Red Hurts

There are all these murders going on in the Bay Area now, with remains of bodies washing up near where I walk the dogs. I didn't do it! I heard a roommate's answering machine once, back when I lived in Alameda, with an anonymous man (and sometimes, woman) threatening her and her boyfriend Enrica for having an affair. "God will punish you!" the unimaginably venomous voice said. Later I heard that same voice on TV, slightly flattened. It was a UC Berkeley professor who (along with his wife) had been assaulted shortly after the answering machine tapes had been made. Well, there were no more messages after that! That was the good side. My roommate's married boyfriend, who at the time was the Berkeley Waterfront Commissioner, (4.) went on to murder his best friend, (2.) to whom he had carelessly confided, (3.) who told the police (1.) he had assaulted the professor and his wife. That was the bad side.


Trends and Everyday Events in

the Early Twenty-First Century

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Richard Ames Hart

Monday 21 April 2003