WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

Violence Against Women

2015, Vol. 21(4) 535 –543

vaw.sagepub.com

Poem

Summer’s Death

Lori Ann Post1

Preamble – Background Preceding Poem

My sister and her husband were murdered in their home in the middle of a sunny fall

day in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. My story has raised many important questions

and facts. First, I lost two beloved family members. The pain was excruciating.

My pain was exacerbated when I learned how my sister and her husband were tortured

before their murders. As a violence researcher, I know empirically that there is no way

around this pain; however, to climb my way out of this dark posttraumatic stress disorder

(PTSD) abyss, I focus on the positive and am developing policies to prevent

batterers from having free reign in communities. Second, due to the violence, I experienced

extreme feelings of shock, fear, and helplessness because somebody wanted

my sister and her husband dead. In fact, the killer wanted them more than dead. Each

of their bodies had multiple injuries pre, peri, and post-mortem, and each of their bodies

was posed to torment whomever found them. The killer pulled Michael’s pants and

underwear down and sexually assaulted him, and Terri was posed in a grotesque manner

in the pond with an altar built on her back. Their deaths were without the honor or

peace becoming of a state trooper or an environmental investigator. Michael and Terri

dedicated their lives to advocacy for the vulnerable and the environment.

It is with great hope that you, the reader, share the story of Terri and Michael

Greene. Domestic violence affects all of us, even those who do not live in violent

homes. We are still waiting for the necessary social change that frames domestic violence

as a human rights violation to prevent Terri and Michael’s fate from occurring to

others. Most importantly, Terri and Michael Greene were victims of domestic violence.

Their murders were preventable, and had anybody at any point over the last 25 years

upheld the laws passed by Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) I, II, and III and held

the perpetrator accountable for the psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual

abuse of dozens of women and children, Terri and Mike would be alive. Deemed a

narcissistic sociopath with substance abuse dependencies and depression based on a

court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, the question isn’t why he killed Mike and Terri;

the question is “why did the police, prosecutors, parole boards, and judges feel he was

a safe bet to let out of jail?” At the time of the murders, the perpetrator was on parole,

incarcerated, and on work release simultaneously. He did not have a job, and he was

allowed to roam the community freely. These were passionate acts of hatred. He

enjoyed killing, and surely they were not his first because he was comfortable playing

with dead bodies for two hours before leaving their home only minutes before my

elderly parents arrived.

I discovered the name of the killer on September 29, 2011, but that fact had to

remain a secret until December 22, 2011, when the prosecutor charged their killer with

two counts of homicide. I used all my knowledge and skills to learn about the killer.

From the sheriff’s perspective, the killer had a six-line rap sheet that ranged from driving

without a license to credit card fraud. From a domestic violence researcher’s perspective,

the killer had 132 independent violent events that ranged from child abuse,

attempted homicide, child neglect, absconding from parole, dropping dirty, home

invasion, and breaking and entering. Everything about this perpetrator predicts violence.

The lead detective said this was a strange case because the killer had no violent

history. I immediately responded, “What about the violence perpetrated against his

partners and children?” The detective responded sheepishly, “Well, that is because he

had a lot of girlfriends.” It did not occur to a law enforcement officer in the year 2012

that woman abuse is a crime, violent, and a violation of a victim’s civil rights. When

we met with the prosecutor, I was shocked a second time when someone queried the

prosecutor “why?” He said he did not know because the killer only had a history of

credit card fraud. I immediately asked, “Why do you continue to say he is not violent

when I have pages and pages of violent events?” The prosecutor did not consider the

woman and child abuse “real violence.”

My mother said to me, “I thought domestic violence is illegal.” She asked me,

“Why wasn’t he in prison?” “Why did he pose their bodies?” “I thought you could get

arrested for hurting your girlfriend.”

I can only guess that most Americans feel the same as my parents. Their awareness

of woman abuse has increased, but the system intended to protect fails to protect battered

women and children and remains dysfunctional. Alas, I have no answers for my

mother because it is illegal, and the police and prosecutors and judges were aware and

he should have been in prison. At the perpetrator’s arraignment for the murders of

Terri and Michael Greene, his previous victims crawled out of the woodwork. Some

emailed me, some called, some showed up in court to hug me. These amazing women

who survived near-lethal homicide and were not protected by the U.S. criminal justice

system were the most compassionate persons during my grief; they comforted me.

Nobody believed their story or paid attention to violations of laws put in place to protect

battered women and children. These women did not know there were dozens of

other victims because the domestic violence crimes were never publically recognized.

Each woman believed she was alone. Independent cases in four Michigan counties

consisted of women who had been battered, robbed, beaten, threatened, and terrorized

by my sister’s killer, and not a single police officer, prosecutor, or judge took them

seriously. Each police report was met with skepticism that the case was unique, or the

woman was “crazy” and if she did not like being battered, why she had continued to

return to her abuser. The perpetrator’s violent history was treated as a series of “singular

events,” rather than as a 25-year pattern of violence. One crazy woman is possible,

but 12? Terri and Michael’s murders validated battered women’s experiences. One of

his victims was battered and stalked by the killer for years. She made multiple police

reports and filed restraining orders and a no stalking order. The perpetrator was not

arrested when he violated the restraining orders. Terri and Michael’s murders gave this

woman peace. Following the arraignment, she asked the police detective, “See! Do

you believe me now?” Nobody believed her fear and experience until Terri and

Michael were brutally tortured and murdered.

It is within this context that I offer Summer’s Death, plus an apology to all battered

women for referring to myself as an expert in violence against women. I knew nothing.

These murders weighed heavily on my family, but what hurt the most were the

people telling me not to discuss the case before the trial, during the trial, or afterward

because it might make somebody uncomfortable. These restrictions left me in a lonely

place and the one person, my sister, who could have helped me through these dark

days was dead.

Summer’s Death - Poem

The Autumnal Equinox occurred on September 22, 2011, when I learned my sister and

her husband were murdered.

I knew this girl, such a short while ago;

Our design was divine apropos;

Our beings in discord;

She was tall, I am small;

She was bronze, I am fair;

She was structured, me laissez faire;

My life chaos, next to orderly;

My brazen words, her timidity;

She worked to live, while I lived to work;

And yet we lived in this common ground;

A mother, a father, and a history abound;

This woman, my sister, was always around;

Despite my strange ways, she still cared for me;

In her way, in her way, so specially;

She is that person, I so need;

The quiet strength behind me;

The woman accepted, unrestricted from me;

For my words, for my words, astounded;

Contradiction, infliction, conviction from me;

Mayhap unwonted, offended, could be;

Lacked inhibition, oft shamed her;

But she stayed, yes she stayed, beside me;

Demented deranged erratic could be;

Explained my conduct, byproduct crazy;

But she stayed, yes she stayed, and she claimed me;

As her sister, with pride, that perplexed me;

Separated by six states, distant depart;

Yet connected, unaffected 700 miles, apart;

Then came that call, yes a call, that broke my heart;

At 10:29, 10:29, 22 of September;

Death of summer, The Fall Equinox;

I remember, I remember, I remember;

That call, oh that call, stole you from me;

You departed, I started, my journey to hell;

Disbelief traded for pain;

Confusion, effusion disoriented I fell;

Hysteria, delirium, madness now sadness;

God, oh my God, awaken me;

To a day, any day, besides the “one” without you.

One life, not suffice, so he took more;

In my head, I see dead, I see your end;

He took one life, he took Mike, wanted more;

He took two, yes its true, with no remorse;

I went to the place, yes that space, where you died;

I follow the steps, you walked as you died;

Just to know, just to feel, just to touch you some way;

I walked your death march, the following day;

A hundred times, in my mind, I have tried;

To feel what you felt, as you knelt, in his blood;

From your dead husband, his body destroyed;

Devoid of life, until you did know;

You were not safe, the monster came for you.

The obscure demonic beast, which hath no soul;

Unfettered, unhampered, out of control;

His growing hunger, hateful vitriol;

Consuming lovers, clandestine children, as his toll;

Secretly, the weakly, he gains control;

Asunder the sentinel’s stand, he grows;

Because he knows, he knows, he knows;

;

They are invisible, inconspicuous; nonvisuals;

In the eyes of our guardian fools;

You meant the world to me, irony;

Because your life, just a trophy, was snuffed randomly.

I wonder and wonder, what came to your mind;

As you lay dying, struggling for life;

Was there worry or fear or pain to bear;

You died alone, oh alone, I was not there;

To tell you I love you, maybe just hold your hand;

Or cradle your head, and tell you some lies;

You will live, all will be well;

Stay with me, please stay, instead of farewell;

You’re my sister, my sister, and I was not there;

When you needed me most, I was lost, nor did hear;

Your last words, precious words, are lost to the wind.

You are my sister, and sisters do know;

The minds of each other, so maybe I know;

I am late, I came late, but I finally did show;

You need not worry, for your son, pray tell;

Would be safe, beloved, as he grew;

He’s a man, yes a man, and he did survive;

You’d be proud, yes so proud, strong and alive;

He went on, without you, with work and school;

The son you wanted, exalted, a beautiful soul.

It is I who is trapped between life and death;

Unable to cope, to live, without hope;

Pushed by others to go on and forget

To live without you, ignore my regret;

My sister, dear sister, is no longer here;

Your dreams and your stories, are missing I fear;

Heart broken and lonely, I’m forced to go on;

It’s the motions, the motions, without feeling or soul;

I dredge forward, yes forward, and nobody knows;

I cannot let go, let go, let go;

No rehearsal for death or a murder;

Crazy, unstable, is what I hear;

Forced into silence, where I may not speak;

The horrors of murder, because I am weak;

My sister, dear sister, I can’t move on;

How cruel to cross over, you left me alone;

Alone, alone, forsaken alone;

Death is forever, to weather alone;

Terri, my secret murder, tormentor and torture;

Visions of your body submerged in a pond;

The blood spattered walls, bullet holes, abandoned;

The memory of death, I can’t go beyond;

Some days, too many days, I try and forget;

But the pills and booze still cannot mask;

Broken heart, broken heart, I cannot get past;

So for now we pretend that all is well;

My secret murder, I will not tell;

Rather, life is wonderful, as if, as “is” if.

Speak not of these murders, I have been told;

Not at work, nor at home, are secrets untold;

Time to move on, as my grief grows old;

Yet I wonder, I wonder, why it’s so wrong to remember;

Little sister who died, yes you died in September;

Murder evokes a bad feeling, no healing;

I am vexed, so perplexed, for concealing;

Deny, it’s a lie, this girl a short while ago;

I had a sister, perfect sister, I know;

She had to die, no good bye, why deny;

Why must I forget, oh forget and yet;

I know why, must comply, needn’t cry;

You who demand, reprimand, I let go;

Can’t fathom my pain, died not in vain;

Because you had no sister, not my sister, no pain;

Suffered my loss, such a cost, to sustain;

I am normal, as normal a sister could be;

To resent, denounce life, that was she;

Rather I shall scream to the world;

My secret murder had a name, TERRI!

Postscript

The killer went to trial after 26 delays. The trial lasted two and a half weeks. At every

venture, the killer’s rights were considered. He continues to terrorize one of his former

victims, stalking by proxy. He knows where she is and when she is at work. He calls

her or has other girlfriends call and write letters to her. He has somebody watching her.

He has been moved downstate close to where Terri’s son lives, and his former victims

live where he can have visitors that maintain his social network and control. During

my victim’s statement, I was chastised and threatened for divulging the sexual assault.

I did not want the killer to go to prison as a hero for killing a police officer, especially

one who was a champion of battered women during his career. The only time the killer

showed emotion throughout the trial was when my father testified that he found

Michael’s body with his pants pulled down to his ankles and his underwear pulled

down below his buttocks. This was the only time that the killer turned red from shame.

We are currently awaiting an appeal the killer has filed.

1-Author Biography

Lori Ann Post is a professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Yale University

School of Medicine. Her areas of research are violence/injury prevention and health informatics

(HI). She is the principal investigator (PI) on an R01 to test the use of HI in the emergency

department (ER) to reduce injuries, a multi-site informatics Veteran’s Administration (VA) that

targets PTSD, a Department of Defense (DoD) simulation study, and a United States Department

of Agriculture and the United States Agency for International Development study that looks at

gender-based violence (GBV) in low-income countries as it relates to food security. Specifically,

her work in Africa addresses engendering climate change. She will present how to mobilize

political and public will to end GBV at the United Nations in the follow-up meeting to the

Beijing Conference on Women’s Health.

Violence Against Women

2015, Vol. 21(4) 544–547

vaw.sagepub.com

Commentary on Summer’s Death

Evan Stark1

Summer’s Death was written by Lori Post, an associate professor at Yale Medical

School, a domestic violence researcher, and a close friend. On September 22, 2011,

the Winter Solstice, Lori’s sister and brother-in-law, Terri and Michael Greene,

were brutally murdered in the couple’s home in Delta Township, Michigan. Terri,

age 46, was an environmental researcher, and Mike, age 62, was a retired State

Police detective. The killer inflicted numerous injuries on Terri and Mike both

before and after he shot them in a style designed to mirror a Mafia execution. He

sexually assaulted Mike and staged the bodies, almost certainly to torment anyone

who found them, which happened to be Lori’s elderly parents. He also constructed

an altar on Terri’s body, which he left floating in the family pond. More than 2 years

later, Christopher Perrien was convicted of the murders and received a life sentence

without parole.

Poetry is one of the many media used internationally to relieve the effects caused

by violence-related trauma. As a student of domestic violence and partner homicide,

Lori has a deeper understanding than most of the inescapable traumatic effects of

such a loss. However, none of this prepared her for the abyss she faced in the wake of

the killings, the feeling of being “alone, forsaken,” of walking her sister’s “death

march”; lessened the shock, fear, or helplessness she felt; or insulated her from the

inevitable attempts to self-medicate and escape this pain. Victim-witnesses such as

family members commonly experience survivor’s guilt, the sense that our health or

happiness is at the expense of those who have been harmed or that something we

could or should have done would have saved them. The hope is that making poetry or

other art can help contain the trauma and make it more manageable, restoring a sense

of control where there is none and providing a certain apprehension of evil that is

beyond understanding.

What does Summer’s Death have to do with violence against women? Mr. Perrien

had no prior relationship to the Greenes and no known motive for killing them or desecrating

their bodies. By tracking his use of the Greenes’ cell phone and credit and

ATM cards, Lori and police identified the killer within a week. But robbery explains

neither the fact nor the manner of the killings. At the time of his homicides, Mr. Perrien

was simultaneously on parole, in jail for credit card fraud, and on “work release,”

although he had no job. But he had no known history of violence, a fact that “puzzled”

the lead detective. The court deemed him a “narcissistic sociopath” with substance

abuse dependencies and depression. The picture painted was of a crazed sociopath

whose pathology had lain dormant until that fateful, sunny afternoon.

The most obvious link to violence against women is the realization that the complex

of feelings Lori expresses is also felt by the family and friends of the battered

women whom we study, work with, and represent. We have yet to fully appreciate,

study, or mount an appropriate response to the effects of femicide, partner abuse, and

coercive control on adult family members, friends, and co-workers. The recognition

that “witness-survivors” are also co-victims (and potential allies) is particularly important

as advocates seek to help abused women who choose to stay with abusive partners

build safe and empowering spaces within their families/communities.

Lori wrote Summer’s Death during a phase in the case when she knew the killer’s

identity but was forbidden to speak about it publicly. The poem’s dynamism reflects

the tension between her experience of being “silenced” by this mandate; her felt

“speechlessness”; her overwhelming need to give voice to feelings of fear, rage, loss,

and helplessness; and the fact that her most constant confidant, her sister, was dead.

Even after the trial, Lori was urged to confine her experiences of suffering to herself

and her therapist, a wise precept perhaps, but impossible to practice.

Like Lori, victims of violence against women and their families commonly report

being silenced, either explicitly by a court order or a coercively controlling partner, or

implicitly by disbelief or the reluctance of outsiders to accept the depth and durability

of the grief involved. In Summer’s Death, Lori refuses to mute her suffering, “get over

it,” or to let her sister and brother-in-law remain the nameless victims Perrien sought

to make them. Judy Butler (2009) points out that a hierarchy of race, sex, gender identity,

and nationality shape the “grievability” of death and suffering in particular groups.

Lori challenges us to make the tragedies of the women and families we study or work

with “grievable.” As in the poem, this starts by naming those in whose names we claim

to speak (a major point of recent protests over police shootings of young Black men)

and ensuring that the victim-survivors we work with are no less valued than anyone

else and their narratives no less seen or heard or privileged.

In fact, Perrien was a chronic batterer, though his abuse had remained “invisible

in plain sight.” Excluded from the official investigation, Lori applied her considerable

technical skills to track the killer’s history. She identified 132 independent

domestic violence events over 25 years involving partners in four Michigan counties.

His abuse included multiple physical and sexual assaults, stalking, threats to

kill, child abuse, child neglect, attempted homicide, home invasion, and breaking

and entering. Confronted with this history, the detective replied facetiously, “Well,

he had a lot of girlfriends.” The prosecutor acknowledged that this litany of abuse

was not reflected in the six-line rap sheet. Still, like the jurors in O. J. Simpson’s

criminal trial, he wondered what this history had to do with the “real violence”

reflected in the killings.

Twelve of Perrien’s previous victims emailed or phoned Lori during the arraignment,

and some showed up in person to give support. These women told similar stories

of the authorities disbelieving their claims, minimizing Perrien’s abuse, and ignoring

his repeated violations of court orders. Amid their show of compassion, these brave

women were shocked to learn about Perrien’s other victims, kept secret because none

of the harms they had suffered were sufficiently grievable to merit public notice. To

them, the connections between their abuse and the killing of Michael and Terri were

clear, although these threads were invisible to police, prosecutors, and the court.

Ironically, to these women, Perrien’s trial for murdering strangers was the first validation

they had that their experiences were real or important. One woman had been

stalked by Perrien for years, filed numerous reports, attained both no-contact and nostalking

orders, but was ignored when he violated these orders. Realizing she could

easily have been the one murdered, she asked the lead detective rhetorically, “See! Do

you believe me now?”

Perrien’s motive for killing Michael and Terri may never be known. The prosecutor

claimed that his propensity for violence was a by-product of mental illness. As likely,

his violence and narcissism express a “normal pathology,” whereby “doing manhood”

requires constant proofs of dominance over women and men. Whatever his motives, it

is clear that Terri and Michael Greene would be alive today had Perrien been held

accountable for any combination of the violent acts he committed against women and

children prior to September 22, 2011. Had any combination of the various police,

prosecutors, or judges involved with Mr. Perrien previously seen his victims as real

persons with full equality before the law, the danger he posed to public safety would

have been clear. He would not have been on parole and not allowed to roam freely on

work release. Lori’s parents would have been saved the horror of discovering the bodies

of their daughter and son-in-law, and Lori and her family would have been spared

the life-changing trauma from which this poem was born.

At bottom, we owe Summer’s Death and the killings of Terri and Mike to the same

proximate cause. This cause is the failure of our legal, justice, and service systems to

treat violations of women’s human rights to physical integrity, dignity, liberty, and

equality with the seriousness these harms merit. Presented with the evidence Lori

gathered, her mother replied plaintively, “I thought domestic violence was a crime.” It

is by no means clear how to answer this rhetorical question.

Summer’s Death is an agonized and agonizing cry for us to ameliorate the pain suffered

by all trauma victims and witness survivors. But the poem also makes it clear

that, once inflicted, much of the suffering caused by abuse cannot be ameliorated. This

leaves us with a political question: Is ameliorating suffering caused by abuse enough,

or have we reached a stage in our social development where it is possible to eliminate

the causes of this suffering in the first place?

Reference

Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war: What is death grievable? London: Verso.

Author Biography

Evan Stark is a forensic social worker and Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University–Newark

and Rutgers Medical School.