Murder is a wrecking ball.
No one knows that better than those struggling to find a way to go on with their lives after someone else has died by violence, someone who was a crucial part of the very life survivors now struggle to reconstruct. It’s the club that joins you, the one no one wants a membership in.
I suppose it’s a natural thing to want to believe that there’s something out there called ‘closure’. In the minds of those hoping desperately to see it, closure can take many forms. Sometimes it’s a funeral. Sometimes it’s the discovery of a body in a cold case or the conviction of the accused. Sometimes it’s an execution.
Closure is almost always something hoped for by those outside the immediate circle of grief and loss, and it almost always comes from a good place.
Everyone likes the idea of closure, because it’s a way of evening the scales for families and friends. And it’s usually those looking in and wincing who seem to crave it the most. When we see people in agony, we want their suffering to end. In our minds, we imagine watching a criminal case resolve can somehow, in an instant, set things right.
It is the very best of wishful thinking. What it is not...is real life.
Over more than thirty years at Dateline, I have spent a great deal of time with the families and friends of murder victims. In my experience, the sad truth is that ‘closure’ is so rare as to be virtually nonexistent. The criminal justice system is slow, clumsy, and perhaps most important, it is neither a therapist nor a time machine. Putting someone in prison or on death row might be more palatable than having them run free, but it doesn’t turn back the clock or bring back the person taken abruptly from those they loved.
The reality is that for those closest to the epicenter of any murder, healing can be fragmentary, drawn out, or downright elusive. Closure isn’t real, but the ripple effect from murder certainly is.
Consider the case of Jenna Ericson, who appeared in our recent Dateline episode called ‘The Phantom’. Jenna’s sister Kristil Krug was stalked, terrorized and murdered by Kristil’s husband, who masqueraded as an ex-boyfriend. The husband was convicted; he’s doing life. So then... closure for the family? Not quite. Not close.
Jenna was pregnant when I interviewed her. Through her tears, she spoke movingly about how awful it was to realize her baby would never know Kristil, and how she herself wouldn’t get the benefit of Kristil’s own knowledge of how to be a great mom.
A baby can change everything in a family.
Unfortunately, so can a murder.
For Jenna, Kristil’s death would only be the first act of a family tragedy. Jenna’s son Braun arrived on Thanksgiving, a full 14 weeks earlier than expected, with complications that threatened the lives of mother and child.
Thanksgiving was already a difficult time for the family because it was on Thanksgiving 2023 that many of her relatives saw Kristil for the last time.
Today, Jenna seems out of danger; Braun sadly is not.
The family has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help defray the huge financial burden for Jenna and her husband Matthew. Just as they did for Kristil’s children after her murder.
Can you draw a straight line from Kristil’s killing to the premature birth of the boy Kristil will never meet? You can’t, but you also can’t stop wondering.
So when you find yourself hoping for closure for family or friends fighting violent loss, remember their lives have been irretrievably split into two: the part before, and the part after.
And the road ahead? It is always longer than you wish it were.
