A Ten Year Goodbye: How a Murder Changed Our Lives

Ten years ago today, my life changed forever. In so many ways, it is that moment that has shaped me into who I am today. Instead of industry and cultural trends, this month’s newsletter will be entirely dedicated to that moment.?

In an effort to prepare you, please note that this newsletter will include gun violence, murder, depression, and other themes.?

Jenny

Dear Eddy,?

I can’t believe it has been ten years since we last spoke. I remember our final conversation vividly, as we sat together during a night of celebration at our friend’s wedding.?

It was a particularly warm and salty evening in Tampa Bay. The mood was bright. You opted to mix things up for a seaside wedding that night, leaving your suit at home and trying out a more casual ensemble. Truth be told, I don’t think that Best Man suit had been dry cleaned since you wore at our own wedding a few months earlier – I can only imagine the alcohol stains still dried into the fabric, after our infamous wedding reception that had banned us permanently from the venue (hey, who rents an open bar to twenty-somethings?)

Always one for appearances, you made certain I snapped a photo of you and Pav Stojkovic on this particular evening. You were feeling fresh, and you wanted everyone to know it.

You and I hadn’t spoken much – if at all – in the months leading up to this evening. Things weren’t going well between us, as you struggled to let your best friend enter a new phase of his life. Pavle was an only child, so you were like brothers, and when I entered the picture, it was an unexpected surprise.

Back then, I was naive to the depths of the male bond. With time, I eventually learned that every person – if they are lucky – has two soulmates: their life partner and their best friend. Soon after we met, you and I both realized that we were family now. And that means, for better or worse, we would be sharing space, permanently. But, life moved quickly for Pavle and I, and you started to feel left behind, opting to spend more time with other people.?

All of that, however, seemed to finally be behind us on this salty Florida evening, as we spent hours chatting, making amends, and reconnecting. You were excited to tell me more about a new role you were taking on as a board member at a local charity, and we, quite literally, hugged it out. You were a lifelong bodybuilder and I remember that firm, bearish hug well.?

Soon, you said goodbye for the night and headed out to a friend’s birthday party at our favorite club, while we headed out to go see friends who were visiting from Canada. On any other Friday, we’d have been there with you, but that night just happened to work out differently.?

The Next Day

The next morning, we headed out to eat breakfast with friends. It would turn out to be the last normal morning we ever had.?

As the rest of us sat down to eat, Pavle emerged from the restroom. His face was white as a ghost, as his phone had been buzzing nonstop with missed calls and text messages. There, in a text from a friend, was the article: “Man dies after being shot near Publix in downtown St. Petersburg”.?

Mere hours after we had hugged goodbye, you were murdered in the street.?

Stunned, we packed our bags to get back to the city. The reporter covering the story called us to share the details, explaining that you had been walking home from a night out with two other men, when one shot you twice, left you to die, then kidnapped the other. The name of the murderer, he shared, was ‘Andres’, which was coincidentally the name of your good friend. We responded naively to the reporter, “How strange. Andres must have been kidnapped by a third man, who was also named Andres.”

An hour later, the mugshot came in. There was no other Andres. You had been killed in cold blood by… your friend.

I called Pavle’s dad and was crying so hard, he thought that Pavle had been killed, too. I drove the rental car back to St. Petersburg, as Pavle sat in the passenger seat and calmly called each of your friends one by one, asking them to pull over or sit down. Some of their screams were so loud, I could hear them from the driver’s seat.?

The minutes, hours, and days that came were a blur. We drove to your mom and dad’s house to fend off the press on the lawn, as details began to emerge. The paramedics came to the house and shared the many hours that they, then the surgeons, worked on saving you – even going as far as performing a “chest cracker” (resuscitative thoracotomy), an extremely rare and last ditch effort, where they cut your entire body open to save you.?

The next day, I spent twelve hours going through every photo of you from birth, carefully curating your funeral program. The media coverage rolled in. Snoop Dogg tweeted. We dressed you in your casket in that Best Man suit one final time. Your funeral was so large that we had to reserve overflow space for over 400 of your friends.?

Then, the dust began to settle and the chaos slowed. We cleaned out your apartment and divided up your belongings between your brothers and Pavle. The silence came.

The Silence

The thing about tragedy is that it’s actually quite easy to be in it when it’s unfolding. For most of us, our instinctual need to jump into action gives us a sense of purpose and direction. We stay busy and distracted in the chaos, moving from task-to-task, until each is done.?

It’s not until those moments are done that the truth sets in. You were gone, forever locked in time at 26 years old.

Week by week, details began to pour in about trials and hearings. Meanwhile, we had to go back to our jobs and pretend to live like normal people. Spiritually homeless, we dove deep into exploration, seeking an answer for our grief. Eventually, Pavle found solace in Buddhist readings on suffering and pain.

By the time summer rolled around, the decision had become clear to us. While everyone around us wanted nothing more than vengeance and punishment, we knew that more pain would not bring us peace. So, we decided to forgive Andres.?

To be honest, the forgiveness seemed to do little for him. But, then again, anyone sitting in a jail cell like him would likely exhibit the same coldness and stoicism. Ultimately, the forgiveness was for us, not him.?

Time slowly eked forward. We changed as people. Though we were still so young, our youth was ultimately gone – stolen – from us. Pavle became more introverted and I became more soft. We instinctively developed a deep, core sense of empathy, ultimately connecting ourselves to the suffering of the world. We changed our diets later that year.

Not long after, as we prepared for your trial, we shockingly lost Josh, too. Still, we persevered, wading through a trauma that will remain unbeknownst to most in this world. Your trial rolled around and we sat, day after day, in the courtroom.?

We knew from the beginning how the trial would end, but it did not lessen the heartbreak around us. What nobody tells you about a murder trial is that not one, but two families lose a son – and it’s often the other family that seems to suffer more.

As we sat with your mother, we looked over to Andres’ mother, a slight and petite Colombian woman, who had fought against all odds to escape the drug war and come to America for a better life, only to expend her entire life’s work (a Miami-based laundromat business) to fund her son’s legal fees. She did not look much different than your mother. I later shared a sink next to her in the restroom, and I could see in her eyes that her pain would never be gone. You see, your mother could find peace one day, but his mother? She will never know peace. We pitied her.?

The trial was as miserable and painful as we imagined. We saw far too many things. Andres fought till the end, claiming a preposterous ‘stand your ground’ defense, which had been (shockingly) successfully used by George Zimmerman only months before. The jury saw through this easily, and Andres was convicted of second degree murder and kidnapping. Just like that, a young man with an entire life ahead of him – a star athlete and an investment banker – was locked up for the rest of his life. He remains there today.

The Epilogue

The trial ended in August and by October, we moved 2,500 miles across the continent to San Francisco. It was time to move on, so we flung ourselves head first into our careers. Life sped up.?

Before we knew it, a year had passed. Then, another. We wondered where you would be. Would you have moved to San Francisco with us? Maybe New York would have been more your style? What would you be doing today?

We explored the world and spent our free time learning new hobbies. We pushed ourselves in our fitness, like you always had, and worked hard on making something of our lives. We took that trip you always talked about to Ecuador and visited your mom and dad in your childhood home. After years of sadness, new life came into the family with your niece, Eliana. We’ve made sure to secure her future so she’ll go to college, like you would have wanted.?

Externally, life was good. People would reach out to us each week, sharing how inspirational our journey had become. It was nice to feel that others were benefiting from something so tragic – that at least some good could come from things.

On the inside, though, things weren’t very good and it wasn’t at all what it looked like. The struggle with depression, PTSD, and more continued to take hold in our marriage. In many ways, it felt like our marriage had three participants in it – the two of us and the disease.?

It is difficult to love someone in pain and as a young adult, barely out of college, I was unprepared for marriage, let alone this level of trauma. I was both suffering and a bystander to suffering in the person I loved most. I felt hopeless and lost often, as the travails of grief and pain continued to permeate our lives. It felt inescapable at times, as if something was fundamentally wrong and broken.?

I wasn’t sure things would pull through. But they did, eventually.?

It took a very long time to get down this road. First came the utter shock of someone being taken from you, then the intense anger of the world, ultimately followed by the indifference and apathy to what could come next. If you don’t fill that gaping hole with something – a higher purpose, as they call it – it will only consume you.?

For us, we dove into dedicating our lives to helping the most defenseless among us. We worked on bigger and more creative ways to envision the world as a better place. We found direction in a North Star that didn’t exist before.

You don’t even know it, but your death was the single spark that ignited an entire new world for us. We are the people we are, because of you.?

You were strong, vivacious, and a larger than life person in every sense of the word. Even in only 26 years of life, you made such an impact on this world.

Eddy, I don’t know if you will ever read this message, but I know that by putting it out into this world that you will never ever be forgotten.?

We miss you, forever and always.?