A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder And Its Aftermath Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AFTERWORD

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,

  London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,

  Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads,

  Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL England

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, June 2004

  Copyright © Jeanine Cummins, 2004

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK — MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Cummins, Jeanine.

  A rip in Heaven : a memoir of murder and its aftermath / by Jeanine Cummins.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-0-451-21053-1

  1. Murder — Missouri — Case studies. I. Title.

  HV6533.M45C86 2004

  364.152’3’0977866 — dc22 2003025673

  Set in Bembo

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP

  (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Robin: my true friend, my blood, my laugh-maker. And for Julie: my sunshine, my awe-inspirer, my soul-waker.

  May God grant us the strength and wisdom

  to do your lives a sliver of justice in the telling.

  We love you always and miss you every day.

  Kisses and Revolution.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are a number of people without whom, it is no stretch to say, this book might never have happened. To the following people, I want to express my most heartfelt thanks:

  To all my friends, colleagues, mos, pokeys and extended New York family — for keeping my daily life fun and (sometimes) sane.

  To Dan Slater — for your early wisdom. Your sensitivity and encouragement helped me more than you know. To Kara and Claire — for seeing the potential in a rough, rough draft.

  And to Laura — for the incredible insight to spin that roughness into a polish I can feel truly proud of; you made me see things I would never have accepted without your clarity.

  To Frank Carlson, Frank Fabbri, and Nels Moss — for taking the time to read the manuscript and share your invaluable advice (both legal and personal) with me. And more importantly, for the things you have all done for my brother.

  To Nikki — for being the best live-in therapist a girl ever had. (And to Noel for getting her out of the house in between our sessions so that I could write).

  To Evelyne — for talking me down from the ledge time after time despite the ocean usually separating us.

  To Joe — for chasing the very notion of complacency right out of my life. You are, quite simply, my backbone.

  To the Dorks of the Round Table, Anton and Carolyn — for teaching me how to be humble and proud all at the same time. You two are almost as responsible for this book as I am. (Okay, maybe more than “almost.”) I very seriously could not have done this without you.

  To the best damn sales force in the industry — you guys have been absolutely brimming with confidence and enthusiasm from day one, and I wouldn’t want anybody else behind me. I am the luckiest author ever. To Norman and Trish — for becoming my mentors and for teaching me that what’s really important in business is the people surrounding you. Norman, you believed in me, and because of that, my dreams are happening. Thank you.

  To my family (way too many to name here: all Cumminses, Matthewses, and married variations thereof ) — it sounds corny, but it’s true: I come from good stock. The strength and love I have witnessed within our family over the years takes my breath away. I am proud to belong to you.

  To Jamie — you are the most dignified and courageous young lady I have ever known. You have an amazing willingness to be fully engaged in life, and it is truly an honor to call you my cousin and my friend.

  To Ginna — words cannot express what you have done for me. Your daughters planted action in me, but it was your faith and strength that made me unafraid. In my wildest dreams, I could not imagine a more compassionate or generous soul than you have been to me.

  To Mom and Dad — for being unconditionally loving and supportive (even when I choose to live in “hostile foreign territories”). For raising me to keep my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds. And for always believing in me, and reminding me of that when I floundered. I hope to make you proud.

  To Kathy — what can I say? You will always be my emotional partner in life. We grew up on the same day, and no one will ever understand who I am quite as well as you do. Eres la mejor hermanita en todo el mundo.

  And to Tom — it’s been one hell of a journey, and you have been mostly a pain in the ass. But I love you even more now than I did when we started this dream on Grandma’s and Grandpa’s back porch all those years ago. Tom, you are my hero.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is a work of nonfiction. My research materials included court documents, police records, and electronic and print media, as well as interviews I conducted with people who appear in this book. Additionally, because I am part of the story, I used my own personal memories of certain events.

  I chose to write the book from a third-person omniscient point of view so that readers could gain an intimate knowledge of each facet of the story. Some supposition was necessary in writing dialogue, though the interactions are all based on real conversations and contain many direct quotes.

  Certain family members have requested to be omitted from the book for personal reasons, and I have honored those requests. Apart from these alterations, I have endeavored to maintain the factual and quintessential integrity of both the people and the events related herein.

  The river moans and sighs

  Swa
llows my memories

  And spits back currents of regret

  To drown careless swimmers

  ’Neath onion’s shield

  She sheds saltless tears

  Howling at the moon

  The bridge has long since collapsed

  And now the river boasts her danger

  For fear of drowning

  I no longer cross to meet you

  I stand on muddy banks waving

  But can’t see you clearly

  My dreams take me down

  To rocks and the cold current below

  And I have lost myself

  In the water’s wailing drone

  That lulls me to sleep.

  — Julie Kerry

  PROLOGUE

  In 1991, I was a sixteen-year-old high-school kid living on the outskirts of the nation’s capital and I thought I was invincible. I thought I was tough. Washington, D.C., was the homicide capital of the United States. Roughly one out of every twelve hundred people living there that year was murdered. Our mayor sat in jail after he and a prostitute were caught on video smoking crack in a motel room. But behind this curtain of corruption, D.C. was a shiny, whitewashed city whose streets were lined with world-famous museums, government buildings, and busloads of tourists sporting matching T-shirts and Kodak Discs. This city that was my home thrived in the face of scandal, drew its life-breath from the mayhem.

  So when my parents packed my brother, my sister, and me into the family van and drove us to Missouri for spring break, we brought our East Coast attitudes and our entirely imagined city-hardness with us. We drove through two days’ worth of sunshiny American cornfields to get from Maryland to St. Louis, and we were sure we would die from a particularly Midwestern brand of boredom before we even crossed the Mississippi.

  The hard truth that we were about to learn was that, in fact, we weren’t tough kids at all. In reality, we were fairly sheltered, comfortably angst-ridden, suburban teenagers and we had no idea what “tough” was all about. We lived in the early nineties, during a time when youthful violence still had the ability to shock. Even in the homicide capital of the country, there was nothing that felt commonplace about violence, nothing normal about the metal detectors they began installing in our schools in an effort to quell that violence. We were still several years naïve of Columbine and the kind of terror that a tragedy of that magnitude can inspire.

  As my family bumped our blue van westward through the heartland of America, we imagined we were leaving urban dangers behind us in the East. We never dreamed of the kind of brutality we were about to encounter, the kind of tragedy that would destroy our lives in a single night. D.C. had not prepared us for anything. Nothing could prepare us for this.

  My name is Jeanine Cummins, but I’ve been called Tink since the day I was born, so that’s the name that will appear in the following pages. This book is the true story of a violent crime. And it’s the story of my family. By its very nature it is both a true crime and a memoir. I have spent countless hours researching the facts, the evidence, the transcripts, the court documents, the media coverage and the testimony that make up the library of data for this case. And I have made every possible effort to be fair in my portrayal of those facts. But I don’t pretend for a moment to be unbiased. This is my family. There are victims’ voices in this story that have been overlooked and overshadowed by louder, more sensational voices for more than a decade. Now it’s our turn.

  Julie and Robin Kerry are my cousins. Tom Cummins is my brother. This is their story.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The rickety card table was so heaped with plates and elbows that Tom Cummins was almost afraid to lift his fork and feed himself, afraid that even this slightest movement might threaten to upend the carefully arranged scene. On his right sat the dainty figure of his cousin Julie Kerry, who was devouring her steaming plate of chicken stir-fry without a single thought toward the sturdiness of the quivering table. On his left his two younger sisters, Tink and Kathy, shared their grandfather’s organ bench and kicked each other repeatedly under the table, vying for precious knee room. Beside them, Julie’s sister Robin was dwarfed in a large blue velvet recliner, and their younger sister Jamie was perched like a bird on the chair’s arm. All five of the girls tucked into their plates with a vigor that threatened the trembling little table with every bite, but only Tom seemed concerned.

  There was plenty of room at the dining room table for a couple of them to have eaten with the grown-ups, but nobody wanted to be left out of the fun at the kids’ table. So they sacrificed elbow room and crowded in together. The six cousins were unusually quiet, maybe because of the good food they were eating, maybe because of the inhibiting presence of parents and grandparents in the adjoining room. More likely, though, their six minds were sharing a faint, unspoken melancholy at the thought of their imminent parting. They all knew that in twelve hours the Cummins siblings would be packed into their parents’ van and rolling eastward back to Washington, D.C., leaving St. Louis and their Kerry cousins behind.

  Nine-year-old Jamie had finished picking all of the chicken out of her stir-fry and was listlessly shoveling snow peas and broccoli around with her fork. She eyed Robin’s plate and waited patiently. When Robin finished scarfing down all her veggies, she switched her plateful of chicken with Jamie’s vegetables and the two sisters resumed eating. Tink and Kathy stifled a giggle at this exchange. Jamie and Robin’s meat-and-veggie swap still hadn’t lost its novelty to them. It was the kind of behavior that their own strict parents would never have allowed, and as such, it had that air of the forbidden that teenagers seem to find so funny.

  Nineteen-year-old Robin was a strict vegetarian; Jamie hated vegetables. So the sisters had developed this foolproof system that never so much as raised an eyebrow in their all-girl household — their mother Ginna had always encouraged her daughters to embrace their individual ideals. But to Tink and Kathy, who were raised in a home where free thinking and authority-questioning were not actively cultivated habits, the food swap couldn’t have been more foreign. In fact, Tink and Kathy found almost everything about their cousins to be a little exotic. The Kerry sisters were the kinds of people that the Cummins kids wished they could be.

  Sixteen-year-old Tink absolutely idolized the twenty-year-old Julie for her poetry and her passion. The fact that Julie was a brilliant soccer player only furthered Tink’s devotion to her; she was a striker — the same position Tink played. And Kathy, who was almost fifteen, similarly idolized Robin. Kathy had even tried vegetarianism a year or so previously, but Tink and Tom had teased her mercilessly, and her mother Kay had explained that, at least while she was preparing the dinners, Kathy would have to eat what was cooked — end of story. So Kathy restlessly obeyed, but she admired her older cousin for her independence and resolve.

  Tom was the only male member of the little crew, and Julie was his best friend. It was a fact he was proud of, because Julie was cool in a way that Tom had always wanted to be. She made him laugh, she nourished his self-esteem, and she inspired him. Tom was a practical person, almost pessimistic in nature. Julie had taught him how to dream, how to nurture his ambitions. But he didn’t really know any of this consciously; he just loved the way he felt around her. She made fun wherever she went. So Tom and Julie were confidantes with a bond so strong that it spilled over onto their siblings. It made all six of them feel like a part of some clandestine, impenetrable society. It was understandable that their last supper together was a gently somber and muted affair.

  After the six plates of chicken stir-fry were emptied, rinsed, and stacked in the dishwasher, the six cousins retreated to the game room in the basement while the grown-ups sipped coffee and talked. Downstairs in the musty basement, Simon and Garfunkel was the music of choice and gin rummy was the game. The green-felt-covered game table was as crowded as their dinner table had been a few minutes before. But again, no one seemed to mind. Tink was in dealer persona, complete with green visor and pretzel-stick ciga
r — and the stakes were high: plastic chips and bragging rights. Eventually, Ginna called down the steps to say that she was heading home and told Julie not to keep Jamie out too late. The games continued, and Tink doodled her name on Tom’s arm in capital letters when she should have been keeping score. Ordinarily Tom would have smacked the ballpoint pen right out of her hand for writing on him, but tonight it somehow seemed to fit the atmosphere of the evening. He just laughed at her and shrugged her off as she tried to add a curlicue to the K. After an hour or so, Jamie grew bored, Tom got tired of losing, and Robin was having a nicotine fit anyway, so the group made a collective decision to move the party to the front yard.

  It was twilight now on Fair Acres Road. Tink and Kathy bare-footed a soccer ball in the dewy grass while the others had a chicken fight — Julie on Tom’s back and Jamie on Robin’s. A few feet away, Julie’s once-blue Chevy Chevette sat in the driveway, a rusty blot on the suburban landscape. Its rear end was completely plastered in bumper stickers, one of which proclaimed, RONALD REAGAN IS A LESBIAN. Gene, the father of the Cummins kids, hadn’t found that one particularly amusing.

  The six companions laughed and played in the dusky evening with a wantonness that teenagers rarely feel comfortable exhibiting. As was often the case, nine-year-old Jamie seemed to be more mature than anyone else in the group. Her wry sense of humor and easy demeanor made her seem eerily wise and grown-up — so much so, in fact, that her rare moments of childishness sometimes startled the others. But tonight, they all romped like children. Together they abandoned self-consciousness and embraced their last vestiges of childhood. So it was with heavy hearts that they brought their merriment to an end when Gene squeaked open the screen door and appeared on the front step. There was packing to do; there were showers to take; there was sleep to get. It was time for good-byes.