Here are parts of two paragraphs in my book,  Murder in a Small Town: The Tragic Death of Stacey Burns. They both come from a chapter titled “A Prelude To Murder: Saturday, May 9, 2009.”

“Conflicting reports about events on Saturday, May 9, 2009, abound, complicated by the fact that everything is in hindsight. On that day, no one was recording conversations; no one was listening for innuendos that may be precursors to murder; no one was thinking that tomorrow morning when I wake up, my mother, or my best friend, or my sister, or my daughter, will be dead. People were simply living their lives, not absorbing details to reconstruct the next day.”

“Hindsight is always 20-20. This cliché, like so many others, is a fallacy. . . .expecting hindsight to be accurate is as foolish as expecting memory to be accurate. As with every tragedy, the day of the murder of Stacey Burns has everyone involved scrambling to remember the day before. It is as though searching for answers in the day before could perhaps change the outcome of the event….”

It anyone thought it was difficult to recall details a day or two after the murder, imagine how much more difficult it is six years, four months, and seventeen days later. (but who’s counting?)

Each day that passes give the killer another day of freedom and allows crucial details to sink further to the bottom of the collective memories of those who possibly could shut off that freedom.

So sad . . .

Duke