2
Copyright 1995 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe
November 16, 1995, Thursday, City Edition
SECTION: LIVING; Pg. 65
LENGTH: 2451 words
HEADLINE: Killed over a kiss;
The two women were lovers, shot by a man who hated
to see women embrace. One lived to tell the story.
BYLINE: By Alisa Valdes, Globe Staff
DATELINE: FREEVILLE, N.Y.
BODY:
She's dead now. Murdered. 28. But when Rebecca Wight
walked, the world watched. Graceful. Strong. She lifted weights. Business
major. Clear, dark skin. Confident - you could
tell by the angle of her shoulders. Funny. Smiled easily, straight white
teeth. No wonder Claudia Brenner fell in love with
her.
In those days, the final days of loving Rebecca, Brenner,
32, mixed her food with nutritional yeast and lived here in the rolling
greens and yellows of upstate New York, a far
cry from the noisy Manhattan of her upbringing. In a way Rebecca was like
Ithaca - wild, powerful, beautiful, free. In a way, she
was perfect.
In other words, Rebecca was nothing - nothing - like
. . . him.
Stephen Roy Carr. Tall like an ostrich. Sunken eyes.
Chain smoker. Pale. Knit cap in the middle of summer. Sweatpants. Loner.
Drifter. Loser. Hated when men kissed men, he
told the police later. Hated when women kissed women. He watched Rebecca
and Claudia kissing in the woods. They thought they
were alone. Minutes later, 82 feet from their tent, hidden in the bushes,
he shot them. Eight times.
Incredibly, Brenner survived.
Seven years later, she has written a book about it
called "Eight Bullets: One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence,"
with the help of a friend, Hannah Ashley. And
at 6:30 tonight she will talk at the Cambridge Public Library about her
book, her survival, her activism and her recovery.
It's not as if there was a huge lesbian community
in Blacksburg, Va. Especially at Virginia Tech, where Brenner was studying
to become an architect.
There were a few lesbians. Hung around together. Community.
There were the straight women who hung around with
them, too: feminists, organizing the Women's Week activities. Then there
were the straight women who were curious, and
the "straight" women who were actually gay, peeking out of the closet.
Rebecca Wight fell somewhere between the latter two
categories. Lived with her boyfriend, but looked at Brenner a certain
way. Brenner knew better than to get involved
with a curious straight woman who had a boyfriend. That was masochism.
But there was no denying Wight's charm. The way she
held her head back and to the side. The way her walking shorts fit over
her leotards. Brenner was a Manhattan-born Jew.
Wight came from a Puerto Rican mother and an Iranian-American father.
She was gorgeous, and to Brenner, exotic.
So when Wight put her hand on Brenner's thigh during
a breakfast conversation one morning and looked right into her soul, it
shook her. Hard. She had to tell her. She had
to. She took a deep breath. She did. Wight felt the same way. Left her
man. In the book, Brenner remembers this as when Wight gave her
permission to fall in love with her. And she did.
It would last almost two years, until the shooting.
Almost two years despite constant geographical separation. They went to
concerts, restaurants. But epecially they liked
to be outdoors, camping and hiking.
Wight was the kind of camper who laughed at the idea
of cooking fires. Only amateur campers built fires. Real campers used
little camping stoves run on butane or batteries.
Next to Wight, Brenner felt like a klutz outdoors. But she remembers it
being wonderful to hike and camp with Wight - just for the chance
to watch her walking up ahead, perfect like that.
That's what she was thinking on May 13, 1988. Friday
the 13th. Morning. In the forest, the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania.
They had camped overnight after parking their
cars on Dead Woman Hollow trail. Coincidence. Beautiful trail. Woman died
of a snakebite there once. Got named for her.
No one else was there. Quiet. Peaceful. They had kissed,
two people in love in the isolation of the woods. They had waited. Careful.
They thought they were alone.
Morning. Wight had walked to the public restroom at
a campground. Thought no one was there. So she was nude except for her
shoes. Free. Camping. Summer. Hair messy from
sleeping. Sound of birds. Sun in the trees. And then Stephen Roy Carr
like a bad dream.
Got a cigarette? he asked her. I'm so embarrassed,
she said. We thought we were alone. We're camping. No, no cigarette. He
stared. Wight hurried back to the tent. We have
to put clothes on, she said. There's someone here. A creepy man.
They dressed and decided to head to another campground.
Packed up. Walked past Stephen Roy Carr, sitting like the devil in the
forest. See you later, Wight said. She was polite
like that. See you later, he said back. Wight didn't mean it. Stephen
Roy Carr did.
He saw them later, when they stopped to look at their
map. They kissed then. He was behind them. A .22-caliber rifle over his
shoulders. Casual. You lost already? he asked.
Nasty. Sneering. They looked at him. No, are you? Brenner wondered what
he could be hunting. It wasn't hunting season. He laughed
to himself. He walked away. Wight and Brenner thought he was gone.
Wight and Brenner found a place to set up camp. Made
dinner. Talked about moss and if you could find a spot big enough to sleep
on. Silly conversations. Fun, Brenner remembers.
They were having fun. Ate dinner. Bugs were biting them. Late afternoon,
maybe 5:30. They kissed. Rolled around. Began
making love.
That's when Brenner's arm exploded. In the next 30
seconds she took the shots: Arm Neck Neck Face Head. If her mouth hadn't
been closed, her molars wouldn't have shattered
the bullet in her face. If her head had been turned just centimeters in
either direction, her jugular would have opened.
Wight took two. Back. Head. Still had energy to tell
Brenner to get down, to run for cover behind a tree, to stop the bleeding.
Behind the tree, bleeding. Talking to each other.
He came back. They knew. It was him. What are we going to do? Wight trying
to get up but she couldn't. She fell. Brenner
watching. Brenner thinking she had to go get help. Wight saying no, don't
go. Wight looking at her like she wanted Brenner to
die with her, in her arms. Brenner insisting she had to go. Wight going
blind, trying to put her own shoes on so she can go, too. Too weak. Brenner
watching Wight's eyes roll up into her head,
her lips turn pale. Wight saying it hurts, her back hurts. Brenner afraid
of bleeding to death. Wight leaning against
the tree, telling Brenner to take her wallet, in the pocket of her shirt.
You'll need money. Brenner putting on a sweater, gathering a map and flashlight,
afraid he was still there, waiting to finish her off. Brenner terrified,
in shock, leaving her love to die alone against the tree. Walking. Leaving
a trail of blood.
Four miles. Three hours. Staying on the road. He's
probably in the woods. Choking on bits of bullet. White towel around her
neck turned red. Dripping.
One car passed. Waving a flashlight. They looked at
her and kept driving.
Second car, two kids, boys, maybe 16. Chewing tobacco.
They stopped. Put her in the front seat. Offered her their spitting cup
for all the blood she was pushing out of her
mouth. Raced her to Shippensburg, to the police station. Put the radio
on for her. Talked to her. Tried not to act horrified.
Sitting in the station, saying over and over the name
Rebecca Wight, saying over and over, she's on the Rocky Knob Trail off
the Appalachian trail.
Saying over and over, she's hurt, she needs help.
Not yet registering she'd been shot five times. Some pain. More would
come later. Thinking she'd go with them, walk
back, find Rebecca.
Ambulance to Chambersburg Hospital. Helicopter to
Hershey Trauma Center. Operation. Drugs. Thinking the whole time of Wight.
Wondering. Falling asleep, reluctant. Waking
to the news. Rebecca Wight was murdered. The police found her that night.
Stayed with her body all night, until morning, when
they could photograph the evidence. In the pictures, her eyes were open.
The irises were there, brown. In the pictures, she was dead.
Stephen Roy Carr thought they were both dead. That's
why he left 25 rounds of ammunition there, in the spot where the police
found his cap with the cat hair on it. Hair
from the cat at the house where he'd stayed the week before, the house
to which he'd fled after he shot the women, and told his nephew, I did
something very very bad.
Stephen Roy Carr wrapped his rifle in plastic so it
wouldn't get damaged, and he hid it. He left a trail of cigarette butts
and a Coke can, and then he jumped into a washtub
and floated downstream to an Amish village. A family there took him in,
believed his lies. He lived with them for 10 days, until an Amish
man secretly watching television saw the composite drawing on the news.
He called the police. That man is here in our village, said the Amish
man.
They caught Stephen Roy Carr. Arrested him on a warrant
from Florida for grand larceny. Thank God you're taking me out of here,
he told the police. I hate the way the men kiss
the men here. Later they told him his hat and ammunition were found at
a murder scene. He said his gun was stolen. One of the women
lived, they told him. She identified you. He said he was hunting and thought
they were deer. He was an unreliable witness. He had a criminal record.
He was a liar. He killed Rebecca Wight.
The courts agreed. His public defender tried to say
that Wight and Brenner had made him do it, taunted him, put on a show
with their lesbian antics. Said that in jail
he'd been raped by another inmate. Had been raped as a child. Was disturbed.
On the stand Brenner was calm and reliable and proud
of her love, a healthy, innocent love. She was full of bullets. Her girlfriend
was dead. Even the worst homophobe couldn't
deny the guilt, the coldblooded, calculated guilt of Stephen Roy Carr.
Life without parole. In Pennsylvania that means something.
He's there now, Greterford Prison. Listed S. Carr. Prisoner. Forever.
"There are a lot of things that made us lucky with
the criminal justice system," Brenner says. She is speaking in her home,
a big yellow farmhouse in rural Freeville, 12
miles outside of Ithaca. A dog outside barks and wags her tail. Six cats
roam inside and out, one curled by the big wood stove, another rubbing
Brenner's shins. She sits on a couch. It's a house full of couches and
books and magazines - The Nation, The Jerusalem Report - and cassettes
like "People Are a Rainbow" for her 14-month-old
child, Reuben (named for Rebecca), whom she had through artificial insemination.
Brenner wears black jeans, black sneakers, a
big wool sweater. Her eyes are turquoise.
The justice system "often doesn't work for gays and
lesbians. But for me it helped that I was white, that I was from an upper-middle-class
family, that my family cared about me, that
I was educated, that I was not your stereotypical image."
She doesn't say what "stereotypical image" means,
but it is clear. Brenner is petite. She is pretty. At the time of the
shooting, her hair was long. That's what she
means.
"But," she adds, "it's a sad statement that when the
system actually works for a lesbian or gay person, or a black person or
a minority, that we have to say we feel lucky.
Why should we feel lucky for getting simple justice?"
Brenner has a regular life now. She is an architect,
with her own practice in Ithaca. She has a new love, Dana Jacobsen, of
San Francisco. They met at a women's music festival
in Michigan. Jacobsen is a sound engineer. They communicate every day
on the Internet. They visit once a month.
"We're totally in love," Brenner says. "I think it's
important that people know that, that I've been able to fall in love again,
that I have a normal life. Sometimes people
survive these stant, and it shows in her speaking. Years of therapy, books,
love from friends have all helped. She is comfortable talking
about the shooting. If you apologize for asking about it, she stares and
then says gently: "There's not enough space in our lives to talk about
violence." She smiles. "We've made some progress,
but I think there's this general politeness in not talking about painful
stuff. We all need to talk more than we do.
People worry it will be hard for me, but it's been seven years. When I
speak publicly people want to talk about their own experiences, and we
all end up feeling better."
There is not a day when Brenner does not think about
the shooting. She keeps a picture of Wight in her room. The inside of
her mouth is puckered in spots with scar tissue.
There's a line down the side of her neck from the operation. Last year
her cheek turned black where a bullet bit came to the surface.
"It's like a metaphor for my healing," she says. "Little
by little working its way out. I'm not suffering anymore, but I'm very
aware every day of what happened to me."
People tell her she is strong. Strong to have survived,
physically. Strong to have gone on to become an activist, to have written
a book. But she doesn't like this title, "strong
woman." She is a survivor.
Brenner has been talking since it happened. She's
been on talk shows, in magazines, on the radio. She wrote the book. Once
a month she travels somewhere to talk.
"The hatred of gays and lesbians is all about gender
roles," she says. "I've thought a lot about this. . . . When you realize
the magnitude of our belief in gender roles
as a society it is staggering and upsetting.
"I felt the speaking was having such a strong impact
dispelling the myth that anti-gay violence is some guys coming out of
a bar and a car full of guys comes by and beats
the crap out of them. Anti-gay violence is much bigger than anyone admits.
It affects all sorts of people. And my story seems to have a
huge impact on all people because it is so horrific and it doesn't leave
room for a person to stay uncommitted. When you hear the story - two women,
unarmed, innocent, shot - people don't stay
neutral. They go to a place of compassion."
Thousands a year are victims of anti-gay crimes
In 1994, 2,739 people reported being victims of anti-gay
or anti-lesbian hate crimes in the United States. Of those, 30 percent
were women.
In the year before, 1993, 26 percent of all reported
anti-gay or anti-lesbian hate crimes were perpetrated against women.
Of all the anti-gay and anti-lesbian crimes reported
in 1994, 40 percent involved no physical injury. Twenty-seven percent
resulted in minor injuries; 16 percent in outpatient
treatment; 16 percent in hospitalization. Three percent resulted in death.
In Massachusetts last year, 73 women reported being
victims of anti-lesbian crime, ranging from constant harassment by neighbors
to actual physical attacks.
Numbers gathered from the report "Anti-Gay/Lesbian
Violence in 1994, Massachusetts and the United States: Local & National
Trends, Analysis and Incident Summaries."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, 1. Claudia Brenner (right) has written
a book about the shooting that injured her and killed her lover, Rebecca
Wight (left), on
the Appalachian trail.(COLOR) 2. AP FILE PHOTO / Brenner
speaks at Pennsylvania State House on anti-gay crime. 3. AP PHOTO / Stephen
Roy Carr
after his arrest for shooting Brenner and Wight.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: November 17, 1995
|