Fatal Attraction

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Contrary to the opening scene of the musical phenomenon “Les Mis,” nobody on the prison chain gang actually sings.

I don’t think my friend Tom ever found reason to sing anywhere in prison. We were journalism colleagues a century ago. He was part of the reason I later studied law and chose criminal defense. We covered some of the same criminal courts for audiences of none of the same readers. Because we weren’t competing with each other, and because he had a wide streak of decency in his multi-streaked character, he taught me a few ropes, introduced me to a few judges, to a few lawyers for the prosecution and defense, and generally eased my entry to that particular news beat.

He warned me not to get too close to anyone, because I might be forced to burn any one of them in a news story. Especially don’t grow too fond of the defendants, he said. Most of them are going to jail.

But I learned later — long after I had left journalism — that Tom himself had gotten too close. In fact had always been too close. He was fascinated by the seedy lives of the people he met in the criminal subculture. Though a journalist doesn’t stop being a journalist at five o’clock, he spent more time than usual off the clock in that culture, wandering their streets, drinking in their dives. He loved them.

I’m told he eventually married one of them. It was a marriage doomed from the start, toxic and rife with jealousy, with counter-ambition, with obsession. Not soon enough, they separated. Their marriage ended not in divorce court, where it should have, but in Tom’s professional home, the criminal court.

In some sort of drunken fugue, he had murdered his wife. Through every police interrogation, throughout his testimony at trial, he professed his love for her, perhaps even when he was stabbing her over and over. Many, many times over.

He was convicted of second degree murder. Sentenced fifteen years to life.

He served not even two years. For Tom, it was a life sentence. He was released, but not from prison.

One of the people he loved, murdered him there.