It's difficult to look beyond the devastating details of what happened to my mother that night, but when I do, I see that in the big picture, other things matter, too. I had never been exposed to such violence, never felt the rage that it inspired in me, never imagined I would want revenge like I wanted revenge on Reginald McFadden. My heart had never been broken like this before. When I arrived at the hospital the next day and saw her barely recognizable face, my mother tells me I screamed. When I got the call that this happened, I packed up my belongings at graduate school and I headed home. They were standing in front of a bureau that had a mirror hanging over it. There was one point during the night, and this is key, that my mother finally saw him. McFadden put my mother in a sleeping bag and took her in her own car to various ATMs to steal her money. So let me try to tell you in a condensed version, for all our sakes, the rest of what happened to my mother that night. I know it's hard to hear the details, but you won't understand why this crime got so much attention and why it's so hard for my mom to get it out of her head if you don't hear what actually happened. Stories like these get shortened over time to sentences like the one I started with, my mother is the victim of a violent crime, and usually, you leave it at that. My mother, it turned out, was his only surviving victim.
#Shamyla this american life serial
The police eventually referred to McFadden as a serial killer. The week after he attacked my mom, he sexually assaulted and killed 78-year-old Margaret Kierer, also on Long Island, and Dana DeMarco in Rockland County the week after that. In fact, he had murdered Robert Silk on Long Island just two weeks before. What my mother had no way of knowing then was that McFadden did plan to kill her. But instead, I think I'll save those parts and start where I usually start, which is with my mother.
I could start with the thousands of prisoners whose lives were affected by McFadden, or I could tell you about the political careers, both launched and destroyed. I suppose I could start with how the system failed or with McFadden's family in Philadelphia. I've already told you this isn't an easy story to tell. I just wanted to get us un-stuck, maybe move the story forward, rethink it, something. I wasn't sure what I was doing exactly or why. I started digging around, reaching out to people related to the case. That's when I decided I needed to do something. I couldn't stand to see her suffering still. I was surprised at the intensity of it after all these years. It was the aftershock from her assault, of course, from McFadden. She imagined walks in the woods would have some violent end. Every little sound she was convinced was a stranger in her house. I thought it would be an easy adjustment for her, less congestion, more ocean, but it wasn't. And because it happened during an election, it even had an impact on who became the governor of Pennsylvania.Ī few years ago, nearly 20 years after all this happened, my mother moved from her home in New York to one near me on Cape Cod. It was one of those crimes that makes people angry and scared, that becomes a symbol for a lot of things. The Pennsylvania State Constitution was changed, commutation for lifers became nearly impossible to get. And it seemed as if that's exactly what happened.
#Shamyla this american life crack
I couldn't understand how Reginald McFadden had been let out of prison and I wanted to be sure whatever crack he slipped through was sealed shut. I wanted someone to take responsibility for what went wrong, which is how I ended up testifying in front of a Senate Judiciary hearing in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. When Reginald McFadden was arrested and charged with the crimes against my mom, my feeling shifted from terror to outrage. What happened to her changed our view of the world. I felt violated after those events, but what happened to my mom was unimaginable, undigestable. I've had my car stolen, my apartment broken into. I know that a lot of people have been the victims of crimes. I still find it hard to believe to accept what she went through. Whatever horrible thing you imagined happened to her in those five hours, likely did. Five hours later, he left her lying on her bed, hands and feet bound with tape, alive. On the evening of September 21st, a stranger came into her backyard. She was 55 years old and living alone in Nyack, New York. In 1994, my mother was the victim of a violent crime. There's no way to ease into this story, so I'll just start.
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