Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_03 Read Online Free PDF Page A

photos of the bereaved and bewildered families, the reassurances by President Tucker that the Thorndyke campus was indeed safe for students, the daily progress reports by Lieutenant Urschel of the Derry Hills Police Department.
    The stories hung on to page one for a week; inside, for several more weeks. But as the days of spring and the academic year dwindled, so did the coverage, until, finally, it was old news, the unsolved campus murders in the spring of ’88.
    I gleaned a few more facts from the follow-ups.
    According to Gail Voss’s roommate, Linda Lou Kelly, Rosen and Voss were unofficially engaged, but a wedding date hadn’t been set.
    Police announced Rosen and Voss had spent most of the evening at the Green Owl. The couple had been deep in conversation. “Laughing a lot,” a waitress recalled. “He kept raising a glass and saying, ‘Here’s to Joe Smith,’ and she’d smile and say something like ‘Joe’s my guy.’”
    I knew the Green Owl. It was just a block from Brandt Hall and was still one of the most popular hangouts for students and faculty, a combination restaurant, bar, and coffeehouse. Members of the English and philosophy faculties were especially likely to be found in the game-room area, around old oak tables with inlaid squares for checkers and chess.
    On the final night of their lives, Rosen and Voss ate in one of the wooden booths at the far back. “They were regulars,” the waitress said.
    But when I’d read all the stories, the bottom line was that the murder weapon was never found and no suspect in the murders was ever named.
    The in-depth profiles pictured Howard Rosen as boisterous and outgoing, with a booming laugh and a penchant for practical jokes. Gail Voss was described as serious, intense, responsible. Both were superb students. Rosen had been named a Fulbright scholar and planned to spend the following year in Berlin, studying the subversion of the German press in the decade preceding World War II.
    I studied their pictures.
    Howard Rosen exuded the vitality of a buccaneer. In another age, he would have been at home in an elegant doublet and brandishing a sword. His wickedly merry eyes gleamed with deviltry, and his full, sensuous mouth stretched in an appealing grin. Any woman would love to smooth his thick dark curls. No sweet maiden would have been safe from his blandishments.
    Gail Voss stared shyly into the camera. Smooth hair framed a heart-shaped face. Her lips curved in a sweet smile. She was the girl next door, your kid sister, Miss America.
    Anger flickered within me.
    Howard Rosen should be jumping to his feet at a press conference, his voice raised in demand, or straddling a chair at a coffeehouse, regaling fellow reporters with ambitious plans to climb a mountain or run a marathon.
    Gail Voss should be hurrying to meet a deadline and, perhaps playing the dual role of many of today’s young women, thinking about dinner and picking up the baby at day care.
    They should not be moldering bones and desiccated flesh in corroding coffins.
    I fished the last peanut from the bag and swiftly scrawled several questions beneath the heading“Rosen-Voss.” Then I turned back to the computer, punched in “Candace Murdoch,” and pressed the search key.
    The first story in what became the Murdoch case ran on Thursday, July 22, 1982:
    CIVIC LEADER SLAIN AT HOME
    Curt Murdoch, president of Murdoch Brothers Concrete, was shot to death Wednesday night in the garden of his Derry Hills home. Police have not named any suspects in the murder of the well-known Derry Hills civic leader.
    Police said Murdoch’s body was found slumped on a stone bench near a reflecting pool. Lt. Ralph Forbes said a .38 pistol was found on the terrace behind the house, approximately twenty feet from the bench. Lt. Forbes said shots were heard by a next-door neighbor, Gerald Trent, at 10:05 P.M.
    Trent told police he had just opened his