I’m staring on the man accused of raping and murdering my sister, Vickie, in August 1979. She was 28.
I can see him, however he can’t see me. We’re related by video. He’s wearing an orange jumpsuit, sitting in a Maryland jailhouse holding room ready for his bail listening to to start. I’m alone in a lodge room, on a enterprise journey to New York.
I’m shocked by his look. He was 18 in 1979. Now 62, he seems to be years older, agitated, eyes darting. He’s Black — like me, like Vickie.
I can really feel my chest tightening, sweat accumulating on my brow. Vickie’s dying left me with my very own boogeyman. A faceless presence by no means removed from my facet. I noticed actual and imagined threats in every single place. My life was bifurcated into the earlier than and the after. I lugged round survivor’s baggage — sorrow, guilt and concern.
And now there he’s: The boogeyman has a face and a reputation: Andre Taylor. And, most essential, genetic markers. He left behind DNA when he brutally raped Vickie, shot her within the head and left her physique alongside a rural highway in Charles County, Md. For 4 a long time, the police made no arrests. Her killing added to the shocking number of unsolved murdered or lacking Black ladies and ladies within the U.S.
My youthful sister, Kay, now a retired California deputy sheriff, stored pushing for solutions. I selected as an alternative to concentrate on supporting Vickie’s son, who was 8 on the time of her dying, on elevating cash for the Vickie Belk Scholarship Basis launched by our household church and on talking out towards gun violence.
Then in mid-2023, the mixture of enhanced DNA know-how, Kay’s willpower and new management within the Charles County Sheriff’s Division and the Maryland state lawyer’s workplace, there was a serious break within the case.
A DNA pattern lifted from Vickie’s clothes matched a profile within the nationwide database. On the time, Taylor was residing in a Washington, D.C., convalescent house. One in every of his legs had been amputated and he was utilizing a wheelchair. He had no recognized relationship with Vickie. What he did have was an extended, violent felony document, and jail time. When the DNA match was confirmed, he was indicted and arrested.
Which introduced us to the bail listening to.
Reminiscences rush again. The final time I noticed Vickie was on my wedding ceremony day. She was standing subsequent to me on the altar in a blue maid-of-honor costume and matching hat. Three weeks later, I might be again on the identical altar, sobbing over her lifeless physique mendacity in a casket. She was sporting the identical blue costume. For weeks, unopened wedding ceremony presents stayed stacked within the nook of our home.
I hear as the general public defender explains why the choose ought to grant Taylor bail. A flicker of compassion strikes me. I spent years working for felony justice reform. I do know the system usually fails poor individuals, particularly these with disabilities and communities of colour. I’ve been a powerful public advocate of restorative justice and a critic of mass incarceration.
“Choose, have a look at him,” the general public defender says. “He’s not going anyplace. He’s not a flight threat.”
I push apart any ideas of compassion when the prosecutor shares Taylor’s model of how his DNA acquired on Vickie’s clothes.
He claimed {that a} pal named Mikey confirmed up at his home with a hysterical Vickie within the backseat of his automobile. Taylor’s story was that she begged for her life, providing to have intercourse if they’d simply let her go. He stated Mikey left with Vickie, alive, and when he requested later, Mikey informed him: “Properly man, I needed to do what I needed to do.”
I begin to weep.
The prosecutor jumps in, noting the defensive wounds on Vickie’s physique as she fought for her life and misplaced, the presence of Taylor’s DNA on her panties. After which this: When Taylor was arrested, the prosecutor says, he informed officers he would have enlisted his brothers to assist him flee if he’d recognized the police have been coming for him.
“He’s a flight threat and must be held with out bail,” the prosecutor insists.
“Bail denied!” the choose thunders.
::
A yr and half later, in summer time 2024, I journey east from California once more, this time for Taylor’s trial. Each day our household and associates from the outdated neighborhood and past are within the Maryland courtroom or Zooming in. However all their love and help isn’t sufficient to minimize my dread of what’s going to come.
Jury choice is a reminder of how a lot violence is ingrained in American life. The choose asks the various pool of almost 100 potential jurors to face in the event that they know somebody who was wounded or killed by gun violence. Solely 5 remained seated. When he asks about sexual violence, a majority of the ladies stand. Many settle for the choose’s supply to be excused in the event that they really feel they will’t be neutral. I start to fret if there will probably be any ladies left to serve. Lastly, the prosecution and protection agree on 4 ladies and 9 males (together with one alternate). They’re principally of us of colour.
The hallways are cleared every morning as Taylor is wheeled into court docket. In particular person, he appears small, innocuous. I discover myself wishing I knew easy methods to hate higher, however I come up empty. All I can muster is curiosity, loss and ache, questioning what had occurred to him in his first 18 years of life.
Kay is among the first referred to as to the witness stand by the prosecutor. She should formally establish Vickie within the crime scene pictures. A number of relations select to go away the courtroom. I keep and watch as jurors gasp on the photos or look away. Taylor sits immobile, as if the proof has nothing to do with him.
We hear emotional testimony from the person who‘d discovered Vickie within the woods. Now a grandfather, he was 15, driving his bike close to his house, when he noticed her physique. He had shared with the household how the picture haunted him for years.
When the protection begins, I begin directing my bitterness much less at Taylor and extra at his legal professionals. It’s a two-person staff headed by the chief public defender, a Black girl, with a white girl within the second chair. I do know they’re doing their jobs, however their competency turns my abdomen and coronary heart inside out.
Taylor’s lawyer asks the medical expert who did the unique post-mortem whether it is potential that Vickie dedicated suicide or if her blunt vaginal accidents may very well be from consensual intercourse. Completely not, the medical expert says. She stands by her evaluation that Vickie’s dying was a murder, and that she was violently sexually assaulted.
Subsequent Taylor’s legal professionals take a web page from the O.J. Simpson playbook and spend hours attempting to dispute the gathering and validity of the DNA proof.
However ultimately, Taylor’s personal phrases convict him. The prosecution performs the whole two-hour video of his arrest interview. For nearly 60 minutes, he denies having any contact with Vickie, after which he admits to what the prosecutors will name “actions that amounted to rape.”
“I had intercourse along with her to quiet her down. She was properly dressed with good costly footwear. I keep in mind these footwear. Dressed like she labored in an workplace or one thing.”
He deadpans, “She was alive once I was carried out along with her.”
Within the closing argument, the prosecutor connects the dots. There was no Mikey. All of the proof factors to the truth that Vickie was kidnapped, taken to the woods a number of miles from the place Taylor lived, sexually assaulted and murdered. The DNA implicates Taylor and Taylor alone.
It takes the jury two hours to come back again with a verdict: responsible. As they file out of the courtroom, a number of of them make eye contact. I silently mouth “thanks.”
::
A month later, I return to the courtroom for Taylor’s sentencing. Relations are given the chance to make statements.
We’re instructed to direct our feedback to the choose, not Taylor. Vickie’s son speaks first. I preserve my remarks quick, reminding the court docket of the brutality of the crime, how scared Vickie will need to have been, and the way Taylor had proven no regret for his actions.
When it’s my youngest sister’s flip, she first apologizes to the choose for ignoring his directions, then turns to Taylor, and says what I want I had had the nerve to say: “ You’re a piece of trash.” She accepts the choose’s reprimand and leaves the courtroom.
Taylor is sentenced to life in jail. “My actions at present gained’t convey Vickie again,” the choose says. “It most likely gained’t even present closure. However I hope it’s going to convey you some sense of justice and peace.”
Perhaps in the future it’s going to. However not today. I depart the courtroom feeling the lack of a sister — no justice, no peace.
Judy Belk, former president and chief govt of the California Wellness Basis, is a frequent contributor to The Occasions. She is at work on a e-book of private essays about racial justice and social change.
