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offices in a great stream. McGraw got a couple of death threats: “An Open Letter to Marty McGraw…You started this, you son of a bitch, and now it’s your turn…” A lot of people, in public and private, were moved to guess who Will’s next target might be, and offered their recommended candidates.
    Everyone was sure of one thing. There would be a third. Nobody stopped at two. One maybe, three maybe. But nobody stopped at two.
    Will didn’t disappoint, although his next pick may have surprised a lot of people. “An Open Letter to Roswell Berry” was his heading, and he went on to identify the city’s leading anti-abortion activist as an unindicted murderer. “Your rhetoric has provoked violent action on the part of your followers time and time again,” Will asserted, “and on at least two occasions death has been the direct result. The bombing at the 137th Street clinic, the assassinations of the nurse and physician on Ralph Avenue, were wanton acts of murder. Both times you have talked out of both sides of your mouth, disassociating yourself from the act but all but applauding it as a means to an end, and a far lesser evil than abortion…You champion the unborn, but your interest in a fetus ends at birth. You oppose birth control, oppose sex education, oppose any social program that might lessen the demand for abortion. You are a despicable human being, and seemingly unpunishable. But no one can hold out for long against
“THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE”
    Berry was out of town when the letter landed on Marty McGraw’s desk. He was in Omaha, leading a massive protest against an abortion clinic. “I am doing God’s work,” he told the TV cameras. “It’s His will that I continue, and I’ll stack that up against the so-called will of the people any day.” He told another interviewer that whatever business Will had with him would have to wait until he returned to New York, and he expected to be in Omaha for some time to come.
    God’s will. In AA, we’re advised to pray only for knowledge of His will, and the power to carry it out. My sponsor, Jim Faber, has said that it’s the easiest thing in the world to know God’s will. You just wait and see what happens, and that’s it.
    It may indeed have been God’s work that Roswell Berry was doing, but it evidently wasn’t God’s will that he continue. He stayed in Omaha, just as he said he would, but when he returned to New York it was in a box.
    The maid found him in his room at the Omaha Hilton. His killer, not without a sense of humor, had left him with a coat hanger wrapped around his neck.
     
     
    It was the Omaha Police Department’s case, of course, but they welcomed the two NYPD detectives who flew out to consult with them and exchange information. There was no evidence to link Berry’s murder with the killings of Vollmer and Salerno, none aside from Will’s having singled him out in his open letter, and this left room for speculation that some native Omahan, spurred perhaps by Will’s suggestion, had handled the matter on a local level.
    Will’s next communication—sent, like all the others, to Marty McGraw—addressed that notion. “Did I go off to Omaha to settle accounts with Mr. Berry? Or did some citizen of Omaha, outraged at having to put up with Roswell Berry’s disruption of that fair city’s urban equilibrium, take matters into his own hands?
    “My friend, what on earth does it matter? What difference can it possibly make? I myself am nothing, as someone is purported to have said in a slightly different context. It is the will of the people that acts through me. If indeed another pair of hands than mine stuck the knife in Roswell Berry’s pitiless heart before girdling his neck with a coat hanger, it is as moot to ponder my own responsibility in the matter as it is to wonder how much your own writing gave rise to my actions. Each of us, alone or in concert, helps to express
“THE PEOPLE’S WILL”
    It was cleverly done. Will