Evidence

What made me different began early. As a child, there were personal experiences that led me to explore death, dying, and the will to live. I was curious about things that frightened me, and when I didn’t have answers, I tended to turn inward and look for them myself.

When I was little, I would watch the kids walk to the bus each morning, excited to imagine myself doing that soon. I was five when one morning, as I approached the living room window to watch them, I instead saw red flashing lights, police cars, and ambulances. I was curious, but there was no one to answer all of my questions. My mother simply said that a girl had been found murdered in the bean field across the way. I didn’t get the space to feel or ask what had happened. I didn’t get the comfort of being told that I would be okay. I had so many questions and feelings, and I was left to make sense of them on my own.

Later, we moved to another part of town. There was a house in our new neighborhood where a murder-suicide had happened before we arrived, and the neighbors talked about it. I remember walking by that house every morning and afternoon on my way to and from the bus stop. The family had a loud barking dog, but I never saw who lived there. I tried to imagine what had happened inside- the possible layout, the scene, the screams- but I couldn’t grasp it.

Then, when I was nine, death was no longer something that existed across a field or behind the walls of a house.

I used to take long walks alone through the woods behind our house and wander through a neighborhood that was still being built. There was a man-made pond that had not yet been filled with water. One day, I slid down one side, intending to walk out through the shallow end, and saw a boy’s feet sticking out from the side of the embankment.

I ran to a nearby friend’s house and got her father, who was a paramedic. I watched as they pulled the boy’s body out. I remember staring at his peaceful, lifeless face. I knew him. He was the boy who was kicked to the back of the school bus each morning. Somehow, looking at him, I felt the hardness of his life. I hoped he was in a better place now.

By then, I had begun reading the newspaper. I started collecting stories of death and violence like these. It became a way of searching for answers to things I didn’t understand and perhaps a way of giving form to experiences I didn’t yet know how to process.

I think these are some of the reasons I eventually ended up in forensics, especially as a photographer. Those years photographing the dead and crime scenes answered many questions for me. It is still difficult for me to imagine the actual violence, but putting together the aftermath of the puzzle fascinates me.

Why? I don’t know exactly.

Maybe it has something to do with our inability as humans to see it coming- the moment of true desperation. The moment of facing death at the hand of a person we once loved.

Angela Strassheim 2009