Tuesday, May 01, 2012

RIP Jeane...


This isn't a five year or ten year benchmark, but considerable time has passed now, and I need to make my peace. Jeane, I tried my best to help save you, but as the months and years have passed by, I came to understand that there was no saving you, that you were doomed long before we crossed paths, before you came my way asking for help. I'm sorry you had the life you had, my heart was broken watching them destroy you, a human being, flawed, but not evil, not nearly as "criminal" as the people prosecuting you, who used Pamela Martin. No one is as evil as them, no one.

At least once a week I think about how this all affected your mother, maybe one of the most painful things I have to consider in all of this. That's why I have left her in peace. You did the best you could with a rotten life in a bad culture, a sexist, exploitative nation that appears as doomed as you were. Your case made you a proverbial canary in the coal mine--a victim of the final stages in the construction of a police state in America, the end of a good dream, maybe the end of everything. Perhaps you were lucky to go when you did, I don't know, but the future doesn't appear a bright one for the rest of us, the "survivors".

All I can hope is that you're at peace, and that hope is hardly in vain. Whether there's something after this (I find this doubtful) is irrelevant: you are free, they can no longer harm you, and you won, you beat the "bastards," as you referred to them so accurately. Jeffrey Taylor, Cowden, Butler, Connelly, Rakestraw--everyone involved in investigating and prosecuting you--will have to carry this around with them for the rest of their lives. If it doesn't bother them, they have bigger problems, like being a deranged psychopath, like the people they serve, and that's not the public, hardly. One day the entire truth will be known and people will gasp at the horror of what was done to you.

Rest in Peace, Jeane, you earned it. Soon, they're going to get a taste of payback simply by my telling the truth.

5 comments:

  1. I was thinking of you today Matt. I knew it would be a rough day for you. Take care of yourself - life is too short.

    RIP Jeane.

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  2. It was, and thank you Vicky. That it is. One of the former escorts wrote a review of Sibley's book on Amazon, and that they didn't always get along, but that she wasn't a bad woman. I think she did the best she could with a hard life.

    RIP Jeane.

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  3. I very much hope that your book is not filled with conspiracy theories. I worked for her and was in the trial.
    I'm so sick of people that know nothing, come to these "of the wall" ideas.
    I was not the biggest fan of her. The only thing I agree with everyone, is that the trial was a complete waste of time, money, and resources.
    But if you were writing a book about her and the trial, shouldn't you have contacted people that were actually involved with it?

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  4. Nope, it's not filled with conspiracy theories at all. I've made attempts to get in touch with former escorts to no avail. If you want to tell me your side of things, great, if not, so be it.

    This site has been up for years--what was the wait Andrea? The book isn't an omnibus text, it's my account of my time assisting her with my own take on things as well as materials that came my way during and after her death. I have been in contact with people involved--like Jeane, for example, Mr. Sibley, but it goes wider than that into the lives of former privileged clients like Jack Burkman.

    This is the "Rashomon effect": you saw only your part of the picture, I saw mine. We can trade notes, that's fine, but that's up to you. I've put out feelers on the Internet for some time now without any responses from former escorts.

    Aren't you a journalist nowadays?

    The trial wasn't just a waste, it goes deeper than that. I didn't always care for Jeane either, but so be it, I worked to help her for ten months doing research, getting her up to speed on the political landscape, and so on.

    But no, the criteria you're talking about here doesn't fit with an account of one player, that's leading, as they say in the legal world. But I did come across a LOT of primary information, defense materials, you name it, and Jeane communicated quite a lot to me.

    If you have anything to share, that's great, let's service the historical record and clear the air, I'm all for that.

    I agree: too many conspiracy theories. She wasn't murdered, for example. On the other hand, there was more to the case.

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  5. PS: If you know more about Paula Neble, I'm all ears.

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