A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder And Its Aftermath

by Jeanine Cummins

  “And what do you have to add to this, young lady?” the judge asked her as she dabbed at her wet face.

  “Well, obviously I wasn’t there that night,” she began, clearing her throat to compose herself, “so anything I have to say is more in the way of a victim-impact statement.”

  After her multiple failed attempts at writing victim-impact statements during the three trials, Tink was finally having her moment.

  “I guess mainly I just want to express what wonderful people my cousins were and how deeply they affected my life. I’m a writer now — um, an aspiring writer — and I really feel that I have Julie to thank for that. She was the first one to encourage and inspire me. I always wanted to write, but she was actually doing it, you know? She was studying English in college and she was published. She was the first person who ever said to me, ‘Never mind practicality — do what you love. You want to be a writer? Then write.’ So that’s what I’m doing. I guess I just want you to know that there are so many people, so many lives that were touched by those two girls and destroyed by their deaths. Daniel Winfrey has only served three and a half years for murdering each of my cousins. I don’t think that’s anywhere near enough time. Julie and Robin aren’t coming back.”

  Gabbi and Jacquie made similar statements on behalf of the girls and the family. Jacquie talked a little bit about her sister Ginna and how desperate and isolated her life had become after her daughters’ deaths. For Ginna, the roller coaster had never stopped in the ensuing years. While Tom had somehow pieced his life back together, Ginna’s grief remained an ever-present daily monster in her life. The grief cycles of anger, guilt, denial, and acceptance seemed to have become a never-ending emotional merry-go-round for her. Every time she thought she was about to break through to some kind of peace, the ride would start up again and her grief would loom up in front of her, as fresh and unconquerable as it had been the day her daughters were murdered. Jacquie also talked a little bit about the bonds of family that had been strengthened by the collective loss; she talked about the difficulties Jamie faced growing up in an environment that was constantly overshadowed by loss. But she didn’t presume to speak for any of the Kerry family — their suffering being unique and inconceivable. Even a close outsider could not articulate their anguish.

  The judge listened respectfully and patiently the whole time, his hands clasped in front of him on the large desk and an expression of concern lining his face. When the little group was done talking, there were more than a few wet tissues wadded up in fists, and everyone felt collectively drained. The judge stood up to walk them out.

  “Thank you very much for coming,” he said, shaking hands with each one in turn. “I will definitely take your statements under advisement. Just the fact that you’ve taken the time and come all this way speaks volumes about those two girls, and how much you loved them.”

  The judge’s words brought a whole fresh round of tears that Tink was barely able to suppress until the elevator doors opened and the foursome waved good-bye to the judge and stepped inside. As the doors slid shut all four of them began to cry. They all held hands walking out to the sunny parking lot, and once there they stood quietly hugging each other for a long time.

  A few days after Tom and Tink returned to the East Coast, they received the news: Daniel Winfrey had been denied parole. His case would be reassessed in the year 2004. The families heaved a sigh of relief. For a time, things were quiet again.

  Then, at Christmastime 2000, two producers working on a documentary about Richardson for Court TV contacted Tom and asked for his participation in their project. Tom was naturally wary, but he agreed to meet with them. He traveled to New York, where Tink was now living, to meet with the producers, and he invited his sister along for moral support and advice. The intention of the show, they explained, was to explore the widespread impact, or what they called the “ripple effect,” that one night of violence can have.

  “The effects of one violent act can reach into the lives of dozens of human beings and last for decades,” the producers said. “That’s what we want to expose — that the consequences reach further than the criminals and their victims.”

  When the Cumminses asked the producers why they had chosen to focus on Richardson rather than any of the other perpetrators, the answers were unclear.

  “Well, we chose to focus on Antonio because he’s a teen on death row. It’s just an additional dimension to the — ”

  “He’s not a teen,” Tom interrupted. “The man is twenty-six years old.”

  The producers glanced at each other.

  “Yes, we understand that,” one of them began diplomatically. “But the fact that he was a teen when he committed the crime — that’s what we mean. And we don’t intend to make this a one-sided fanatical view of the death penalty. That’s why your involvement is so important to us. We need to show how much damage this guy is responsible for. We don’t want to just create a blanket of blind sympathy for him.”

  “So it’s not going to be an anti-death penalty show, then?” Tom asked pointedly.

  “I don’t intend for it to come across as pro- or anti-.” The second producer answered him this time. “I want it to be strictly fact-driven — for the audience to draw their own conclusions. But in order to accomplish that, we need to involve all parties affected — everyone whose life has been devastated by this crime. And that includes you. I don’t know if you guys are aware that Ricki Lake is doing a show on Antonio?”

  From the blank stares on the Cumminses’ faces, it was clear that they were certainly not aware of the Ricki Lake show.

  “Well, her people have been pestering us for your contact information,” the producer continued, without waiting for a verbal response from the stunned brother and sister. “Don’t worry — we won’t give it to her. Their show will be extremely one-sided. She’s not a real journalist and she has no intention of trying to be evenhanded. It’s her once-annual attempt at a serious topic. People won’t take it seriously. But the fact is that this guy is getting media attention and that will drum up a certain degree of sympathy. So what we’re offering you is an opportunity to counterbalance that with your own story. We want the whole truth — not just one side.”

  The conversation continued in that vein for the better part of an hour. After a couple of drinks and a lot of reassurances, Tom and Tink agreed to appear in the documentary. Within a couple of months, a film crew traveled to Maryland and spent a day filming the Cummins family in what would be their first cooperative effort with the media since the day of the murders.

  By February 2001, Tom was still working as a full-time firefighter, but he had also used his pre-law degree to land himself a part-time gig with the FBI, which he was enjoying immensely. He came home from a hard day of FBI work one evening and was greeted lovingly by his two cats, Guinness and Cider. It was freezing outside, even for the middle of winter, so as soon as he had his coat off, he picked up Cider to warm his hands. He flicked the kitchen light on, tossed his mail on the table, and went to the fridge. On the way by, he hit the flashing light on the answering machine and listened to it beep while he peered into the fridge, hoping for a miraculous dinner idea.

  The voice that filled the kitchen from the tape machine made Tom stand up straight and close the refrigerator door. Kay Crockett was the Victims Services coordinator for the state of Missouri, and she had been an enormous help to Tom over the years — a seemingly tireless source of energy and information. He walked back to the counter where the answering machine was still clicking and whirring, and he hit the rewind button while Cider squirmed in his arms. He set her on the counter and leaned onto his elbows, for steadiness as much as for concentration. Crockett repeated her message. Yep, Tom had heard right. They had set an execution date for Antonio Richardson. And it was less than a month away.

  Tom sat down at his shiny wooden kitchen table and listened to his two cats mewing for their dinner. He lit a cigarette he hadn’t intended to smoke and tried to tak
e in the enormity of what he had just heard. Antonio Richardson would be executed in exactly four weeks. I guess I’ve got a lot of arrangements to make, he thought, shaking himself from his reverie and standing up from the table. The cigarette had burnt to ash in his fingers — he had hardly taken three puffs from it, he realized now as he stubbed the remainder of it out. He walked back to the counter, lifted the phone’s receiver, and hit three on the speed dial.

  “Dad?” he said. “I’m going back to St. Louis again.”

  The news of Richardson’s execution spread to all corners of the Cummins and Kerry families, and sent everyone reeling unexpectedly. In New York, Tink replaced the phone and flopped zombie-like onto her couch, too stunned to relay the news to anyone just yet. In Gaithersburg, Kathy and Tom went for their weekly beer at their local bar, Mrs. O’Leary’s. There wasn’t much to be said this particular evening. Even their favorite bartender, Mac, couldn’t do much to cheer them up — they were both just too confused by the rather surprising onslaught of emotions they were experiencing. In Missouri, Ginna, Rick, and the now nineteen-year-old Jamie hunkered down against the inevitable rush of unwelcome media attention that they knew would follow the announcement. They had four weeks to prepare themselves. The execution was set for March 7, 2001, at one minute past midnight. It would happen on the night of Ginna’s birthday.

  During the decade that had passed since Julie’s and Robin’s murders, every member of the Kerry and Cummins families had been redefined, both internally and in the eyes of those around them. Not a single member of either family was the same person he or she had been on April 4, 1991. Each of them was now what the state would call a “homicide survivor,” though the title was insufficient; there were no varying degrees within that definition to depict: mother, sister, cousin, friend. Nevertheless, each of their personalities had been drastically and permanently altered by the loss of Julie and Robin.

  Few of these transformations had been as dramatic as Kay’s. For Kay, the utter helplessness and subsequent anger she had experienced during the immediate aftermath of her nieces’ deaths had lit a fire in her that would never be quenched. When she had returned to Gaithersburg from the horrors of St. Louis all those years before, her initial feelings of ineffectiveness were immediately replaced by an itching, driving, completely motivating impatience to do something. So she took a page from the way her nieces had lived their lives and, at the age of forty-four, Kay — housewife, registered nurse, mother of three — transformed herself into an activist. When a friend referred her to the county’s Victim Advocate Program for counseling, Kay wasted no time in becoming a veritable fixture at the offices. Within a couple of months, she and a few members of her support group had founded the Wings of Hope newsletter for crime victims and their families. In less than three years, the newsletter received the governor’s award for “outstanding contributions in the field of victim rights or services, in recognition of exemplary humanitarian support, loyalty, devotion, and caring in serving crime victims.”

  But Kay wasn’t satisfied. The following year, she petitioned her city and received an official proclamation by the mayor and city council that April 21-27 would now be designated “National Crime Victims’ Rights Week.” Later that year she was invited to the U.S. Capitol to attend a press conference about a proposed constitutional amendment for a crime victims’ bill of rights. There she met John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted and had a videotaped conversation with him that was later aired on his show. Her kids finally noticed her ambitious activities. Over the next few years Tom, Tink, and Kathy watched with bemused pride while their middle-aged mom took her newfound expertise into the legislative arena. By 1999 she had been instrumental in establishing laws on both the state and county levels to provide help for crime victims with financial burdens like funeral expenses, counseling, and lost wages.

  But despite the ever-mounting successes, Kay was insatiable. Because each time she won a small public battle for victims’ rights, Kay felt a profound and private victory somewhere for someone else’s Ginna.

  Three weeks after the announcement of Richardson’s pending execution, Tink left her job at a publishing house in downtown Manhattan a couple of hours early. She was feeling a little under the weather. It was getting dark when she arrived at her apartment in Queens, and she flipped lights on around the house as she went. A cup of tea is what I need, she thought. That’ll make me feel better. She turned the television on in her bedroom and made her way to the kitchen to put the kettle on. The tea was ready in a few short minutes and she returned to her bedroom, holding the steaming mug with both hands. She took two steps inside her bedroom door before the face on the television made her stop dead in her tracks. Antonio Richardson was in her bedroom, via The Ricki Lake Show.

  She had known in the back of her mind that this day might come, but she hadn’t heard another word about it since the initial warning from the Court TV producers a few months before. The reality of it now was utterly shocking, and she shrieked before slamming her mug down, slopping boiling tea over the edges as she did so. She lunged at the television, slapping the power button to turn it off. Now the black screen stared mockingly back at her.

  “Get out! Get out of my room!” she shouted crazily at the television, disintegrating into tears. “Oh God, why did I come home early?”

  She only allowed herself a few short moments of self-pity before pulling herself back together. She glanced at the clock and realized that her sister Kathy might be home from work by now. She ventured to the living room and dialed her sister’s number before cautiously turning on the television there. Despite her initial revulsion at seeing Richardson, she realized that something was compelling her to watch.

  “Kath?” she said as her sister answered the phone. “Um. Turn on channel five.”

  Her sister was quiet for a few moments and then answered her, “Okay . . . Family Feud. Is there something special about this particular episode?”

  “Shit,” Tink answered. “I’ve got Ricki Lake on my channel five right now.”

  “Ah,” Kathy responded with sarcastic recognition. “Fine-quality television viewing, that.”

  “No,” Tink said, “it’s Antonio Richardson. He’s on Ricki Lake.”

  Tink heard her sister take in a sharp breath over the phone line.

  “I didn’t want to watch it alone. But I can’t seem to turn it off.”

  “Yeah, I can understand that,” Kathy responded. “You want me to stay on the line anyway?”

  “No,” Tink answered. “Thanks. I’ll ... um ... Nikki will be home soon anyway probably. Or I’ll give Joe a ring.”

  “Okay — if you’re sure,” Kathy said. “But call me back if you need anything. I’m gonna try to find out when it’s on here and tape it. I’m gonna need some company when I watch it too, I’m sure.”

  The sisters hung up and Tink immediately dialed her boyfriend Joe’s cell phone. He was a construction foreman and he was working on a job in the city. By the time he answered his phone on the fourth ring, Tink was in bad shape again. The background portion of the show was finished and the interview segment was beginning. Ricki Lake was standing to shake Richardson’s hand. Her voiceover came on and said, “Before we could begin, [Antonio] had something to get off his chest.” Then the film cut to a close-up of Richardson, looking propped up and not entirely successful in suppressing the wildly inappropriate smirk that seemed to play on his lips. Perhaps it was nerves, but it completely destroyed any credibility his words might have had.

  “Before I do this interview with you, I’d like to, um, you know, apologize to the Kerry family — the victims’ family — about this whole situation. I’d like to apologize to my family for the changes that they have been going through since I’ve been incarcerated.”

  “When you came to prison, you were just a kid in an adult prison.” Ricki Lake began the interview then, cocking her head thoughtfully to one side as she spoke. “What was that like for you — being so young?”


  Richardson went on to relate the horrors that he had seen in prison. He talked about watching people get beaten up and raped. Tink could hear Joe’s voice on the phone, prompting her to speak, but she couldn’t at first. Finally, she managed, “Joe? Antonio Richardson is on TV. Antonio Richardson is on The Ricki Lake Show. Right now. I’m looking at his face right now,” she said, all in a rush.

  “Oh no,” Joe responded. “Are you okay?”

  Tink nodded, but her voice was gone again. All she could manage was a giant sniffle.

  “I’ll be right there,” Joe said. “I’m leaving the job right now — I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

  Tink tried to argue that she was fine, that he didn’t need to leave work, but Joe wouldn’t hear of it. And when he hung up, she was glad he was on his way. The show got worse before it was over. Richardson accused Tom of perjury and called him a liar. And he rounded out his “apology” to the family with a flat denial of any involvement in the crime. He admitted being at the Chain of Rocks Bridge that night, but he claimed that, like Winfrey, he had been a frightened observer.

  Then came the icing on the cake. Ricki leaned in and asked him what had gone through his mind when the judge announced the death-penalty sentence. Tink couldn’t even listen to his response. She stood up and paced the length of the room, all the way down the hallway, into her bedroom and back.

  “Why don’t you ask him what went through his victims’ minds before he killed them?” she muttered bitterly as she paced.

  Her anger was swift and unexpected. She didn’t even consider herself a death penalty advocate. In fact, she had very mixed feelings on the subject. But something about the sympathetic tone in Ricki Lake’s voice, something about Richardson’s attempts to appear pathetic while at the same time denying all responsibility for what he had done, infuriated her. She stalked back to the couch and sat down in time to hear him say, “I did a lot of things in my past, but I’m no rapist and I’m no murderer,” he said.