Moving in After Murder

In the summer of 2005, author Gabriel Cohen moved into an apartment on the corner of Beverly and Stratford Roads. What Gabriel didn’t know until the ink was dry was that the house had been the scene of a murder only a few months prior. A marriage had crumbled, the couple had separated and then the man killed his wife in the bathroom.

Last month, Narrative.ly published “A Splash of Red,” Gabriel’s side of the story.

Even for an author who makes his living by writing crime novels about grisly New York City murders, the reality of the situation was a shock to his system. On some nights, living in the crime scene kept him from sleeping. On other nights, it drove him to write.

While he imagined fictional murders, Gabriel worked to unravel what really happened the night of January 21, 2005. He hoped to write a profile on the killer for a prominent magazine. He spoke with the victim’s family, wrote letters to the murderer hoping for a face-to-face interview and sought out colleagues for regular advice. All the while, his deadline rapidly approached.

I develop insomnia, partly due to the heartburn that has begun scalding my chest. I come to a bitter realization:  if I were writing a novel, I could dream up an exciting dialogue with the killer, but my ability to finish this story is completely dependent on the whim of one bored man in a prison cell. I’ve been expecting that we might engage in a sort of cat-and-mouse game as I try to extract the truth from him. As his refusal to call me lengthens, I start wondering who the cat is.

It’s well worth reading Gabriel’s one-of-a-kind perspective about a very local tragedy.

Thanks to Lonnie Stultz for pointing us towards this story.

Photo: Narratively