Five years after the murders, Leah Sussman still flared when she looked at her daughter, Sonia, and realized that Sam would never be part of the child’s life.
“He was such a beautiful man,” Leah said. “So kind. When you’re with my uncle Steve, and you get past the grief and anger, you see the giving side, the silly side—the man he really is. Sammy was all that and more. It’s just sad.”
Oddly, one of her most enduring memories of Sam involved another loss that the family suffered: “When my mom died, Sammy was just beside himself. He couldn’t even talk to me about it. I brought it up a few weeks before he was killed, and he was still so emotional about the loss. That’s how much he loved her. That’s how much he cared. And that’s the way we’ll always feel about him.”
There were times when she thought about how Sam would have reacted if she’d been the one who’d died early. But she already knew the answer: “Even though he was my little cousin, he’d want to protect me. He had the sweetness of my aunt and the macho, teddy-bear nature of my uncle. I know the way he’d grieve.
“He’d never forget.”
On the most somber day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, Leah went to synagogue, grasping a Velcro patch bearing the name “Herr”—a remnant of Sammy’s Army uniform—as she prayed. During visits to her aunt and uncle’s home, Leah and her daughter, Sonia, slept in her cousin’s old room. “The whole experience alters your beliefs,” she said. “It smells like him. You feel like there’s actually someone watching you. I have a sense of comfort when I’m in his room. I like it there.”
A few miles away, Juri’s friend Jessica Wolf moved on with her life but was regularly reminded of the fun-loving girl with the bright makeup and indelible laugh. At times, Jessica would go on Facebook and see a post from Juri’s mother, Junko, and just stare at the computer screen. “It stops me dead in my tracks every time,” she said. “I just sit there and think about that missing piece of her parents’ life. I want to write something back to her that will make her feel better, but there’s nothing I can say. It’s just”— She paused to find the right word, then settled for “heartbreaking.”
After Jessica became a mother, Junko messaged her several times and asked to see the baby. Junko explained that seeing Juri’s friends filled her with memories, and a window into how her daughter’s life might have turned out.
“I want to go over the house,” Jessica said. “I want her mother to meet my baby. But I haven’t had the courage to do it yet.”
She sat quietly for a moment as a tear slid down her face.
In El Cholo, the Mexican restaurant where Steve and his wife had looked at photos of their son’s grave on the anniversary of his death, the parents speculated about how the legal proceedings might play out. Steve mentioned that he wanted Rachel to have a separate trial from Dan, so whatever role each played would be clearly delineated. He feared the prosecution using her as a witness and granting her immunity in return.
“Let them each be tried on their own merits,” he said. “And if Rachel is found not guilty, she’ll walk. At least, we’ll know what happened. At least, we’ll know what she did or didn’t do.”
Steve claimed that he was looking forward to seeing an aggressive Scott Sanders in court. “I want him to be good at his job, and I want him to attack. I want him to grill every one of the witnesses. When I’m testifying, I want him to grill me. I want him to grill Wesley. I want him to grill everybody there. Because then, we can come to an educated conclusion. Then, we can find out some truths.”
By this point, Steve had visited Dan a total of three times in jail and was considering going again. “The first time I went, when I told him, ‘I know you had help with this,’ he said, ‘I can’t tell you.’ The second and third time, he said, ‘I did it alone. Nobody helped me.’ I didn’t believe him, and I told him that I knew he was lying to me. And he said, ‘I can talk to you more after the trial.’”
But Steve wondered if he’d ever know the entire story. And, in a bizarre way, he believed that both he and Dan were using the same coping mechanisms. “I try to live my life day to day,” he said. “But every day, it bothers me—especially at night, when I’m trying to go to sleep and I can’t stop thinking about it. But most of the time, I try not to think about it. I need to keep my sanity. And Dan probably does the same thing.”
Yet for Steve it would always be worse. If Dan was sentenced to death, it would be over. Long after the execution, Steve would have to live with the knowledge that his son’s life had been stolen just as it was starting to bloom.
“It’s always there,” Steve said. “The hurt, the anger, the angst. It doesn’t come out all the time. Most of the time, it doesn’t come out. But it’s always there.”