No matter how long it takes, no matter how slowly the wheels turn, justice brings relief and satisfaction that the system works - unless it doesn’t, of course.
Rich and poor alike deserve justice. But not everybody receives their just rewards. Some people live and die in the shadow of equality. Some people pine for a loss and die without savoring an equitable end result.
Crime victims, particularly victims of homicide, immediately come to mind.
During the many years I’ve written and talked about murder, I’ve watched too many families wait forever for righteousness to come their way.
In at least two cases, I did my best to call attention to a killing that seemed within the reach of police to solve. In both cases I failed. In both cases family members eventually included me in the failed system that promises them everything and delivers nothing.
They knew I tried.
But they also knew that I helped them hope again in a world where hope is an enemy rather than a friend.
Police named suspects in both cases.
The investigation in Wilkes-Barre seems less solvable than the case in Santa Maria, California.
After many years of inaction, police finally gave the Wilkes-Barre death their best shot. They came close. But witnesses and at least one suspect had died and evidence got lost, leaving too much emptiness in the case to repair.
I still have hope in the California case.
I have no intention of contacting family members of Bobby Lopez. I don’t want to put Norma, Bobby’s sister, through any more than she’s already been through. But I’ve caught myself thinking about calling Jerry Brown, the state attorney general, who might be interested in listening to one big piece of the investigation that I believe police have still not pursued in almost 30 years.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody ever interviewed the one main suspect in the case. About 50 people might have seen who killed Lopez, but were too afraid of one man to come forward. A caller did phone police and gave the suspect’s name.
People who are still alive know who plunged a machete into Lopez’s heart.
As far as I know, the suspect is alive and well and living on the Central Coast. I tried to track him down and talk to him one day a few years ago but failed. Police have more resources and should have interviewed him. But, for whatever the reason, they did not.
I wrote many columns about the case.
And Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger even authorized a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer or killers. That happened after I called Santa Maria police and asked police if they knew about the reward program.
They didn’t.
Within a short time of applying for the reward, they got yet another inducement to solve the case. But nobody interviewed the suspect. And everybody I talked to in town, including the police chief, named him as the killer.
How can that happen?
Bobby’s parents believed it was because he was of mixed race, part Mexican and part American Indian. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
Bobby’s father was very ill when we last spoke. But that didn’t stop him from going to the mountains with Norma one day and cutting fresh sage that he brought home and burned in private ceremonies of hope in the back garden – a quiet place where he raised doves and other small birds.
Before I left the West Coast, Norma gave me a small gray bundle of fresh sage that her father had tied in a bright red string.
I keep that sage on an altar in my meditation room. Each day I sit in stillness before that herb. Each day I feel the energy of life and death. Each day I wonder what the day will bring.
Today, for whatever the reason, I felt the presence of Bobby Lopez.
Norma is a mystic of sorts who believes her brother visits her in the shape of a big bird – a great spirit whose song is a cry for justice.
Sue Henry
