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

by Jeanine Cummins

  “Then what the hell did you just apologize for, you asshole?” Tink shouted at the television.

  But Richardson didn’t hear her.

  “My life right now is a living hell,” he was saying.

  And then the show cut to commercial and Tink sat speechless, with the remote control in her hand and her mouth gawping. Ricki’s voiceover came on and asked, “Do you know two people who went on a horrible date? If you want one of them to get a makeover so you can send them on a second-chance date, you could be a guest. Call 1-800-GO-RICKI.”

  She threw the remote control across the room, brought her knees up to her chest, and indulged in a fresh round of tears. She was still crying when her roommate Nikki came home a few minutes later.

  “What’s up — you okay?” Nikki asked, tossing her keys down and approaching her friend on the couch.

  Tink nodded and wiped her face on her knees. “Yeah, just a bit stunned,” she responded. “Antonio Richardson’s on television.”

  Nikki looked at the TV and back to Tink.

  “On Ricki Lake?” she asked incredulously. “What’s she gonna do — give him a makeover before they execute him?”

  Tink laughed in spite of herself.

  The next week was a downward spiral of frenzied media activity and emotional mayhem for all the Cumminses and Kerrys. After ten years, their case was back on the front pages. In the days leading up to the execution, Richardson’s current attorney, Gino Battisti, began an intensive, media-savvy campaign to drum up public support for his client. It worked. On February 26, The Post-Dispatch printed the headline: “Anti-death Penalty Group Urges Holden to Halt Execution.”

  A group called Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty was quoted in the article claiming that Richardson’s IQ was “about 70,” which would qualify as borderline mentally retarded. In fact, Richardson’s IQ was higher than that and he did not meet other criteria to be considered legally mentally retarded. Certainly his rather eloquent Ricki Lake Show interview was evidence enough that he didn’t have any trouble at all with verbal communication.

  Battisti was also quoted, saying, “We have a 16-year-old who in essence was just a 7-year-old at the time of the offense.” The facts stated in the article were misleading at best, and to make matters worse, Julie and Robin weren’t even mentioned by name until the seventh paragraph.

  Over the next few days, people began writing editorials to local papers, calling for clemency for Richardson. Students on the campus of the University of Missouri at St. Louis, where Julie and Robin had been students and where Jamie was now studying, organized protests on Richardson’s behalf. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the European Union began writing letters of protest to the Missouri governor. But the most distressing protest, for the Cumminses and the Kerrys, was the one organized by members of Julie and Robin’s beloved alma mater, Amnesty International.

  Sixty-two students from the organization’s University of Missouri at Columbia chapter planned a three-day hunger strike on Richardson’s behalf. The event was not sanctioned by Amnesty International, but that didn’t stop the media from naming the participants as members of the organization. Other volunteers at the Columbia campus organized “die-ins,” where students around campus played dead at various intervals during the day.

  Jacquie, who had been working at the school for several years as a graphic designer, would avoid the campus and stay home that day. She wasn’t sure she’d be emotionally fit to handle watching zealous eighteen-year-olds who didn’t even know Julie or Robin playing dead on behalf of one of their murderers.

  When Tink read the article in The Columbia Missourian online detailing these protests, she envisioned Amnesty International’s candle wrapped in barbed wire — the same one that meant Bobby Sands, and justice, and Julie and Robin to her — and she thought about Antonio Richardson using that candle, bending it and distorting it and perverting it for himself. The betrayal stung her more deeply than she would have imagined possible and she wept from the sheer heaviness of it. And then she did what she always did when she felt helpless or disgusted: she sat down to write a letter. When it was finished, she mailed it to the chapter president, the regional president, and the national president of Amnesty International. Here is part of what it said:

  ... Mr. Noah Jennings was quoted in the Digital Missourian, saying, “We thought this was an exceptional case, a case where we could turn up the heat.” He was right. This is an exceptional case.

  I wonder if Mr. Jennings knows the names of Antonio’s two rape and homicide victims. I do. They were Julie and Robin Kerry and they were my cousins. They were members of Amnesty International and compassionate young college students, just like most of these protestors.

  I believe in the brave tenets set forth by Amnesty International and I applaud the efforts of its many tireless members. But I also believe, in your zeal to make a positive difference in our society, you occasionally rally around the wrong banner. I think this is one of those times.

  Here, Tink spelled out some of the many inaccuracies that had been vigorously adopted and then regurgitated as fact in the recent media. But she didn’t waste much time on those fact-based arguments because this letter wasn’t about facts. She concluded as follows:

  Amnesty International is a powerful and well-respected organization and as such, your role of social responsibility is a heavy one. I respectfully urge you to take caution when choosing your battles. Things are not always as they appear in the headlines.

  Julie and Robin Kerry still have many friends and family members in the St. Louis and Columbia areas, many of whom are active in campus life. These are largely people who support Amnesty International and fondly remember the girls as members of your organization. For their sake, I ask you to exercise your greatest sensitivities regarding this case. Please do not make us feel any further ostracized. If you intend to persist in your support of Antonio, please at least reconsider your methods. “Die-Ins” and similar protests on behalf of the man who murdered my cousins really are difficult to stomach. This man continues to display a flagrant disregard for human life; his victims spent their brief time on this planet fighting for human rights, until he took the battle away from them. You are on the wrong side of the fence on this one.

  The letter said everything Tink wanted it to say, and when she put the stamps on the envelopes later that afternoon she felt an enormous sense of relief. She didn’t expect that her words would accomplish anything really, but she felt better for having written them.

  She was more than a little surprised a couple of weeks later when she received personal, empathetic responses from all three recipients of her letter. She felt as if she had, in a small way, reclaimed Amnesty International for its rightful owners.

  On March 5, The New York Times lent its voice to the growing public fracas, printing an editorial entitled “Cycle of Death” that argued that “by killing [Richardson] we’ll succeed only in diminishing ourselves.” The article also reprinted several of the erroneous factoids, spin-doctored by Battisti, that had begun to permeate every article on the subject. Julie’s and Robin’s loved ones watched in stricken silence as the groundswell of support for Antonio Richardson flooded the media.

  No one seemed to notice the ample legal documentation, including Richardson’s own clemency application, that contradicted many of the “facts” being reported in the media. The story told in the legal documents revealed not the kindhearted, mentally disabled lost soul the media had created, but rather, the true Richardson: a very disturbed and angry young man who had led a miserable life since the day he was born.

  According to his own clemency application, Richardson’s father, Archie Richardson, was never married to his mother Gwendolyn and was not active in any of his three sons’ lives. But while Archie acknowledged paternity of Richardson’s two brothers, he persistently refused to acknowledge that Antonio Richardson was his son. He and Gwendolyn had not been getting along well during the period of time
in which Richardson was conceived and born. As a result, Archie was convinced that the child was the product of Gwendolyn’s unfaithfulness. So even on those rare occasions when he would spend time with the boys, he overtly rejected his middle child, allowing the other two to call him “Father” while snubbing Richardson. The young boy had not understood the spitefulness being passed back and forth between his parents, but he did comprehend the utter rejection.

  When Richardson was six years old, Archie married another woman and dropped out of his sons’ lives almost entirely. For Richardson, the damage had already been done. By the time he was enrolled in the first grade, he was displaying severe behavioral problems. A report from the Missouri Division of Family Services in 1981 indicated that Gwendolyn was “having trouble” with Richardson, and that his “academic progress was poor — his report card for the first grade was mostly D’s and unsatisfactory marks for social behavior.” His teacher from that same year mentioned that the child would not sit still; he was always moving around, fighting, throwing crayons, and stealing from his class-mates.

  When Richardson was seven, his mother was diagnosed with severe kidney problems, and he and his two brothers began a permanent shuffle from one relative’s home to the next. Gwendolyn would spend weeks at a time in the hospital, and in between her medical difficulties, the young mother developed a serious drug and alcohol habit. She would abandon her children for weeks at a time when she went on a binge. Often the boys didn’t know where their mother was, and if or when she was coming home. She would spend her Social Security payments on drugs for herself and her boyfriends and, as a result, Richardson and his brothers frequently went hungry.

  Further court documents indicated that it was “the severity, frequency, and consistency of the student’s behavioral problems” and not any kind of mental retardation that resulted in Richardson’s placement in a special school district for students with severe academic impediments. Richardson’s educational problems had nothing to do with his purported mental retardation. He was simply a neglected, angry, uneducated, and violent kid who, without the benefits of sufficient love or guidance in his life, grew up to become an angry, uneducated, and violent man.

  On the morning of March 5 the online edition of The Post-Dispatch printed an article with an unforgivable typo: Ginna Kerry was mistakenly identified as “Ginny Richardson.” From her desk in New York, Tink fired off a scathing voice mail to the article’s author, Paul Hampel, and set to work on another letter, this time to the editor of The Post-Dispatch. In St. Louis, James Kerry — an uncle of Julie and Robin’s — did the same. Nels Moss was already putting the finishing touches on his.

  Tink was more than a little surprised when Paul Hampel from The Post-Dispatch telephoned her about fifteen minutes after she had e-mailed her letter to the editor. He felt terrible about the reprehensible typo in the morning paper, and he wondered if she might be willing to do an interview. He said he would very much like to write an article supporting the victims’ families. Tink was wary — her family had been burned by the media so many times before, and when they weren’t being burned, they were being resolutely ignored, while Antonio basked in the spotlight performing in his now firmly established role as victim of the system. She told Hampel she’d have to think it over and call him back.

  She hung up and immediately opened her electronic phone-book. Tom was first on the list, but two hours later, Tink had spoken to no fewer than half a dozen family members, all of whom agreed that she should grant Hampel the interview. After all, they couldn’t very well continue to complain about the one-sidedness of the recent media coverage if nobody from their side was willing to give an interview. So after much nail-biting and second-guessing, Tink called Hampel back and nervously agreed to do the interview that evening. Despite her initial wariness, Tink warmed to Hampel and they spent nearly two hours on the phone that evening. At the end of the conversation, he thanked her.

  “I’ve learned a lot today, about how to treat people — how to treat crime victims and their families, and I just want to thank you for giving me a second chance. My e-mail has been jammed all day with messages from Julie and Robin’s family and loved ones. Those two girls really were incredible people and their story has been overlooked during the past few weeks. You have my word, I’m going to do my best to right that wrong tomorrow.”

  Hampel’s front-page Post-Dispatch headline the next morning, March 6, read “Killer’s TV Appearance Infuriates Relative Of Victims.” Tink was extensively quoted in the article, debunking many of the myths that had somehow evolved into “fact” in recent media coverage. It was the first article the paper had printed in years that focused on the victims rather than on their murderers.

  That same day, The Post-Dispatch prominently printed the three letters to the editor from James Kerry, Tink Cummins, and Nels Moss.

  James Kerry’s letter was extremely well thought out and passionate in its arguments.

  First, there are no doubts as to his guilt. Also, contrary to the false implication of the headline on the March 2 editorial, the state would not be executing a juvenile. He is 26. He was 16 when he committed multiple rape and murder — very adult crimes committed in a very deliberate, very vicious, very violent, very determined, very adult manner.

  Moss’s letter was no less impassioned.

  This case was probably the most callous and wanton homicide of two young people I ever saw. Make no mistake, it was Richardson and Clemons who raped and pushed their nude victims into the cold waters of the Mississippi River to drown.

  I have had extensive experience with mental defenses, including retardation, and Richardson is not mentally retarded in the true meaning of the diagnosis. Mere poor scores on IQ tests or reading deficiencies do not amount to mental retardation.

  Richardson has excellent verbal skills, common sense and street smarts far above those of a mentally retarded person. He made a videotaped statement claiming others performed the actual murder, and he was articulate and logical in his attempted deception. He made a reasoned choice to go to trial.

  The backlash was finally underway.

  What Tink did not realize when she granted Hampel the interview was that her participation would earmark her as the spokesperson for at least the Cummins side of the family. It was a role she did not feel either qualified for or entitled to, yet despite her reluctance, she was swamped with phone calls by mid-morning.

  The reasons the Cummins and Kerry families had remained largely silent during the ten years since Julie’s and Robin’s murders were multiple. For Tom, it was as simple as this: he didn’t trust the media. Time and time again he had seen innuendoes, half truths, and errors printed about the case, and he simply didn’t want any part of it. For the Kerry family, it may have been that their grief was just too large to voice. For the others, the large extended families — the aunts, uncles, cousins — well, they each had personal reasons. Some felt that these deaths were private — that their grief was nobody’s business. And those in the family who did get angry at the lopsidedness of the media and did want to speak out were afraid of upsetting the others. Nobody really felt it was his or her place to step up and start talking to the press. After all, in such a large family, it was only natural that there would be a multitude of differing opinions on issues like the death penalty. And nobody wanted the responsibility of being labeled the “voice of the family.”

  So when Tink found herself seemingly at the top of the “to-do” list of every reporter in the country, she was more than a little uncomfortable. But after much ongoing discussion and encouragement from several family members, she agreed that she would talk to some members of the press. At the outset of each media conversation, she explained that she was speaking only for herself, not for the whole family. And she was adamant that she would not talk about her feelings on the issue of the death penalty. The only point that she really wanted to get across was this one: Haven’t we forgotten something? What about the victims?

  But if
Tink felt overwhelmed as she juggled incoming calls from reporters and advice-seeking calls to her family, it was nothing compared to what the family members in St. Louis were facing. As the date of the execution drew near, all the family members were taken by surprise by the intensity of emotion that surrounded the impending event. The advent of another death ultimately resulting from that horrifying night in April 1991 stripped any scar tissue off the wounds of grief.

  For Ginna, there were no scars — the wounds had never healed. And for the rest of her family, on March 6, 2001, while the media swarmed and the protesters worked themselves into a camera-worthy frenzy, the memories and the anguish were as raw as they had been ten years before.

  Tom swung his rental car into his grandparents’ driveway — the same driveway he had sneaked away from all those years before on that terrible night — pulled the handbrake, and looked over at his aunt Jacquie in the passenger seat beside him. He took a deep breath, but before he had a chance to say anything, his mother had appeared at the front door and was beckoning them inside. Kay had taken an earlier flight in order to spend an extra night with her parents. They had a few hours left before the three of them — Tom, Jacquie, and Kay — would make the drive to Potosi State Penitentiary where, at one minute past midnight, they were scheduled to witness the execution of Antonio Richardson by lethal injection.

  The three hadn’t talked much about why they were going. In truth, Kay and Jacquie were both just going to keep Tom company. Neither one of them had any desire to witness the execution for herself; they just felt that Tom needed their support. Ginna had never had any intention of attending the execution, and though Rick had considered it, he had eventually decided against it as well.