A Sister Searches for Comfort

Michael Myers, brother of Mashpee resident Beverly Bailey.

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(additional audio: interview with Beverly Bailey)

52-year-old Beverly Bailey of Mashpee places a sign-in sheet and a book entitled "Healing Imagery" on a table in the conference room at the YMCA in Wareham. She's trying to turn the sparse room into a more comfortable space, so she thoughtfully arranges framed photos of nature scenes displays a small statue constructed of seashells that make up the word: HOPE.

BAILEY: I want to welcome all of you that are returning to our meeting this evening, and I want to welcome those of you who are new tonight. . . We are not normal grievers. And I just really admire all of you for being here and braving the storm.

This is the POMC -- the Parents of Murdered Children support group, though anyone who has lost someone to murder may attend. Bailey, for example, tells the group that her brother was murderer in 2002. It took her six years, she says, before she could talk publicly about his death.

BAILEY: My brother was Michael Joseph Myers and he was murdered six years ago, in Washington DC. It sent me to a very dark place. I had difficulty getting through the day.

The day he was killed, Myers was waiting to meet his girlfriend when he welcomed a man he barely knew into his home. Before leaving with Myers' wallet and his car, the killer stabbed and tortured him. The details are horrendous. At one point his murderer drove a screwdriver into Myers' eyes. And of course there is no clear reason for it -- there's no rational explanation for torture and murder.

BAILEY: The way he was murdered was heinous. He did nothing to deserve it. And I just found it difficult to breathe. I found it difficult to move beyond the comfort of my bedroom. I had children and a husband. I had to face the hoax of life, if you will. But I knew if I stopped living that the murdered would not have only killed my brother, but he would have ended the life of my family, my children and everything else in my world.

Bailey and other people who've lost loved ones say murder defies the rules of a normal grieving process. It leaves the victim's family struggling with a loss of peace and safety, unable to separate the memories of their loved ones from the way they were killed.

BAILEY: Mike's murder was a heinous crime. It involved 300 stabbings and screwdrivers and hacksaws, and it was a horrible, brutal one that I will never be able to erase from my mind.

Grief is perhaps the most difficult and time-consuming emotion people deal with, and when it comes to murder, family members also are left vulnerable to re-victimizing by the court system. Families relive their loved-ones undignified death when they attend trials, appeals, and later, parole hearings. During that time solace, comfort, and even the cliched idea of closure, they say, simply cannot be found.

BAILEY: Just last month, six years later at the appeal, you have defense attorneys -- doing their job -- but presenting your brother as a bad guy. And he had 300 wounds inflicted upon him, stab wounds and screwdrivers into the eyes. The defendant, however, had a band-aid. Probably from the glass that he used on my brother. This isn't right. So, how do you grieve normally? I'm not sure it's possible. All that was reopened six years later. I feel like I am starting over.

Interviews with several family members of murder victims show that Bailey's experience is not extraordinary but rather typical. Some of the challenges the court system presents to grieving survivors will be discussed in a future story in this series, but Bailey and other people who have lost family members to violence say even friends and acquaintances have trouble understanding their fearfulness, as well as the duration and depth of their grief.

BAILEY: Unfortunately, friends, as well intentioned as they are, when they tell you a story, that they understand, their grandmother died last year, they don't. They are well intended, but it is not the same as their grandmother died last year. It's a forever battle for us. It will never end, and the only people who can really understand is the people who have been through it.

In Bailey's case, she found herself hiding her pain to make the people around her more comfortable. But eventually she began to search for support, to search for people who could understand her grief, and that led her to the Parents of Murdered Children group.

BAILEY: I am tired of pretending it didn't happen to comfort my neighbors. I am tired of going to a social encounter and protect them. We had to protect the jury. I had to protect my children. Every once and awhile you wish they would just listen. Come to our meetings -- you don't have to be a survivor -- come to our meetings and find out and don't be afraid to talk to us.

Nancy Ruey is the executive director of the national organization Parents of Murdered Children. She says that when a family member is murdered, the surviving family struggles with grief and fearfulness. They realize that their home is not safe. Violence tore their family apart once, and it could happen again. And beyond that, Ruey says, families feel alone and completely out of control.

RUEY: From the moment your loved one becomes a victim, you have no control of where the body goes, when the body is released, whether or not someone is captured, whether or not there is a trial. You have no control for many, many years of your life. So unlike many other types of death when they talk about closure, the only thing that closes in a homicide death is the lid on the coffin.

Scores of Americans watch fictional murder-mystery dramas on television, but there's a reluctance to believe or accept that they or their loved ones could die in such a violent, senseless way. People don't want to talk about murder. But Bailey and other members of the POMC do. They want to talk about murder statistics, plea bargains, repeat offenders and the parole system. They also want to spread awareness and change because what they don't want are any more people to join their support group.

reported by Sean Corcoran
broadcast October 13, 2008