He said: “Don’t dothat! Don’t do that!”
Butz’s partner, who wasbeing raped at that moment, and was in a more vulnerable position, also said toButz: “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.”
Butz stopped trying to getthe knife. The man said: “I know you’re going to call the police. They alldo. But I’m going to be long gone. I always am.”
"Maybe we won’t,"Butz’s partner told him.
“Well, you mightnot,” he said.
Then he looked at Butz:“But she will.”
The attacks became moresadistic. Things began to happen that were beyond the worst imagining of Butz’spartner. She felt like she was going to be ripped in half. She thought:“He’s not going to kill me with a knife, but he’s going to kill me thisway.”
Then she heard Butz say:“Why are you cutting me? Why are you cutting me?”
The man said to Butz:“Shut up, or I’m going to kill your girlfriend.”
He took the women intoanother room in the house, where he pulled another knife out of a pair of jeanshe’d left on a guest bed.
The story he had beentelling them, the story Butz’s partner had been telling herself, the story thathe just wanted sex and was not going to hurt them, now completely shattered.“In that moment I just knew he was going to kill us,” Butz’s partnertold the court. “I just knew. There was something different in his gaze.There was this kind of looking. I didn’t feel fear from him, I didn’t feelanger from him, I just felt this nothing.”
He made them go back intotheir bedroom. They pleaded with him, tried to think of what they couldpossibly say. They told him they were on the board of a nonprofit that helpshomeless people, which was true. He didn’t respond. They were back on the bed,on their backs, one of his knees on each of them, pinning them down, a knife ineach of his hands.
The next thing she heardwas Butz saying: “You got me. You got me. You got me.” He had stabbedButz in the heart.
“I remember thinking,‘No. No. No. No. No. No. No. We were supposed to get to leave. We were supposedto get to go. She can’t be dying.’”
The man was slashing and stabbingButz’s partner, too.
“He just cut, cut,cut, cut, and I remember just feeling the blood come down, some of the bloodjust spurting up and out. And I remember thinking, ‘This is it. There’s no wayI can have my throat slit and live. There’s no way. There’s just no way.’
“The next thing Iremember him doing was switching his hand from a cutting motion to a stabbingmotion.”
Each of the women had theirhands up, trying to push him off. Butz’s partner realized, though, that themore she struggled, the more blood gushed out of her neck.
“It’s the weirdestthing. You don’t hurt. Blood’s spurting out of you, but you don’t feelanything,” she told the court.
She thought: “This ishow I’m going to die.”
It was, she said,“sort of a moment of peace.”
She thought: “Maybewhat Teresa tells me about heaven is true. Maybe it will be okay.”
She stopped fighting andreleased.
“The next thing I felt was just thispowerful surge of energy.”
Butz had pushed and kickedthe man off of the bed.
“I remember screaming:‘Get him!’”
He punched Butz in theface. (An autopsy later showed her three bottom teeth broken and pushed back.)Butz grabbed the nightstand.
“I saw her holdingthat metal table, that little teeny tiny table. She kind of pushed him backwith it.”
No stories matteredanymore. No hopes. No promises. It was now fight or flight in that room, killor be killed. Butz threw the table through the window. She pushed herselfthrough the jagged glass, fell to the ground outside, got up, sprinted to thecurb, ran into the street. Then, her partner said, “As quickly as shestarted running, she just fell straight back.”
The man and Butz’s partnerwere still standing there in the bedroom, and they looked at each other.
He ran out of the room.
She ran to the front door.
“I remember I couldn’tget the front door open because my hands were too bloody,” she told thecourt. Eventually, she did get it open and she ran to the neighbors across thestreet, ran past her partner lying on her back on South Rose Street, becauseboth of them needed he
lp right now, because itseemed like they didn’t have much time. “Just ran as fast as Icould,” Butz’s partner told the court. She was naked. They were bothnaked. She reached the neighbors’ front door.
“I bang on the door ashard as I can,” she said. As she did, she noticed the skin open on one ofher arms, muscle popping through. She didn’t even remember being stabbed there.Her flat palms left perfect bloody prints on the door. The neighbors weren’thome.
“So I just turn aroundand start screaming: ‘Help us! Help us!’”
Indifferent silence. Unansweredscreams. A murderer and rapist running away through the night. Crueltyunchecked.
And then civilization,which did not stop this from happening, which did not even know this washappening, slowly returned, slowly wrapped itself back around the women, layerby insufficient layer.
Butz’s partner saw a youngHispanic man running toward them. “He just ran,” she told the court.She saw a young woman leaning over her partner. Neighborhood kids, up late on awarm night, were coming to help. One of them took off a sweatshirt and gave itto Butz’s partner. “I just grabbed her sweatshirt and held it up to myneck,” she said. She told a young man to call her mom on his cell phoneand tell her she loved her. “And the next thing I remember at this pointis an officer coming up to me and kind of abruptly telling me to stopscreaming.” The officer asked: Is the bad guy gone? Which way did he go?He needed to secure the area before the firemen, waiting down the block, couldrush in, blue smocked and white gloved, and try and help whomever they could.“I remember they came to me”—the firemen—“and they didn’t go toher, and I was like, ‘Go to her! Go to her!’” Other firemen and medicswould go to Butz, but it would be too late.
The canine unit would cometo track the man’s scent. An emergency room physician would swab Butz’s partnerfor evidence and, for a time, with her best interests in mind, withhold fromher the information that Butz had been killed. The coroner would autopsy Butz’sbody. The crime lab would process the evidence: fingerprints on the dresser andthe bathtub, a bloody footprint on a piece of paper that had been on the floor,DNA in and on the bodies of the two women. Detectives would run down leads, matchthe prints and DNA directly to Kalebu.
One of the detectives, awoman named Dana Duffey, would call one day while Butz’s partner sat in St.Louis at one of Butz’s favorite places, a bar and restaurant overlooking theMississippi River. Detective Duffey would tell her: “We have him.”(And—no joke—fireworks would go off right at that moment across the river, anaccident on the part of some worker preparing for a later show.) Statepsychiatrists would evaluate Kalebu and declare him competent. King County prosecutors,well aware that Kalebu had been repeatedly held—and repeatedly released—by thestate’s mental health and criminal justice systems in the 16 months before theSouth Park attacks, would prepare to try to put him away for life this time.Public defense attorneys would prepare his defense, which currently is"general denial.” A judge would be assigned, a jury selected. Thecomponent pieces of this effort to be civilized even toward those accused ofdefying the demands of civilization, this attempt at a fair trial, would fallinto place.
And then she—the bravestwoman in Seattle—would testify at this trial, relive and recount it all, bearwitness and bare her pain for the hope of justice.
Before all of this, though,the firemen would try to get Butz’s partner to sit down on South Rose Street,to stop her screaming. But she would not sit down and stop her screaming. Notafter what happened. Not after all that silence. Not anymore.
A part of her knew Butz’sfate. Still, she shouted into the night. Even if Butz couldn’t hear heranymore, maybe someone would hear: “I love you, Teresa! Fight! Fight!Fight! Fight! Fight!” 此楼先占