CHAPTER ONE-THE AVE MARIA DIARIES

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.
-- From The Moon and The Yew Tree
Sylvia Plath


I have fallen a long way
I was seventeen when I was born the second time. Not from my Mother’s womb but from the womb I had created around myself after committing the murder. I had to become someone or something new -- a survivor, first and foremost, a survivor. I had chiseled myself into a new being; ever shrouding myself in shame, guilt and despair. Through the years, spinning and weaving a cotton candy like cocoon growing thicker and more impenetrable with each passing year. I was past sweetness, becoming hardened and bitter. My cocoon was neither sweet nor inviting. My shell was as tough as a five year old oyster and my spirit and soul had become malleable, acquiescent, and highly unpleasant.
I was no polished pearl.

June 1969
A NEW PREACHER IS CALLED
I have never heard God call out to me. He whispers to me. Gently and persuasive, always leaving me with an ethereal knowing that means but one thing—it is He that is whispering and not the trappings of this world. Heaven opens itself to me, petal by petal. I can usually tell the magnitude of God’s wishes for me by the scent He leaves behind and by the gentleness of His whisper. Some people call it the “holy spirit” anointing. Maybe it is. I just know it is Godlike and most likely God Himself. I know I am special to God and he loves me. I do not fool myself any longer, I am a mortal sinner.
Heaven’s scent is roses, lilies, and maybe a little gardenia with a hint of magnolia. Mostly roses. God never smells of cheap perfume, so it was on that Sunday in 1969, a hot summer night when the church smelled of Pierre Cardin, Jovan Musk, Estee Lauder, Avon, and sweat; scents all pouring from skin pores of the congregation and the choir after an especially loud gospel song, that I knew we were all in for something not called of Him.
Man had once again intervened and spoiled everything by believing they knew what was “of God.”
Glen Smiley, our new preacher, was seated on the divan to the left of the pulpit where our interim pastor, Brother Henry had been seated for the past several months. Hopewell Springs was in an “interim” phase. The last preacher, Brother Clinton, had been “called” to Florida to a large Southern Baptist church on the edge of the Everglades.
That church was apparently in more need than Hopewell Springs because Preacher Clinton felt the call so strong that he left town with a brand new baby blue Lincoln Continental and a renewed attitude for the Lord.
The church sent him off with a reception in the fellowship hall complete with a shrimp cocktail tray from the A & P that my mother said was sinful in and of itself. Imagine, spending $29.99 on a tray of shrimp when he would be rolling in shrimp as soon as he passed the Florida line, but I guess the church ladies knew what they were doing, because everyone seemed to enjoy the shrimp and the fact that Brother Clinton promised to visit whenever he could afford the time off from his new church home. Of course, he never returned, and actually, no one ever missed him, until the trouble started.
Looking back to that summer the entire congregation should have known that something was wrong. A rash of rapes had suddenly gripped our church and our town in fear. Pastors from all church denominations: The Church of Christ, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Nazarenes, and even the Episcopalians preached from their pulpits each Sunday how a woman could defend herself against rape often bringing in police officers resplendent in their dress blues to teach women basic self defense.
Jesus took a back seat during those months.
We still sung the hymns and prayed the Lord’s Prayer, but everyone had only one thing on their minds—the “Church Rapist”. Husbands, brothers and fathers were taking turns paroling the streets of Hopewell Springs looking for the predator. A curfew had been imposed in our town for the first time in months, we were after all in the throes of the Civil Rights Movement and tensions were strained and taunt as the strings on a two hundred year old Stratavarious.
The description of the rapist seemed to change with each rape. He wore a ski mask but the color of the mask often changed from bright blue to orange or red. He was tall, no short. He was slim and then strong and hulking. One thing remained the same.
He was white.
He tried to mask his voice by speaking in a “colored” accent or exaggerated gentile southern accent. One thing was certain. He was illusive and agile, dumping the women in a different spot each time he had had his way with them. All the women remembered being driven a long way to the destination and each recalled being molested on a bed which smelled of mildew, mustiness and mold. They all remembered being grabbed from the back while they were walking alone in the church parking lot or near the church. The women had been traumatized and emerged from the experience in a state of shock and confusion that would leave them broken and defeated. The total number of women had reached twenty-two as of September 1969. The rapes had started the first of June and the predator had averaged in the first two weeks of June alone a total of seven women. The town was on hyper alert and the women who had been victimized had formed a support group which met on Sunday evenings at the local Shoney’s. All the women except the two young black girls. They had not been invited to attend.

The police and state troopers had solicited many new interns to help catch the predator and talk was circulating that the FBI was about to step in a take control of the rapist capture altogether. And then in mid September the rapes stopped. Of course by then the rapes had already taken a second seat for Bear Bryant, the most revered man in the state, The University of Alabama football coach had promised another National Championship. And for the men that was all that really mattered. Speculation grew the rapist must be a football fan or the very least an errant fan with misguided notions of morality and decorum. It was as if the rapes really hadn’t happened at all, except for the women who bore the scars.

Just as they had started with a force as great as an impending hurricane, they stopped with all the calmness and peace of a blue sky after the storm. Our pastor held daily prayer services to stop the rapist and it was largely believed that he alone had stopped the rapist with his prayers to God, Jesus and the blessed trinity. It did not seem to raise any suspicion or coincidence that the rapes started when he arrived and ended when the FBI threatened to take over the investigation.
The rapist was not stupid. He was a smart, deceptive man who knew he had no recourse and no hope with the FBI taking over the investigation. So the community was saved by Brother Smiley and once again he had won the hearts of the congregation. The task of raping became a moot point with him. He could get what he needed with little work. He had only to use his charm and his sharp wit to reel in the women of the church. Women lined up after church to offer their appreciation and faith in him. Some of the women had actually been his victims and now they were offering their subservient bodies, yielding to him and allowing him to caress and comfort their souls, offering in his own way redemption and acting as a priest would do if he had not been Baptist—absolution of their sins for causing the rape in the first place. Of course, that knowledge was to come at a much later date. Thirty fives years later during the course of my trial for murdering him.