\n\tIt\u2019s been two decades since the media took an incredulous phrase that fell out of Nicole\u2019s mouth \u2014 \u201cWhat are you going to do, shoot us?\u201d \u2014 and blamed her for her own death while capitalizing on it: The Village Voice called it \u201cA Murder Made for the Front Page<\/a>.\u201d The New York Post<\/a> covered the killer\u2019s trial gavel to gavel, while glossy magazines wrote about how not to let this happen to you.<\/p>\n \n\tThings have been fucked up ever since the night when I sat in a Manhattan police station trying to comprehend that Nicole was dead, and I was not. But after 20 years, I felt like I could finally revisit her story. With a therapist guiding me, I went back to the night Nicole died over and over until something shifted. It was like a foreign object had been extracted from a wound. It still exists, but it\u2019s outside me, and I can examine it without pain. Now, I want to know how the others who loved her have coped with losing her. That\u2019s what I\u2019m on this trip to find out.<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \t\t\u2018She Always Felt Like a Little Bit of an Outsider\u2019\t<\/p>\n \n\tNicole DuFresne was born on Jan. 5, 1977, in Wayzata, Minnesota, a wealthy suburb west of Minneapolis. Her father, Tom, was a forceful, charismatic man who worked as a commercial real-estate developer. Her mother, Linda, a knockout with turquoise eyes, was a gentle, creative woman. Nicole and her younger brother, Zach, both inherited their mother\u2019s looks, but Nicole took after her father when it came to temperament; she was a passionate, moody kid who would dominate on the soccer pitch and then write poetry in her bedroom. \u201cI think she always felt like a little bit of an outsider, even in our family,\u201d Zach DuFresne tells me when I visit him at his quiet suburban home in Colorado, \u201cbut she was totally unafraid to be herself.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tDuFresne moved from Seattle to New York in 2002 to be part of the downtown theater scene. \u201cI feel that I can be my absolute self there,\u201d she wrote at the time. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJulia Newman<\/p>\n \n\tTom DuFresne wanted his kids to have the best of everything, but from a young age, Nicole bucked his attempts to insulate her with money. She hated the preppy private school her parents sent her to, and insisted on attending public school for junior high before transferring to an arts high school. When she moved to Boston to study theater at Emerson College, her father rented her a brownstone apartment in a tony neighborhood, but Nicole chafed at feeling like a rich kid. She started to work odd jobs that didn\u2019t conflict with her schooling.<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tIn her junior year of college, Nicole was raped in the parking lot of a bar. When she told her parents about the assault, they begged her to come home, but she refused; she\u2019d been cast in a show that she didn\u2019t want to drop out of. She received counseling and later used the traumatic experience as inspiration for a two-woman play, Matter.<\/p>\n \n\tI have a copy of the play with me on my cross-country travels. I keep returning to one line that articulates a familiar feeling: \u201cIn my dreams someone is waiting to eat me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNicole and I met in Seattle at Theater Schmeater in August 2001, on the first day of rehearsal for Our Country\u2019s Good, a play set in a penal colony in 1780s Australia. The director wanted everyone to be as disgusting as possible: lice, syphilis, scabies, goiters, rotten teeth. Nicole was good at getting ugly; her performance was frightening, \u201calmost unbearably tragic,\u201d one reviewer wrote. I played a convict named Shitty Meg and pushed the gross-out factor as far as I could. We bonded over the freedom we found in being filthy; our playacting felt like an antidote to what the world expected of us.<\/p>\n \n\tShe loved that I\u2019d worked on an Alaskan salmon boat. I was mesmerized by her witchy hippie energy, lean kinetic body, and throaty laugh. After the show closed, she asked me if I would create a show with her. We wrote a two-hander inspired by a book about CIA brainwashing experiments and hit the fringe-festival circuit in the summer of 2002.<\/p>\n \n\tBurning Cage was an intense play. A reviewer at Minneapolis Fringe called us \u201cfeminists with an axe to grind.\u201d We scrawled \u201cCome see the axe-grinding feminists!\u201d in chalk outside of every venue after that. We did better at other festivals \u2014 one critic said our show was \u201cprecisely the kind of art and passion that fringe theatre should be about.\u201d Another called us \u201cballs-out brave.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBy the time we won Artistic Pick at the Seattle Fringe that fall, we\u2019d been on the road together for most of the summer, and we weren\u2019t sick of each other, which felt monumental to me. I\u2019d always been reserved in my friendships, but Nicole refused to allow it. She told me I needed to trust her; I told her I had a weird feeling that things with us wouldn\u2019t last. \u201cIt\u2019s going to last,\u201d she said. I chalked up my anxiety to existential dread, and we started to plan our next collaboration.<\/p>\n \n\tA couple of months later, Nicole and her fianc\u00e9, Jeffrey Sparks, were moving to New York, and she stopped by my place with a farewell gift \u2014 a little glass vase holding a paper scroll. She said it was a message for whenever I couldn\u2019t reach her and needed to hear from her. I promised her I\u2019d be right behind her; we had things to do.<\/p>\n \n\tNicole was thrilled by the energy of New York. She started developing a pilot with Jeffrey to pitch to the Food Channel (Nikki\u2019s New York), and launched herself into the downtown theater scene, painting sets at LAByrinth Theater Company while concentrating on her own undertakings with a group she\u2019d co-founded with Emerson classmates. She worked at a nonprofit serving seniors on the Upper West Side to pay the bills. \u201cI feel that I can be my absolute self [in New York] since there are so many different souls here,\u201d she wrote in her journal. \u201cThey all work like a puzzle. I suppose there are many hardships I will have here, but I am excited for all the gold I could find.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA year later, I made the trek from Seattle with my boyfriend, Scott Nath. We moved into a fifth-floor walk-up at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge, and I loved the aching feeling of climbing into the sky. We survived off cheap burgers and egg sandwiches from Mom\u2019s Diner, and $2 PBRs from Welcome to the Johnsons; we\u2019d peer into the window of wd~50, the city\u2019s hottest new molecular gastronomy dining establishment, knowing we couldn\u2019t afford to even walk inside. The grime was exhilarating, and the glamorous boutiques opening between old-world vestiges \u2014 hat stores, bridal shops \u2014 gave the neighborhood a sense of urgency. We\u2019d wander home at sunrise past commuters making their way to the train as we crawled into bed.<\/p>\n \n\tNicole and Jeffrey had us over for a welcome dinner, and she gave us a bag of weed mixed with lavender. \u201cYou\u2019ll need it,\u201d she said with a laugh. She told me I should get new headshots; she\u2019d just had hers done, and was insistent that we both had to step up our game. The following months were a glorious whirlwind of auditioning, acting, and writing. Nicole was producing new work with her theater company; I was making a living as an actor. We met up to write whenever we could, ginning each other up as we brainstormed ideas and to-do lists. We laughed so much: I can still hear her bellowing \u201cI have to pee like a horse!\u201d as she charged into Cafe Mogador after being stuck on the L train for an hour.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tNicole\u2019s fianc\u00e9, Jeffrey, saw his grief turn to anger after her death. Now, he aspires to be a good father in her honor. \u201cI liked her vision of me,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Jeffrey Sparks<\/p>\n \n\tReading through our notebooks, I\u2019m struck by how relentlessly confident we were in ourselves, and each other. By the time we rang in 2005 at a warehouse party in a dilapidated former church \u2014 the kind of sweaty all-night revelry I\u2019d always dreamed of going to \u2014 I felt like we could take over the world.<\/p>\n \t\t\u2018They Were So Happy, It Made Me Angrier\u2019\t<\/p>\n \n\tRudy Fleming was born on June 23, 1985. His family lived in the West New Brighton housing projects in a bleak part of Staten Island where more than 15 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. Violence was a grim reality in the Fleming household; his father was shot and killed when he was a child; an older brother was given a five-year sentence for assault; another was sentenced to eight years in prison for beating a man with a baseball bat; and a third was shot and killed with his own gun during a botched robbery.<\/p>\n \n\tFleming struggled with anxiety and depression from a young age, according to court documents; he was diagnosed with a learning disability at the age of eight and enrolled in an individualized program by the Department of Education, but there\u2019s nothing on the record to indicate that he received any psychiatric help. In 2001, when he was 16, Fleming pulled a gun on truancy officers who picked him up for loitering. According to the police report, which designated him an emotionally disturbed person, he told arresting officers, \u201cYou should have shot me. I want you to kill me. I want to die.\u201d He received a three-year prison sentence on a weapons charge and was sent to an upstate correctional facility more than 200 miles away.<\/p>\n \n\tAt an April 2004 parole hearing, he said prison had taught him to learn from his mistakes. That June, three days before his 19th birthday, Fleming was released on parole.<\/p>\n \n\tIn January 2005, Fleming moved into the apartment of his godfather, Servino Simmon, in the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side, a sea of tan high-rises overlooking some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Fleming had grown up close with Simmon\u2019s kids \u2014 Servisio, who was 21 years old, and Servano, who was 17 \u2014 and they were living there, too. Fleming\u2019s 18-year-old girlfriend, Ashley Evans, a well-liked high school cheerleader, also moved into the apartment.<\/p>\n \n\tOn the night of Jan. 26, 2005, Fleming, Evans, Servisio, and Servano, along with their 18-year-old cousin David Simmon, David\u2019s friend Kayshawn Boyd, 15, and Boyd\u2019s 14-year-old girlfriend, Tatianna McDonald, were hanging out at the apartment, smoking weed, drinking, and playing with Fleming\u2019s gun, which had been stolen from its legal owner in South Carolina in 2002. It\u2019s unclear who Fleming got it from or how long he\u2019d had it, but he liked showing off the heavy silver six-shot .357 Magnum revolver, spinning the chamber, loading and unloading it. Servano thought the gun was cool, too; at one point, he and his brother played a mock round of Russian roulette without pulling the trigger.<\/p>\n \n\tThat same night, Nicole was working her first bartending shift at Rockwood Music Hall, a new venue on the Lower East Side. Scott and I met up with Jeffrey at the bar to celebrate her new gig; Nicole served us a couple of rounds, and when she finished her shift, the four of us went to a raucous hipster joint called Max Fish, where we ordered rum and cokes and played pinball.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter a few hours at the apartment, Fleming and his friends were bored, so they went out to \u201cstart trouble,\u201d McDonald later said. They were walking toward the Delancey-Essex subway station when they passed 22-year-old security guard Adam Chavez coming home from work. Chavez was wearing a white leather jacket that caught Fleming\u2019s eye. He chased after Chavez with David Simmon and Boyd, who punched him and demanded he give up the jacket, but after Fleming whacked him twice with his gun, Chavez managed to pull away and run into the street in front of a passing taxi. He called 911, but by the time cops showed up, the friends were on a train to Brooklyn. Chavez declined to file a police report and headed home.<\/p>\n \n\tThe friends took the J train through the rooftops of Brooklyn and got off at Broadway Junction, deep in the borough. They hung out on the subway platform, where the boys tried to goad Evans and McDonald into fighting a couple of other girls waiting for the train. When they refused, the guys made fun of them for chickening out, so when they caught a train back to Manhattan, the girls said they would fight anyone they pointed out. They got off back at the Delancey-Essex stop around 3 a.m. A surveillance camera outside Schiller\u2019s Liquor Bar captured the group walking east on Rivington toward Clinton.<\/p>\n \n\tWe had left Max Fish a few minutes earlier. We were buzzed, goofing around, pushing one another into snowbanks \u2014 oblivious gentrifiers on the home turf of seven friends out looking for a fight. When Evans heard us laughing as we crossed onto Clinton Street, her resentment flamed. \u201cThey were ex\u00adtremely happy, so that made me even angrier,\u201d she later told the police. Pissed off, she pointed us out to Fleming as the ones they should fight. Then everything happened fast.<\/p>\n By the time we rang in 2005 together at a warehouse party, I felt like we could take over the world. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \n\tI remember being stopp\u00aded. Shoved against a wall with a gun. My purse is yanked away. A loud bang. Scott running, screaming, \u201cMurderer! Murderer!\u201d Nicole on her back in the street. My bare knees on cold grit as I kneel next to her. She\u2019s looking up at Jeffrey as he leans over her, telling her to stay with him. The headlights of cars coming toward us off the Williamsburg Bridge. Then I\u2019m in the back of a cop car, looking at Scott\u2019s crumpled face in alternating red and blue light.<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to witnesses who later testified in court, Fleming stepped in front of us, pulled out his gun, and told us to give him our money. Scott said we didn\u2019t have any because we\u2019d spent it all at the bar. When Jeffrey tried to push past him, Fleming smashed him in the face with the gun, opening up a gash over his eye. Then, as Nicole went to check on Jeffrey, Fleming slammed me against a security gate with the gun. He yanked my bag away and threw it to Evans and McDonald as Nicole approached him and pushed him, saying, \u201cYou got what you wanted.\u201d Then, according to testimony from McDonald and Servano Simmon, she asked him, \u201cWhat are you going to do, shoot us?\u201d Fleming lifted the gun, pointed it at her chest, and fired. Nicole stumbled and fell into the street as they ran. The bullet had pierced her heart.<\/p>\n \n\tCops took us to the 7th Precinct station, where Scott and I waited in an interview room under buzzing fluorescents for what felt like hours until Jeffrey came back from the hospital and told us Nicole was dead. He went into another room to call her father. I remember hearing him howling.<\/p>\n \n\tWhen we left the station on the morning of Jan. 27, I couldn\u2019t believe the sun was shining; it was like the world had changed shape, and no one had noticed. Scott and I went home, pulled the blinds, and lay beside each other in the darkness, not talking. At some point, I remembered her message in a bottle. I got it down from my bookshelf and unfurled the scroll. It said:<\/p>\n \n\tBelieve in yourself like I believe in you. \t\t\u2018Becoming One of New York\u2019s Super-Victims\u2019\t<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe died in my arms.\u201d That was Jeffrey\u2019s heartbreaking statement to a reporter who tracked him down after a police bulletin about the shooting went out that day. The story electrified the media; the New York Post ran a cover story with Nicole\u2019s headshot under the headline \u201cBeauty Slain.\u201d A photo of Jeffrey, bloody from being pistol-whipped, accompanied the accounts of her murder.<\/p>\n \n\tReporters were waiting at LaGuardia Airport for Tom and Linda DuFresne when they flew in from Minnesota to identify their daughter\u2019s body; members of the media camped out on our doorstep to snag a photo of Scott and me looking pale and shell-shocked. It was surreal to read tabloid accounts that the gun had been aimed at me too, that Scott thought he had heard it go off. My reality was fracturing.<\/p>\n \n\tBefore internet ubiquity as we know it existed, the story of her death went viral; Nicole\u2019s face was on newsstands across the country, and every major media outlet showed up at her memorial. The Village Voice noted that \u201cDuFresne is on her way to becoming one of New York\u2019s super-victims.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tThe narrative in the press was initially sympathetic to Nicole, but that soon shifted.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNew York Post<\/p>\n \n\tSurveillance videos and tips led to the seven friends being apprehended within days. The tabloids made hay in the wake of their arrests, branding them \u201cthugs\u201d and \u201cfiends.\u201d The report that our laughter had angered them was shocking; \u201cNicole Died for Smiling \u2014 \u2018Slay\u2019 Creeps Picked on Happy Victim,\u201d one article blared. A photo of Fleming sobbing in the back of a police car after his arrest ran under the headline \u201cHe Cries for Himself.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI hadn\u2019t heard Nicole say anything to Fleming, but police told reporters that bystanders had heard her say something to the effect of \u201cWhat are you going to do, shoot us next?\u201d When Evans was arrested, she said Nicole had been the aggressor, claiming that Fleming shot her only because he\u2019d slipped after she pushed him. Evans was accused of taking the murder weapon back to the Simmon apartment, where police had found it hidden under a bed.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter Evans\u2019 allegation was reported, the media narrative shifted \u2014 now Nicole\u2019s death was her fault because she\u2019d \u201cdared\u201d Fleming. Safety advocates said that Nicole\u2019s \u201cdefiant\u201d stand had prompted Fleming to shoot her, and the National Crime Prevention Council circulated a memo on how to survive a mugging, advising potential victims to \u201cstay cool and comply with robbers.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Stranger, a Seattle alt-weekly, ran an anonymous letter addressing Nicole that read, in part, \u201cIt seems you misplayed your role as mugging victim. This was not street theater you were involved in. It was real-life drama, which you helped turn into a tragedy.\u2026 Your last words suggest you did not understand the material. I\u2019m sad that you will not get another audition.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tCosmopolitan published a feature titled \u201cHow Not to Let Your Fearlessness Go Too Far\u201d with tips on what not to do when held at gunpoint, next to a list of mistakes that Nicole had supposedly made.<\/p>\n \n\tRichard Price wrote an acclaimed novel, Lush Life, in which he echoed her purported last words; after a long night of drinking, a would-be writer is gunned down when he makes the dumb decision to tell a mugger \u201cNot tonight, my man.\u201d An episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent ripped the story from the headlines. In that version, it was the friends who\u2019d set her up.<\/p>\n \n\tEven after all of these years, the story has stuck. I\u2019m listening to one of my favorite podcasts on my road trip when they bring up Nicole\u2019s murder. \u201cShe got in their faces,\u201d one of the co-hosts says. \u201cLike, just give them your purse \u2026 don\u2019t start an altercation.\u201d Tears fill my eyes; I have to pull over. Nicole was fiercely protective; she was upset; her death wasn\u2019t her fault. Fleming was an angry kid with a gun that he wanted to use. Maybe Nicole would be alive if our laughter hadn\u2019t filled Evans with rage, if Fleming had gotten the help he needed at school, if the gun had gone off when he pushed me instead. Her murder was a senseless act of violence. Speculating about a different outcome only intensified the pain.<\/p>\n \t\t\u2018A Young Person Who Cannot Come to Grips\u2019\t<\/p>\n \n\tFleming did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him for this article; neither did any of the other six friends, who would now all be in their thirties or early forties. I want to ask them how their lives have been since the night our paths crossed; what details have stayed with them; how their age and maturity have shaped the way they think about the events of that night. But the only update I get is from Detective George Taylor, the lead investigator on the case, who tells me that he saw Servano Simmon a few years later; the only one not charged, he\u2019d straightened his life out and was attending college.<\/p>\n \n\tFleming was charged with first-degree murder. He\u2019d exhibited bizarre behavior when he was arrested, mumbling, stuffing paper towels in his mouth, and going limp in the interview room. He was admitted to Belle\u00advue Hospital and held under observation for several months. In a pretrial hearing, Fleming\u2019s attorney, Anthony Ricco, told the judge that Fleming was mentally incompetent; evidently, he was hearing voices telling him not to eat and hallucinating a giant marshmallow man. However, a court-appointed psychologist and psychiatrist testified that Fleming had gained eight pounds while under observation and that his symptoms only appeared when he knew he was being watched. Although Fleming had \u201cfewer resources than most individuals\u201d to cope with the stress he was under, including a lack of family support, they believed he was feigning his symptoms. He was found competent to stand trial.<\/p>\n \n\tFleming never appeared in the courtroom at his trial; he was removed before jury selection after an outburst that required several officers to restrain him. Assistant District Attorney Robert Hettleman called it a \u201cwell-timed action\u201d for someone trying to avoid trial, and the judge agreed, ordering a CCTV video feed to be set up so Fleming could watch the proceedings from his holding cell.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tRudy Fleming was convicted of murdering Nicole, and is serving a life sentence. His 2010 appeal was denied. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9 Bryan Smith\/Zuma Press<\/p>\n \n\tMcDonald testified that Nicole\u2019s shooting was intentional: It had nothing to do with Fleming being pushed, she said. Scott and Servano Simmon also testified that Fleming had shot Nicole from an arm\u2019s length away. Jeffrey testified that, although the shock of being pistol-whipped had dazed him, his memory of holding Nicole as she lay dying in the street was crystal clear. When I was called to the stand, I could only share my scattershot version of the encounter. It didn\u2019t matter; witnesses confirmed that Nicole had been executed at point-blank range.<\/p>\n \n\tOn Oct. 12, 2006, the jury found Fleming guilty on nine counts, including first-degree murder, robbery, and criminal possession of a weapon. No family or friends had ever come to support him. At his sentencing, his attorney asked the court for mercy. \u201cPeople rehabilitate themselves, and that\u2019s my hope for Rudy Fleming, who\u2019s in the back, cowering in his cell,\u201d Ricco said. \u201cHe\u2019s a young person who cannot come to grips.\u201d The judge deemed Fleming a \u201ccold-blooded, thoroughly amoral killer\u201d and gave him life without parole. The Post got in one last dig when Jeffrey told a reporter outside the court that he was relieved Fleming hadn\u2019t received the death penalty. The headline read \u201cFianc\u00e9\u2019s Pity Is Misplaced for This Vermin.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tEvans and four of the others took plea deals. Servisio Simmon received a sentence of 10 years for first-degree robbery; David Simmon was sentenced to six years for first-degree attempted robbery; Boyd was referred to family court; McDonald was adjudicated a youthful offender and received a sentence of one to three years for first-degree robbery. At her sentencing, when Evans entered a guilty plea to first-degree robbery, she apologized to the DuFresne family. \u201cIf I could take it all back, I most sincerely would,\u201d she said. Linda DuFresne replied, \u201cOurs is a sentence of life without Nicole.\u201d Evans got six years. Fleming appealed his sentence in 2010. It was denied.<\/p>\n \t\t\u2018Nothing More Precious Than Time\u2019\t<\/p>\n \n\tI went back to my restaurant job a couple of weeks after the murder. A co-worker asked me what Nicole had said to make the kid shoot her. There was a faraway ringing in my ears as someone else said, \u201cLeave her alone, man.\u201d I was refilling the owner\u2019s coffee when he grasped my wrist and said quietly, \u201cSurvivor guilt is a real thing.\u201d I knew that his parents were Holocaust survivors, so I nodded at him mutely and went to the bathroom to scream into my latte-stained apron. A few weeks later, I terrorized an elderly Weight Watchers leader after our weekly meeting by telling her what had happened and that I wasn\u2019t OK. She patted my hand and told me I shouldn\u2019t come back until I felt better.<\/p>\n \n\tWhen I went to collect my wallet from One Police Plaza, they handed it to me in a plastic bag labeled \u201cHomicide Evidence.\u201d A letter arrived from the New York State Office of Victim Services offering me funds for therapy. I thought it was pretty funny that I was a state-sanctioned victim. Nothing felt real. I couldn\u2019t sleep. I started drinking to anesthetize myself, making it most of the way through two bottles of wine before stumbling into bed around dawn. When I did sleep, I had nightmares. My relationship with Scott started to suffer. But I kept telling myself I was OK; I wasn\u2019t the one who died.<\/p>\n \n\tFor years, I tried to articulate how I felt, but I couldn\u2019t find the words. At one point, I took a solo-performance class, thinking I\u2019d write a one-woman show about \u2014 murder? Gun violence? Grief? I can\u2019t remember, but the teacher told me I wasn\u2019t ready to address my experience. At the time, I was furious, but years later, I\u2019m thankful for her candor. She was right; I needed time.<\/p>\n \n\tMy first stop on the road trip is in Denver, where I spend a sunny afternoon with Zach, his wife, and their two kids at a neighborhood swimming pool. As we listen to the splashing of happy children, Zach and I reminisce about the Thanksgiving dinner we had with Nicole in 2004, when the siblings walked home across the snowy Williamsburg Bridge after dinner at our place. They stopped to call Linda and sing \u201cNew York, New York\u201d to her from the middle of the East River. It was the last weekend he had with his sister.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter the trial and sentencings, a noose of grief tightened around the DuFresne family. Although Linda continued to set a place for her daughter at the table at holiday gatherings, Zach says that no one spoke her name: \u201cMy mom never recovered, and part of my dad died when Nicole died.\u201d Tom has been in a care facility since suffering a debilitating stroke several years ago; Linda has Alzheimer\u2019s-related dementia, and lives in a nursing home not far from Zach.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember trying to see if that sadness was still there, and I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t need to dig in. It doesn\u2019t help me move forward.’\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \n\tLinda meets me in the lobby when I pull up for our visit. She\u2019s frail, wearing a back brace, and her face is stamped with pain, but her eyes are bright. We go to a restaurant, where we order wine and sit on the breezy patio. She asks me what I\u2019m working on. I take a deep breath, and tell her I\u2019m writing about Nicole. \u201cShe\u2019d be happy that you are,\u201d Linda says. Then she puts a hand on my arm and asks me to tell her about the night her daughter died. I tell her what I remember, and we hold hands in silence for a long time.<\/p>\n \n\tLater, over dinner, Zach tells me that substance abuse dominated his life for years after Nicole was killed. One night, when he was drinking with friends, one of them said something about her that set him off; Zach got into his car in a rage and drove into the side of a mountain near Aspen. \u201cI was fucking annihilated,\u201d he says. \u201cI should have died.\u201d He credits marriage and fatherhood with averting him from his path of self-destruction. Now, his family celebrates his sister\u2019s birthday every January. \u201cWe bake a cake and tell stories about Nicole,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m trying to give my children some sense of their auntie.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNext, I visit Jeffrey in his Midwest home. Over coffee in his backyard, he tells me about proposing to Nicole. They were on a road trip to Joshua Tree. \u201cI had this overwhelming feeling that I wanted to spend the rest of my life listening to her,\u201d he recalls. \u201cShe was sitting next to the fire. I got down on my knee, and she starts throwing all these \u2018What ifs?\u2019 at me, like, \u2018What if I get a terrible disease and lose my hair?\u2019\u201d His answers came easily. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t anything I felt we couldn\u2019t handle.\u201d She said she would marry him on one condition: that they move to New York.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter she was killed, Jeffrey\u2019s grief coalesced into anger under relentless scrutiny from the media: \u201cI was a pressure cooker of rage, trying to keep the lid on.\u201d He went to the Middle East to work on a documentary about war widows, where he was held at gunpoint more than once. Danger felt comforting to him; at one point, he was riding in a car that narrowly missed hitting an oncoming truck. \u201cI remember this distinct feeling of water washing over me,\u201d Jeffrey recalls. \u201cLike, \u2018Here it comes.\u2019 And I felt myself smiling.\u201d Now, he aspires to be a good father to his 13-year-old son in Nicole\u2019s memory. \u201cI channel my love into being the person that she envisioned me to be,\u201d he says. \u201cI liked her vision of me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA few weeks later, I meet Scott for dinner in Brooklyn; it\u2019s the first time we\u2019ve seen each other in years. We stayed together until 2013, and had plenty of good times, but we had stared at each other through hell and couldn\u2019t make it work for the long haul. We order pizza and cocktails, even though Scott doesn\u2019t drink much anymore. He tells me that he didn\u2019t feel the need to self-destruct like the rest of us because his testimony helped secure Fleming\u2019s conviction \u2014 and because he entered therapy right away. \u201cI remember trying to see if that sadness was still there,\u201d he says, \u201cand I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t need to dig in. It doesn\u2019t help me move forward.\u2019\u201d Nonetheless, Nicole\u2019s murder changed his trajectory; he gave up on his dream of being an actor, and took a corporate job. Since the night Nicole died, he often thinks about how limited his time is. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more precious than that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI can see how my PTSD has played out through guilt, dissociation, and self-annihilation, but I didn\u2019t have clarity until recently. After Scott and I split up, I moved on to bad relationships with men who gave me the affection I felt I deserved, which was none. For years, happiness felt like a harbinger of bad things to come; feeling anxious and miserable was familiar. But when my last relationship flamed out, a friend recommended a form of trauma therapy called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR. After several sessions, I felt I could finally write about Nicole, as I\u2019ve wanted to do for so long. It feels good to revisit our work, to read her journals, and to drive for days, thinking about my gorgeous, funny, wild friend without feeling suffocated. Instead of dwelling on how she died, I\u2019m remembering how brightly she lived. I can see Nicole standing in the doorway of my apartment on the night she came to pick me up for a Halloween party wearing a slinky champagne-colored dress, smoky glitter outlining her blue eyes under a cascade of curls. I asked her what her costume was. She winked at me, and said, \u201cI\u2019m a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I \u2019ve been dreaming about the Badlands again. It\u2019s a scorching July day in 2002, and Nicole and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,9620,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,22081,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-24625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-murder","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkcity","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-true-crime","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114766967637805092","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n
Sending you lots of groovey love vibes.
Have faith.
Listen to yourself.
With love,
xo Nicole<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n