Part I: Community
It has been five days.
Just five days since the strangely beefy, beady-eyed behemoth, Jesse Matthew, was indicted for the abduction with the intent to defile and first degree murder of Morgan Harrington.
Jesse: the man who dwarfs the sheriffs and armed guards who now and will forevermore surround him, and who, on the night Hannah Graham disappeared, was caught on video footage, rolling along Charlottesville's Downtown Mall--at first--as Gil Harrington observed, in the guise of Fat Albert.
And then, when he spots Hannah, Jesse turns, and is very suddenly striding as a leopard, as a predator, as a hunter of flesh.
What, in these five short days--if anything--has been the response?
Let's keep in mind: these charges do concern a girl of only twenty. A girl who died six long years ago.
She hadn't even had a chance to finish university.
She wasn't married. She had no chance to have children.
She did leave behind some things.
Some beautiful paintings, in her parents' house, some essays, her hand-decorated CD collection, and a full closet. She loved tie-dyed shirts and sequined dresses, Birkenstocks and vertigo high heels.
She left behind memories. Her friends know she loved music, The Beatles, Heart, Simon and Garfunkel, and Metallica.
Her sad dog Kirby is left behind. He still can't understand where Morgan is.
Her parents have photographs, of first-grade Morgan getting on the school bus, of birthday cake candles, and young cousins from Switzerland visiting for the summers.
There are photographs of a more contemplative Morgan, maturing into a brilliant and highly creative young woman, a natural beauty at the beach, her feet in the sand; and others, of Morgan standing confidently in front of Carilion's beautiful building, an elegant summer intern at her papa's medical school.
These are the most painful photographs.
They came near the end.
Morgan had turned twenty in late July, 2009, not three months before her murder. She was just a girl.
Just a girl.
She was young, and the tragedy was long ago.
So, really, how much response to charges in Morgan's case COULD there be?
On line, on Facebook, two million people read my Tuesday announcement, that Jesse had been charged with Morgan's murder.
Thousands continue to stream supportive comments.
Senator Mark Warner called Dan and Gil to express his relief that charges had finally been brought. Not just because Dan and Gil lobbied with Senator Warner to help raise funding for adults who go missing.
In her last summer, Morgan was walking with her parents at Elwood Park in Roanoke. At a distance, they saw an entourage of suits and a stir of cameras. Senator Warner was there, but that's not who Morgan noticed. The photographer with the steadicam was her friend Tyler. Morgan sprinted toward Tyler to give him one of her famous hugs. She was a great hugger.
Senator Warner's security saw incoming: someone was running, they thought, and running straight at the Senator.
And then the situation became clear: the incoming was a happy blonde girl who was thrilled to see her friend. The Senator and the Harringtons laughed. It was a sweet small town moment.
I listened to Mark Warner's warm phone message: "As a father of three girls," he said, he was sending his blessings, and his admiration. He admires the Harringtons' work to make college campuses safer. And he felt moved to call. His voice registered real emotion, genuine connection.
Men of Mark Warner's warm-heartedness have been moved by Dan and Gil's plight since the beginning of the Harringtons' obscene nightmare: 100 nights of not knowing where their precious daughter could be.
Her skeletonized remains were found on the 101st day. Someone had thrown her used body in a fallow hayfield. He had finished with her.
Jason Maloni, Levick Strategic Communications executive, came forward early and offered to use social media to help find Morgan--the first time social media had been used in a crime case.
James Hetfield, the famous lead guitarist for Metallica, at whose concert Morgan had been dancing hours before her murder, reached out to the Harringtons, and called Dan: "I'm a father, too," he said, "and I want to help you." James Hetfield put forward a reward of $50,000 to help find Morgan.
Ed Smart, whose 14-year-old daughter Elizabeth was abducted in 2002 (amazingly recovered alive, nine months later), flew from Salt Lake City, Utah, to help lead the first search in Charlottesville to try to find Morgan.
Jim Webb, Democratic contender for President, had his arms around Morgan once, when she was a senior at Lord Botetourt High School, and he visited her AP History class. Morgan loved his presentation so much, she gave him one of her hugs. Later, on Capitol Hill, during the unbearable missing phase, Gil showed Jim Webb the photos taken that day in Roanoke. "You had your arms around my girl," Gil smiled. "I wish I could have my arms around her again."
Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte has also been incredibly supportive of the Harringtons. Dan and Gil rode the Congressional train with him and kept talking with the Congressman even after speaking at length in his office, as he headed to the floor to participate in a vote.
The natural state of being for men and women, for boys and girls, is compassion.
The color of your skin, your level of affluence, your politics, they all fall away. If your baby girl is missing, or another family's. It's your common humanity that rises up.
The fabric of our nation is not the crazy distractors, not what's the budget, or on what sides of political issues we stand. Those differences become inconsequential and disintegrate when your daughter is missing.
Our baseline is compassion. We have a bond of common humanity.
Fairfax chief attorney Ray Murrogh expressed the mix of hope and anguish that his 30-year career has produced when he spoke after successfully prosecuting Jesse Matthew for his 2005 crimes: "I still believe most people are good, but a few are very, very bad, and he," Jesse Matthew, "is one of them."
In the last four days, men and women, strangers and friends, from Africa, Asia, South America, and Australia have all sent their love and support to the Harringtons.
People magazine interviewed Gil.
One week from tonight, from 9:00-11:00 Eastern Standard Time, 48 Hours will air a special two-hour Season Premiere, on the yoked cases of:
1. Hannah Graham, the well-loved, promising, 18-year-old University of. Virginia student who was abducted and murdered on September 13, 2014,
2. RG, the then 26-year-old grad student from India (known by her initials out of courtesy), who, walking home with groceries one evening in Fairfax, became the sexual assault/attempted murder victim of Jesse Matthew, and who barely survived her 2005 attack, because a driver and his headlights happened upon the crime and Jesse ran away, and
3. Morgan Harrington, abducted and murdered on October 17, 2009.
Jesse Matthew has already pled guilty in the 2005 case; he is to be sentenced for those crimes on October 2nd.
Now Jesse Matthew faces two murder charges.
And a 48 Hours national exposé.
The attention to Morgan's case and to the powerful non-profit her mama, Gil, has created, Help Save the Next Girl, has gone from local to national.
For Dan and Gil, wounded and bereft as they are, there is also such great hope in how, across the country and across the world, we all (monstrous predators, sociopaths, and psychopaths aside)--neighbors, law enforcement officers, media, Facebook family--we all still care for our younger ones. We all still extend to one another.
And well we should. Societies are judged by how we treat and tend and cherish the vulnerable.
And girls, who are vulnerable to predatory danger, are ironically also the strongest and most precious treasures of all: they are the vessels of humanity's future.
Not something to smash.
Jane Lillian Vance
Vice President, Help Save the Next Girl, and
Morgan Harrington's professor in the last Spring of her life