It was the sixteen-year-olds who were now the subject of my investigation.
“I’m almost seventeen,” Connie Nabors told us.
She was a tiny girl, no taller than five feet, weighing hardly a hundred pounds, little more than a child. Her surprisingly seductive voice was low-pitched and raspy. She was open and guileless, a sweet-looking youngster, wide-eyed and pretty, but with an air of melancholy about her. A pervasive sadness.
“I tried out as a diver. Even though I’m not really all that good. But Coach Hank seemed to think I had potential, so he put me on the team.”
We were in my office—Connie, her mother Louise, Marsha Russo, and me. Connie was very self-contained as she sat straight-backed in one of the armchairs.
Marsha had assumed the role of lead questioner. “Coach Hank was what, a mentor to you?”
“He was more than a mentor.”
“Tell me about it,” Marsha said.
“He liked me.”
“He liked you how?”
“He was kind to me.”
“Did he ever make advances toward you?”
Connie looked at her mother, then back to Marsha. “Advances?”
“Did he ever come on to you? You know, did he ever do anything inappropriate?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Did he make sexual advances to you.”
“You mean did we ever have sex?”
“Yes.”
In an instant I watched her deflate, her already shaky confidence shattered, leaving her with nothing to hide behind. She turned into the sixteen-year-old child she was, her perfidy exposed, her innocence destroyed.
In her naiveté, she had likely come to regard herself a woman, sexually engaged, an alleged badge of honor for someone so young. But she was in over her head and now she stood revealed, a tender youngster, confused and uncertain.
And ashamed.
Her mother sat quietly, her silence a sign of her complicity. I wondered how much she knew and when she knew it. And why she had chosen not to report it.
Marsha urged the girl to continue.
“We had these, you know, these play parties,” Connie said.
“And?”
“Everyone who was at them was doing it.”
“Doing it?”
“Having sex.”
She stared at her mother for several moments, then turned her back to me and addressed her remarks directly to Marsha. “I can’t talk about this.”
“Why not?”
She shook her head from side to side. “I had no choice.”
“So you participated in sexual activity at these parties?”
“Not at first.”
“When?”
Again she made eye contact with her mother. “Those boys. They told me not to say anything. They said they’d come after me.”
“Ronny and Paul?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to be frightened of them, Connie. They’re both in jail.”
She dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex and then blew her nose into it. She sat quietly for several moments, gathering her thoughts.
“One day he kept me after practice. Coach Hank. He said he wanted to evaluate my dives. That’s what he told me. After about a half an hour or so, when I finished, he followed me into the locker room. Everyone was gone. We were alone.
“He came close to me and told me to take off my bathing suit. He said I had the perfect body for a diver and he wanted to see it.”
“And you did as he asked,” Marsha said.
Again she started shaking her head. “I was scared.”
“But you took off your bathing suit.”
“At first he just looked at me. Then he touched me. Everywhere. He made me lie down on one of the benches. Then he lowered his pants and got on top of me. It was awful. It hurt so bad. I asked him to stop but he wouldn’t. He said he’d never been so excited in his life.”
“And you never told anyone about it? Not even your parents?”
Her mother spoke up for the first time. She was a plain-looking woman, modestly dressed, uncomfortable in the spotlight. “When one of the other girls mentioned to Connie you were talking with her teammates, she asked if I would arrange to have her speak with you, too. That’s when she told me.”
“And you didn’t know until then?”
“Not at all. It never dawned on me that anything like this was going on.”
Connie looked at me. “I was ashamed.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “I couldn’t talk about it. Not to anyone. But I’m better now.”
“Because?”
“Because the son of a bitch is dead.”
“Do you know who killed him?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Do you?”
“I only wish it had been me,” she said.
“You wish you had killed Coach Hank?”
“I wish it was me who had plunged that knife into his stinking neck. I dream about it. I dream I did it. I only wish I had.”