LILLIE HEFELE WOKE ME UP AT 5

Forty long years ago, my office was on New Road, same building as the Christian Science Reading Room. I did insurance physicals. Minor physicals for sure. Medical history, meds, fill out a form, take blood pressure and give them a plastic jar for a urine sample. The policies were small, back then they still had insurance agents who went to people’s houses and collected weekly premiums, naturally from the poor and minorities.

I worked mainly for American National, probably defunct by now, but I did a lot of work for JOHN HANCOCK, and back then, George Luther was the manager.

Ira’s on Waco Drive was the big meeting place where we’d drink coffee all morning with free refills, bother the hell out of poor Ira Levy, and occasionally call Ira’s front desk from the back pay phone and ask for “Jack Meoff”. Always fun to have the poor hostess walk around calling out that name.

Ninfa Romanenko was my friend and had been for years and years, one of the first people I met when I moved to Waco. She had a sister named “Lillie Becerra”, and we all had one great time together, it was disco baby and we’d hit Mr. B’s, or the Executive Club, or some other place occasionally and pretty much had a great time and were all great friends.

Insuring and murdering a spouse was something we’d just seen on television and things like that didn’t happen in our pretty much okay but below the poverty line. Luckily, the words, “poverty line” pretty much didn’t exist so we were spared knowing how bad off we were.

Lillie and Ninfa were both Morales to begin with and the women of the Morales family were all formed from the same iddy biddy cookie cutter. Tiny, great head of hair, cute as hell, spicy, and loads of fun.

I am six feet tall, back in those days high heels didn’t bother me so I suppose I was six two most of the time. Lillie and Ninfa were maybe five foot four, Lillie’s autopsy puts her at I think 105 pounds so you can imagine how little she looked to me. If you’re a tall person it seems that short people just gravitate to you and you to them. Even today I’m still the tallest woman I’ve seen in years. HEB over on the interstate gets all the beautiful and tall female athletes and I used to like that a lot. Tall women don’t see many tall women so it’s like you just ran into a lost family member when we see one another.

During this time my insurance physical job used to take me to Mexia where I met Vicky Smith behind the counter at a fast food restaurant on the highway. My six feet talked to her five foot ten and she was cute as a bug and went on to become Anna Nicole Smith.

I remember how we, they, all loved. All the sisters and brothers of the Morales family. They were a bunch of drama queens too, the family teemed with kids, husbands, problems, normal things with the added Latin spice. They could fight like dogs and not speak but if one of their husband’s pissed one of them off in the middle of the night, there was no questioning going out to wherever the hell in Robinson and picking a sister walking along the road waiting for you.

It just was. It could have gone on forever too except for love.

Lillie met a guy from TSTI, TSTC now. He was from Germany, in his twenties, while Lillie was in her forties and he was cute, funny, smart, ambitious, and couldn’t pronounce “J’s” like we do. His name was Gerry, but he called himself “Cherry” and it was a scream.

Later, he’d wind up meeting and falling in love with a stripper from the SHOWTIME named “Jane”, which naturally was “Chain”, which I suppose is more irony than humor.

They say that the last time you see many of your high school and college friends is at their wedding.

Judge John Cabaniss officiated at their wedding.

I was a witness and had never heard Cabaniss speak, much less officiate at a wedding.

A tall thin, classy man he was. Full head of hair and graceful body language, a tall, very thin Siamese cat frame and when he spoke I was assaulted and confused at the depth and brilliance of this man standing in Beverly Hills, Texas with this gift, this voice, this noise stopping fifty dollar paying wedding.

“The difference between men and women,” he began, ” is in the timing. We are not like creatures. A woman will have a tragedy and immediately fall apart and cry, a man on theother hand will experience the same thing and you may find him alone in his car crying his eyes out three years later.”

I am remember that this morning like it was yesterday, I remember because John Cabaniss at the Hefele weeding was something that transcended the place, the circumstance, and time itself.

I am filled with feelings these past few days and I sincerely hate it. When I cannot control my feelings I make mistakes, terrible ones. I smoke pot. It gives me five minutes between “incident” and “kill”. I don’t want to react, I want to think first, today, I am seething and I did it in my sleep and I can’t seem to stop.

Vic and I did not get to see our son in death and I thank goodness for it.

I can’t get Lillie’s hands out of my head in forty years.

We couldn’t get him back. Vic tried to get different politicians to help ship him back and we couldn’t.

Lillie’s skinny little hands used to take care of Jessica Dominguez and drive her to my house. Those skinny hands used to make tamales and at the end those little hands were blotched in blue and black, couldn’t be covered with mortician’s makeup in a darker color either.

I am haunted by subtle things I cannot unsee.

I hope the old age of every cop that touched this case is haunted by those little skinny hands.

I am bone tired of men trying to tell me not to care because they are inept or too busy.

I am tired of the roadblocks that have been put in front of me and I have overcome.

When told that running DNA is expensive, I answered with “I have a donor, no matter how much”.

I am tired of phone calls not returned.

I am tired of power going unused.

I am tired of politicians being bought for piss drip money in a tip jar in cash at cocktail parties.

A probable thousand bucks in cash through gambling and crime to a few men year after year until magic respectability forty years later on an invitation keeps my friend’s last night on earth and cigarette burned body from it’s just dues.

We get a sense of JUSTICE itself at the age of five. That’s true.

Five.

I am asking men around me to do something fucking magnificent.

To do something heroic.

They cannot be bothered.

I have asked in person and in writing.

I have asked for forty years.

I am fighting tears because I cannot kill the hurt at her death and I cannot find the words to get the man or men in charge, who can to do anything, even minor.

Parnell McNamara closed down her case himself. He and his boys would rather pretend to be fourteen year old girls on the internet and lure out of state pervs to Waco so they can get on tv and maintain their 400K in grants for this bullshit, spend it how they feel, and keep it secret.

Barry Johnson has four months to do something heroic, so far Fulmer hasn’t returned my call telling him I have new information, he has not called back ANY of the family members in months.

I am mad and hurt on so many levels.

Thanks reader if you made it this far.

H