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January 24, 1997
There was a guy who used to come into the local Starbucks all the time. He was always chatting up pretty women. He had a big white dog, a Great Pyranees, the he tied to a street sign outside where he could see him. The guy called himself Will. He was, to put it mildly, eccentric. He would tell you the mafia was after him or his uncle was after him or he did this or that impossible or unlikely thing. He seemed pretty harmless although once in a while he would explode and yell at one of the baristas. He talked a lot about going into Boston to go "clubbing" - hanging out at various nightclubs. Everybody knew him - with the huge white dog he was unmistakable.
This past summer a young Swedish nanny was murdered in Boston. A really grisly murder. She had been out clubbing. The Boston Herald focused their report of the murder investigation on a mysterious burly man with a big white dog who had been seen talking to the victim on the night she was murdered. The Herald story didn't actually accuse the man with the dog of anything, they just focused on him as a lead. Police wanted to know who he was. The baristas at Starbucks discussed whether or not to call and tell them who he was. Someone did.
I don't know if the police ever actually questioned him. They claimed he was never under suspicion. They just wanted to talk to him because he had been seen talking to her that night.
He took to wearing an arm band as if in mourning. He brought flowers to Starbucks and said they were in memory of the nanny. He told me once that he was upset because the Herald had described him as burly and made him sound threatening. Eventually he stopped coming to Starbucks.
A week and a half ago he killed himself.
Shortly after his death, a reporter from another paper called Starbucks to ask about "the man with the white dog". He wanted a quote. Nobody would give him one.
An article ran in the other paper on Monday about how the publicity and suspicion over the nanny murder contributed to his suicide.
People had begun to fear him. I guess people thought because the police wanted to talk to him, he must be the one who did it. He was no longer under suspicion by the police but people around town wondered. Some of them out loud. It was all too much for the guy.
I hesitated to write the above for several days. But today when I sat down at the keyboard that was all that would come out the fingers. It was weird sitting next to a guy at the counter at Starbucks wondering if he might be a murderer or if he was just a harmless eccentric. In some ways I feel like I'm just as bad as the press for not being able to leave the guy's story alone after he's dead.
Really makes you wonder about the power of the press.