PlazaJen: Passion Knit

I watch a lot of Law & Order. CSI, Court TV, A&E - I've always loved detective novels, and once I got access to a television, I immediately gravitated to all the criminology-based shows. I am fascinated by the psychology and formation of the criminal mind (and yes, I watch that show, too.)

A young Missouri boy disappeared Monday after school - stepped off the school bus & was gone. A sweet face, 13 years old, beaming up in his school picture, with glasses and a sharp jawline. The news showed the search parties each night, men, mostly, locals, dressed in their camouflage jackets and coveralls, walking shoulder-to-shoulder in the grassy fields near where he disappeared. As each day passed, and the 72-hour mark was hit, I felt that sick feeling in my stomach, that he would be another child gone, snatched and killed. His father on the news, eyes hollow, keeping it together, keeping hope alive, voicing a plea, bewildered this had happened to them.

And then the impossible happened: not only was he found, but another boy, kidnapped four years ago, was also found. James told me as I walked into the living room, they had just broken into the non-stop weather coverage to report it, it had just happened. Then, on the later news, they showed more footage, had more details of the story, you saw the 13-year old smiling as the police escorted him in to the building, and I imagined his father wrapping him in his arms, finally giving in to the fears and sadness in the relief of the moment. We also saw the other boy, taller, unsmiling, walking with another crowd of officers, and I thought of his mother, who must have just spent another Christmas, mourning and hopeful and feeling the hole in her heart that never healed, and I saw their future, an uneasy road, because this boy had grown, has probably been told lies about his parents for the past four years, that they didn't want him, that they gave him to this evil man, and I can barely bring myself to imagine what he did to him. His first victim had gotten too old, and he needed another. The sense of displacement, even in such a hellish situation, this older boy's psyche, the work that will have to be done and undone and still, never erased. And I wept for both those families, because of the joy and the fear and the sadness and the pain, so many lives twisted, never to be unbent completely, because of one man's evil. It's a misnomer to call it a happy ending - but it's as close to a miracle as you can get.

The detailed story is here.