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Tell me, tell me, tell me the answer…
“Helter Skelter,” The Beatles
His name was Jason. I didn’t remember that right away, but I remembered him. As I closed the book on Rader and asked myself how people could sit right next to a murderer like him — or like any of the others whose deeds I’d been reading about — and not now it … I thought about Jason. I hadn’t done that in a long time.
He was, when I knew him, a fairly ordinary guy. I didn’t know him well, and we weren’t close friends. He was, for a while, part of my social circle in college. Most of the time, I’d see him in the dining hall, where some of us who had a break in classes at the same time of day would gather for lunch. Or I’d see him when (roughly) the same group got together for dinner in the dining hall.
I don’t remember how he came to be a part of the group, which was randomly assembled. He may have been someone’s roomate. Perhaps he had a class with someone in the group, or attended the same high school, or came from the same hometown.
He was a pretty regular guy from what I recall. He was average height or maybe a little shorter, kinda skinny, brown hair, blue eyes. He had a nice smile and a somewhat deep voice. Knowing me, I might even have thought he was somewhat cute back then, briefly, before moving on to some other crush on some other guy within a day or so.
Anyway, he was straight, so I likely dismissed the notion quickly. He dated one young woman in our group, for a while. They eventually broke up, but don’t remember any drama about it. He still hung out with the group.
Most of all, I don’t remember anything that stood out about him. He wasn’t, violent as far as I remember. I don’t remember anything about him that suggested he was likely to murder anyone.
Like I said, I couldn’t even remember his name. But I remembered him. And, more than that, I remembered his victim’s name.
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