My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “That Gunther! What has he done now!”

  It was observed that our pedophile’s face, unnaturally pale, with rubbery lips in a frightened smile, and stark staring glassy eyes, that more than one (female) observer believed to be “poetic”—often glistened with tears at such times. If police came for him without warning, as usually they did, Gunther was likely to be wearing nondescript clothes (khaki trousers, sweatshirt, baggy sweater) like any Fair Hills adult male, and not the “spiffy”—“show-offy”—“fag”—clothes (faux-suede, black leather, brightly colored scarf tied at his throat) in which he dressed when he left the house to drive away in his mother’s weatherworn old Datsun or pedal away on his bicycle (with what destination: public park, children’s playground, kiddie matinee, skating rink?); if police came for him in the night, a favored time, for it involved blinding spotlights illuminating the front of the Cape Cod, as on a movie set, Gunther was likely to be hauled outside in pajamas, without shoes; on the most humiliating occasion, Gunther was taken into police custody bare-chested and in white Jockey shorts: his legs were revealed as spindly and lacking muscle, like an ostrich’s legs; his white Jockey shorts might have fit the groin area of a prepubescent boy; his narrow, concave chest was hairless as a young boy’s, with berry-like nipples distinct against the sickly pallor of his skin. For you had only to glance at our pedophile, the pariah of Morris County, all knowledge of Gunther Ruscha’s lurid past but a tabbouleh rosa, and a primitive warning signal would detonate in the frontal lobe of your reptile brain: “Sex deviate!”

  More subtly tuned frontal lobes would detonate: “Pedophile!”

  Yet, so strangely, you might say perversely, Gunther Ruscha seemed never to become adjusted to his situation. Having served only eighteen months of a three-and-a-half-year sentence in the notorious Sex Offenders’ Unit of ghastly Rahway State Prison for Men, to which only the “most hardened” of New Jersey criminals are sent, and having lost all chance of being ever again employed as an elementary school teacher (specialty: music), as a consequence of having pleaded guilty to several counts of “sexual misconduct endangering a child,” Gunther Ruscha yet displayed surprise and hurt, at times indignation, when given harsh looks by Fair Hills residents who knew his identity. And when, at the mall, hurriedly making his way with lowered head and eyes fixed to the floor, he heard in his wake the crude chant Pedophile! Pedophile! Sicko pervert pedophile! he never glanced around for fear of seeing a teenager known to him from the neighborhood where of all the world he wished to feel at home.

  It was believed that, newly paroled from Rahway, Gunther had gamely tried to find employment, but with no luck: for who in his right mind would hire a convicted pedophile! It was believed that Gunther was fearful of leaving the only home he’d ever known, with silly Mrs. Ruscha who must have loved him for look at how she’d been supporting him for years, defending and protecting him for years, paying for sex therapists, psychiatrists, Gunther’s short-lived effort to attend “beauty technician school” in West Orange, though Mrs. Ruscha’s meager pension and Social Security checks must have been seriously strained to pay for her son’s show-offy fag clothes. Why, observers wondered, didn’t our pedophile move away from Fair Hills and out of the dingy Cape Cod on Piper’s Lane? Out of cowardice, very likely; or, it may have been, if Gunther had tried to move into another community, anywhere in the United States including even the remote arctic wilds of Alaska, or the mossy/sultry/alligator-plagued settlements of the Florida Everglades, he’d have had to register with local police as a convicted sex offender/pedophile; and these police wouldn’t have known Gunther as a wholly unthreatening if not pathetic sicko, requiring no more than two police officers to haul him in for questioning: no “backup” or SWAT teams or what’s called “extraordinary force.”

  Female neighbors on Piper’s Lane who’d become acquainted with luckless Gertrude Ruscha over the years spoke of the woman’s “adamant” belief that her son was completely blameless of the crimes for which he’d been sent away to Rahway: poor Gunther, twenty-six at the time, had been the true victim; a group of “vicious” sixth-grade girls at Kriss Elementary where Gunther had been so happily employed for two years after graduating summa cum laude from the Rutgers University School of Education (Newark), had suddenly, for no reason, out of pure meanness accused their music teacher Mr. Ruscha of “saying bad things to them”—“touching them in a bad way”—showing them his “weenie” and asking “would they like to touch it?” Shameless girls shrieking with laughter over Mr. Ruscha’s “weenie”—“such a teeny weenie”—“wrinkled and ugly like a mashed mouse”—and though it had seemed like a crude, cruel, silly joke of some kind or like a small fire that grew wildly out of control it happened that the girls’ parents filed formal complaints and eventually sued the principal at Kriss Elementary, the Fair Hills public school board, and luckless Gunther Ruscha who wasn’t insured for such a claim. And, in this way, Gunther became a known sex offender: pedophile.

  Yet Gunther was continually surprised, disoriented and terrified when wakened from sleep by a pounding at the front door of his house, and shouts: “Rusch-a! Gun-ther Rusch-a! Police.” And those blinding spotlights.

  Though Gunther Ruscha was at least six feet tall, angular and sinewy as an eel, as soon as he was gripped by the officers’ strong hands he seemed to shrink, and to become boneless; if you were a husky Morris County police officer you could feel little but manly contempt for the timorous/cowering/trembling/slouch-shouldered/flamey-red-haired pedophile who, shoved into the rear of the police vehicle, whimpered: “Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me! I haven’t done anything! Please believe me, whatever it is I am innocent.”

  Hauling in Morris County’s lone pedophile to police headquarters had become a routine, something of a ritual to which new police officers had to be initiated, over the past six years; yet Gunther Ruscha continued to be taken by surprise, and greatly agitated, as if in fact he was guilty. At the police station Gunther would be “interviewed” while his accuser was brought to observe him through one-way glass: “Him? That isn’t him! I told you, the man who ‘exposed himself ’ to my daughter was short, bald, looked like somebody’s grandpa.” Or: “Him? He’s got red hair. The one I told you about has dark hair, he’s ‘swarthy-skinned’ like Hispanic, Indian—” Or: “Billy? Open your eyes, honey. The bad man can’t see you through the glass, he can’t hurt you any more I promise. Billy? Please look, honey. You don’t want that bad man to be let free, and come after you again, do you…”

  Very rarely was Gunther Ruscha “arrested”: most of his impromptu visits to the police station were but opportunities for questioning and attempts at identification. When, as happened from time to time, Gunther was arrested, and charged with a crime, the politesse of “interview” was replaced by the aggressive strategies of “interrogation”; the mild-mannered pedophile, accustomed to taking his nighttime medication (Zomix, Percodan) with a glass of warm milk and cookies at 10:30 P.M. most nights, and of being asleep in bed by 11 P.M., was kept awake at the police station through the night being “grilled”—as it’s said on TV—often without knowing what the crime was for which he’d been arrested; nor was it clear who his accusors were. Gunther had learned not to request a lawyer: such requests merely inflamed police officers, like protestations of innocence.

  “LET ME THROUGH! LET ME THROUGH! I HAVE TO SEE HER—BLISS! LET ME through.”

  Even as two police officers had been dispatched to the dingy Cape Cod on Piper’s Lane to bring in, as quickly as possible, convicted sex offender/pedophile Gunther Ruscha for questioning in the apparent homicide of six-year-old Bliss Rampike, only just reported to the Fair Hills Police Department, it happened that, at 3:07 P.M. of January 29, 1997, there came the very man—white-faced, disheveled-looking, breathless—in a battered ’93 Datsun attempting to turn onto Ravens Crest Drive that was barricaded to all but police and emergency vehicles, an ungainly floral display of white flowers on the seat beside him: “These are for B
liss! I heard the terrible news on the radio! The little angel has been injured! I can save her! I can take her away! She is my darling! I am her special friend! These flowers are for her, officer! Please let me pass.” But the distraught flamey-red-haired youngish man with a redhead’s milky pallor and stark staring green-gray eyes was turned back by a Fair Hills patrolman who had no idea that this was Morris County’s pedophile, at that very moment being sought for questioning by Fair Hills PD; except that the driver in the Datsun had seemed “excitable”—“like he was high on some drug”—“with a big, weird bouquet of white flowers for the little dead girl.” For Gunther Ruscha was not the only party eager to turn into Ravens Crest Drive that afternoon, to be turned away by Fair Hills patrolmen.

  At 12:29 P.M. a 911 call had been placed (by Reverend Higley, stammering and nearly incoherent) summoning “emergency aid” to 93 Ravens Crest Drive; by 2 P.M. the first of the news bulletins were broadcast on local radio and TV; through the afternoon, “word spread” through Fair Hills and vicinity in a firestorm of emotion beyond even Schadenfreude: Bliss Rampike had been killed? Murdered? That little ice skater? The skating prodigy? In her own home, in her own bed? In the night, when the Rampikes were sleeping? Someone had broken into the house? Someone had tried to kidnap the little girl, and had killed her instead?

  Fair Hills’s first homicide in seventy years.

  In the Rampike house and vicinity was a swarm of police officers both uniformed and plainclothed, crime scene technicians, emergency medics; in the Rampike driveway and on the road, numerous police vehicles, a crime scene van, a mobile command center. An officer from the Morris County Sheriff ’s K9 Squad arrived with two-year-old German shepherd Blazes to sniff with explosive energy and high hopes outside the Rampike house and on adjoining properties, around a drainage ditch and nearby sewers, and in the township-owned property at the rear of the Rampikes’ two-acre lot, a strip of densely wooded land approximately fifty feet wide that ran parallel with Ravens Crest Drive, to block homeowners’ views of the less-than-glamorous rears of properties on Juniper Pine Lane in the next sub-division. Blazes was a handsome dog with alert, intelligent eyes, a sleek dark muzzle, burnished-looking fur, a young dog’s springy energy and a sharp bark, much admired by his handlers for his brilliant sniffing ability and indefatigable optimism, but Blazes was picking up no crucial scent in the woods, and was about to be urged back in the direction of the Rampike house, when he began barking fiercely: for there came, stumbling through the underbrush, an individual to be described by arresting officers as a Caucasian male, early thirties, height six feet/weight 150, red-haired, “excitable” and “belligerent,” clumsily carrying a large floral display in a vase spilling water down the front of his trouser legs; commanded to stop by the police officer, as he was vigorously being barked-at by Blazes, the red-haired youngish man brazenly continued to press forward, as if, by sheer insolence, he might be able to push his way past Blazes and the police officer, in a high-pitched voice declaring: “I—am a friend of the Rampike family! I—am expected in their hour of need! I am Bliss’s secret friend! Bliss is expecting me! I demand to see her! I have been in that house many times as a trusted friend! I have been in Bliss’s room with her, as a trusted friend! I demand to see Bliss! These are calla lilies—for her. Not for you—” as the police officer, joined by another officer, grappled with him and the vase and calla lilies went flying, and Blazes leapt at the raving red-haired man, barking ferociously, knocking him to the ground, in underbrush glazed with particles of icy snow; though overpowered by two officers and a German shepherd weighing more than one hundred pounds, and though one of the officers was pressing his knee against his back and mashing his face against the ground, yet with maniacal desperation he continued to struggle even as his arms were wrenched behind his back, and Blazes’s sharp yellow fangs tore at his left ear: “Bliss! Bliss! I love you, Bliss! I have come to save you!”

  CUFFED AND DAZED AND BLEEDING FROM SEVERAL FACE AND HEAD WOUNDS, Gunther Ruscha was to be the first “person of interest”* taken into custody in the Bliss Rampike homicide investigation; so promptly, the Fair Hills police were to be universally praised, within an estimated twelve hours of the little girl’s death.

  * Schadenfreude: classy German term for being thrilled, usually secretly, by others’ misfortune; unless the misfortune inconveniences you in some way in which case you “commiserate.”

  * Our luckless pedophile! He was also arrested on charges of criminal trespass, disturbing the peace, refusal to obey a police officer’s command, two counts of assault against a police officer, and one count of assault against a police dog. Bail was set at $450,000.

  OUR PEDOPHILE II

  “IT’S HIM. HAS TO BE.”

  Quickly it was discovered by Fair Hills police that Gunther Ruscha had been several times in the past three years detained by patrol officers for “suspicious behavior” on Ravens Crest Drive, where, according to complainants residing at 89 Ravens Crest, 65 Ravens Crest, and 47 Ravens Crest, he’d been reported to be riding a bicycle “repeatedly” on the curving road, to the cul-de-sac at the end of the road and back to the intersection with the Great Road; questioned by patrol officers called to the scene, Gunther was able to convince them that he was “only just bicycling” in the neighborhood because the road ended in a cul-de-sac and there was little traffic; and because this was a “beautiful, quiet neighborhood” with a “feel of holiness” to it. He was “cooperative”—“unarmed”—“a Fair Hills resident.” Stricken with regret for having upset anyone, Gunther eagerly suggested to police officers that he be allowed to apologize in person to the complainants as well as to the family (name unknown: so the canny pedophile pretended) living in the Colonial at 93 Ravens Crest Drive: “Someone in that house might have seen me, too, and wondered who I was. And if I—if I offended—anyone in that family—a young child, for instance—little girls are especially wary of strangers!—I want to say how sorry—how sorry—how sorry I am.”

  Needless to say, Gunther Ruscha was not invited to “apologize” in person and warned to stay away from Ravens Crest Drive or he’d be arrested.

  “THAT’S HIM. THAT MAN…”

  Quickly it was determined by the Rampikes’ housekeeper Lila Laong, brought to the Fair Hills police station to observe, through one-way glass, the sickly-looking/shifty-eyed/twitchy Gunther Ruscha, that this was the very man who had bicycled to the Rampikes’ house several weeks ago, in early January, just before Bliss was scheduled to skate in a competition in Pennsylvania, bringing her a bouquet of flowers—a “large, beautiful bouquet of spring flowers”—and a hand-printed card signed G.R. Lila had thought it was “strange” that the flower delivery was made on a bicycle—and in such cold weather!—by this “youngish man, very pale”—“red-haired, with no hat”—“smiling so hard, his mouth looked stretched”—“not dressed right for a delivery man”; and this G.R. was the same person who’d brought a present for Bliss’s sixth birthday the year before: “Oh it was so—unusual! At first, it was—very nice. Pretty stuffed birds inside a little glass box, a robin and a little female bird dressed like a groom and a bride, that Mrs. Rampike wouldn’t let Bliss keep and had me throw away because it was ‘disgusting.’”

  Asked why the gift was “disgusting,” Lila Laong said: “Because, Mrs. Rampike said, the birds were real birds, and hadn’t been ‘fixed’ right, like you do with chemicals when you stuff a bird or an animal, and so the poor things were rotting inside their feathers…You could smell them.” Lila shuddered, recalling the smell.

  As soon as The Marriage of Miss Finch and Cock Robin had been disposed of, Lila said, Mrs. Rampike forgot it; Bliss had cried, because she’d wanted to keep the “special” present, but after a day or two Bliss forgot it, too; for Bliss received so many cards and gifts from strangers, and people were always wanting to see her, and Mrs. Rampike had too many things to think about managing Bliss’s career: “Mrs. Rampike would never think that any of Bliss’s fans would want to h
urt her! They all loved her so.”

  Lila shuddered again, and hid her grief-ravaged face in her hands.

  (THE HAND-PRINTED CARD FROM GUNTHER RUSCHA, SIGNED G.R., ONE OF HUNDREDS of cards kept by Betsey Rampike in a half-dozen albums in Bliss’s “trophy room,” which the reader might remember from an earlier chapter titled, “The Marriage of Miss Finch and Cock Robin,” would soon be discovered by Fair Hills detectives and “positively linked” to Morris County’s pedophile. The noose was tightening around G.R.’s slender neck!)

  “THIS MAN! THOSE EYES! SUCH EVIL IN THOSE EYES…”

  In Fair Hills police headquarters, Mummy was being shown “mug shots” of Gunther Ruscha. As if overcome by sudden faintness Mummy swayed in her chair, clutching at her head, and Morris Kruk, who would never leave a client’s side when police officers were anywhere near, leaned over her, and encouraged her to take slow, deep, calm breaths, and to try to remember if she’d seen this man before.

  “This man”: at the time incarcerated in the Morris County Men’s Detention Center, in “quarantine” from other, non-sex offender/pedophile detainees.

  It was the day following the day it had happened: it was a way of the Rampikes to speak, meaning.

  As, for some, G-d is a word not to be uttered. So is not to be uttered within the Rampike family.

  Mummy, Daddy, and Skyler were at police headquarters. I think, yes Skyler was there.

  Skyler had been brought by Mummy and Daddy and Mr. Kruk to the Fair Hills police station because wherever you might look, Bliss was not there.

  Skyler was only beginning to comprehend. There was Bliss’s remains, which had been taken away (where? Skyler did not want to know) but Bliss herself was gone and was not anywhere.