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 resort 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 loss of life left me with my very own boogeyman. A faceless presence by no means removed from my facet. I noticed actual and imagined threats in all places. My life was bifurcated into the earlier than and the after. I lugged round survivor’s baggage — sorrow, guilt and worry.
And now there he’s: The boogeyman has a face and a reputation: Andre Taylor. And, most necessary, genetic markers. He left behind DNA when he brutally raped Vickie, shot her within the head and left her physique alongside a rural street in Charles County, Md. For 4 many years, the police made no arrests. Her killing added to the shocking number of unsolved murdered or lacking Black ladies and women within the U.S.
My youthful sister, Kay, now a retired California deputy sheriff, stored pushing for solutions. I selected as a substitute to deal with supporting Vickie’s son, who was 8 on the time of her loss of life, on elevating cash for the Vickie Belk Scholarship Basis launched by our household church and on talking out in opposition to gun violence.
Then in mid-2023, the mixture of enhanced DNA expertise, Kay’s willpower and new management within the Charles County Sheriff’s Division and the Maryland state legal professional’s workplace, there was a significant break within the case.
A DNA pattern lifted from Vickie’s clothes matched a profile within the nationwide database. On the time, Taylor was dwelling 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 identified relationship with Vickie. What he did have was an extended, violent prison file, 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 marriage 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’d be again on the similar altar, sobbing over her lifeless physique mendacity in a casket. She was carrying the identical blue costume. For weeks, unopened marriage ceremony presents stayed stacked within the nook of our home.
I pay attention as the general public defender explains why the decide ought to grant Taylor bail. A flicker of compassion strikes me. I spent years working for prison justice reform. I do know the system usually fails poor individuals, particularly these with disabilities and communities of shade. I’ve been a powerful public advocate of restorative justice and a critic of mass incarceration.
“Decide, have a look at him,” the general public defender says. “He’s not going wherever. He’s not a flight danger.”
I push apart any ideas of compassion when the prosecutor shares Taylor’s model of how his DNA obtained on Vickie’s clothes.
He claimed {that a} buddy 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 mentioned Mikey left with Vickie, alive, and when he requested later, Mikey informed him: “Nicely man, you recognize 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 identified the police have been coming for him.
“He’s a flight danger and must be held with out bail,” the prosecutor insists.
“Bail denied!” the decide thunders.
::
A yr and half later, in summer season 2024, I journey east from California once more, this time for Taylor’s trial. On daily basis our household and associates from the previous 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 is going to come.
Jury choice is a reminder of how a lot violence is ingrained in American life. The decide 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 decide’s supply to be excused in the event that they really feel they will’t be neutral. I start to fret if there will likely 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 people of shade.
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 how one can 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 without doubt one of the first referred to as to the witness stand by the prosecutor. She should formally establish Vickie within the crime scene images. A number of relations select to go away the courtroom. I keep and watch as jurors gasp on the photographs 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 health worker who did the unique post-mortem whether it is attainable that Vickie dedicated suicide or if her blunt vaginal accidents could possibly be from consensual intercourse. Completely not, the health worker says. She stands by her evaluation that Vickie’s loss of life 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 making an attempt to dispute the gathering and validity of the DNA proof.
However ultimately, Taylor’s personal phrases convict him. The prosecution performs your entire 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 sneakers. I bear in mind these sneakers. Dressed like she labored in an workplace or one thing.”
He deadpans, “She was alive after I was achieved 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 just a few 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. Members of the family are given the chance to make statements.
We’re instructed to direct our feedback to the decide, 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 decide 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 decide’s reprimand and leaves the courtroom.
Taylor is sentenced to life in jail. “My actions at the moment gained’t carry Vickie again,” the decide says. “It in all probability gained’t even present closure. However I hope it’ll carry you some sense of justice and peace.”
Perhaps in the future it’ll. 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 non-public essays about racial justice and social change.
