Last week, we examined the trauma experienced by families of murder victims. This week, a look at those who have survived by drawing strength from their tragedies.

By David J. Foster
Staff Writer

Second of two parts

Why has so much of

my family shied away?

Why don't my friends

come to see me today?

Why is it people don't

mention my child's name?

Why is it I will

never be the same?

--Jack Heil

Pulling into Philadelphia from a New Year's getaway in Niagara Falls, Betty Boyle turned on KYW-AM news radio and careened into a breaking story.

That morning, Police Officer Lauretha Vaird responded to a call at a Feltonville bank where she was ambushed, shot, and killed. She was Philadelphia's first female officer gunned down in the line of duty.

Bracing an emotional flood, Boyle, her family in tow and the car loaded with suitcases, raced for Fraternal Order of Police headquarters, then, escorted by police, to the Vaird home.

"Who are you?" asked a family member. "And what are you doing here?" asked another.

"I'm from TriState Police Survivors," said Boyle. "We're police families who have lost an officer. I'm here to help. What can I do?

The tension drained. At last, a non-official, a stranger with a sympathetic hand.

"We can't get Lauretha's mother to eat," someone said, "and she's diabetic."

Noticing an abundance of cake, but no "real food," Boyle headed for a local Boston Market. "We were prepared to pay," Boyle said, "but they donated bags and bags of turkey, ham, utensils, everything imaginable."

After making platters, Boyle opened a vein: "I want to know your child like you did," she told Vaird's mother. "Tell me everything." It unleashed a torrent of tears.

"I looked at her two sons and realized it hadn't hit them yet." Speaking from experience, she told them: "You'll get through this, but you'll never get over it." What the Vairds didn't know was that by embracing Boyle they had guided through a watershed moment. It was the first time Boyle survived a visit. She usually crumbled under memories of her son's execution.

On February, 4, 1991, car thief Edward "E.Z." Bracy, fleeing police, cornered Danny Boyle in his police cruiser and leveled a pistol at the officer's head. Betty's son, a 21-year-old rookie, died within minutes.

Like the parents of murder victim Christa Lewis, Betty's life shattered with the fatal blow. But this evening, as she absorbed the Vaird's pain and silently relived the horror of Danny's murder, Betty Boyle closed another door on the demons.

"That social transformation from pain, agony, and personal loss into something good, something transcendent, is the real pathway to recovery," said Dr. Sandra Bloom, executive director of the Sanctuary, Friends Hospital's new trauma treatment center.

"Every time I see a family attempt to make something out of their anger, something that (becomes) a social movement, I'm in awe," said Joseph Foderaro, program director for the Sanctuary.

"There is less and less crying, and the sense of being overwhelmed is lessened," Bloom said, "You begin having some good days, not remembering (the event) all the time. It's not always right in front of your face, but it never totally ends."

Jack Heil still wakes up screaming.

Saloon shoot-out

Belligerent, stumbling drunk, and refused service, the two men were not going to let a brassy barmaid have the final word. They grabbed glasses hanging from a ceiling rack and hurled them around the room. The Mesa, Arizona, saloon soon looked like the set of an old Western. Patron Martin Olsen, 63, decided to play John Wayne.

With the police on their way, the rowdies fled to their car. Olsen, "wanting to detain them," his lawyer explained, grabbed a gun from his glove compartment, "took careful aim at their tires," he said, and fired.

Lounging at an adjacent motel pool with her husband Tony, Susan Heil Dina heard a noise- firecrackers?- and sat up. A bullet pierced her left cheek.

"Tony was in the line of fire," said Dee Heil, her mother. "The bullet whizzed over him." It would have missed Susan, too, "but she lifted her head."

Three-thousand miles away, Jack and Dee received the news from Jack's brother: "There was an accident. Susan was involved," he stammered.

"How bad is she?" Jack asked.

"She's gone."

That's usually when Jack wakes shouting: "No! No! No!" Last week, as he placed Thanksgiving flowers on Susan's grave, Jack admitted: "It happened again five o'clock this morning."

Ten years after her 1986 murder, the nightmare haunts the Heil household. But it has not stopped their work.

Few people exemplify the benevolence that can flourish after a murder like this Wissinoming couple.

Poetry and pain

"I was sitting at the table, crying, and I picked up a piece of paper and started writing," Jack said. Dee found it the next morning.

"She was reading this paper and crying," Jack recalled. "She said `The poem you wrote to Susan is wonderful.'"

"What poem?" he asked. "To this day, I don't remember writing it. I was so mixed up, confused, and missed Susan so much . . ."

The poem became Jack's connection to his daughter, herself an amateur poet. "She wrote for special occasions, about life, a bird she found shot, a dog she helped alongside a road," Jack recalled. "It's hard for me to explain why she did it, or what moved her to write, because I can't explain why I do it."

After that first awkward outpouring, he wrote poems for Dee and Susan's sisters. "It just went on and on," he said.

There are times dwelling on such sadness "brings him down," said Dee. "But he has to grieve."

In the 10 years since Susan's death, Jack has written over 500 poems, many published weekly in the Northeast News Gleaner.

Earlier this year, a collection of his most personal poems were privately published.

"Some are about life, some grief," Jack said, and some are for families like themselves, people met through Compassionate Friends and the Northeast Victim Service.

Miles to go

Trials, especially when they end in conviction, can be cathartic. Not for the Heils.

Held in Phoenix, "the state picked up Tony's costs because he was a witness," Dee said. "They knew he wouldn't go alone, so they paid for me to go with him." But the rest of family had to pay their own way. "It was $1,000 every time we had to go out there," she said.

That's when they met Arizona's victim advocates. Working in the prosecutor's office, they kept the Heils abreast of the case's many contortions, and became a source of empathy. Outside a small band of family and friends, few Philadelphians knew of their horror. To the local media, "it was a one-shot wire service story," Dee said. "In Phoenix, it was huge."

Throughout Arizona, reporters posed provocative questions: How guilty was Olsen? After all, he discharged his gun to stop two bad guys.

Stuck in Philadelphia, the Heils could not adequately advocate for Susan. That was left to the D.A.'s office.

Established by government edict, victim service groups walk witnesses through the judicial process, and help victims apply for financial restitution. The Arizona group defrayed some of the Heils' travel costs. At the time of Susan's death, there was no such agency serving Northeast Philadelphia.

There is now.

On the Board

Dee Heil was "always a follower, not a joiner," she said. But after experiencing the invaluable aid of Arizona's victim advocates, she agreed to help the District Attorney's office establish a Northeast Victim Services, dedicated to aiding crime victims of 2nd, 7th, 8th, and 15th Police Districts.

"I was one of the only victims on a board of lawyers, retired police officers, and psychologists," she said.

Dee had entered a new phase of recovery: Anger. "I was furious the judicial system was not doing enough for the victim. My goal was to balance the scales of justice."

Unemployed at the time, Dee became the group's volunteer court advocate, where she accompanied the victims of burglary and auto theft through court hearings. She couldn't handle the hard cases, the rapes and murders.

"Some of these people get very upset," Dee said. Their privacy has been violated. "They need someone to talk to." Then she shares her story. "They're surprised," Dee said, and humbled "because they think their problems are pretty bad when it's only a car that's been stolen."

"The Heils have gone through the mourning phase and come out on the other side," said Friends' Dr. Bloom. "They have a reorganized sense of who they are and where their relationship with their daughter is in relation to the rest of the world. They are sharing that relationship with others."

The Heils are also active in Compassionate Friends. "I didn't really want to go," Dee said. "I had enough pain of my own. I didn't want to hear about someone else. But when you get there you realize it's where you belong because they understand."

"You know you're not the only one out there," said Joann Lewis, whose daughter Christa was stabbed to death at a Russo Park carnival in May. "I was amazed by how many go to these meetings. They are people who have been through the trials. They understand your pain and what you're going to experience."

The rite of trial

"These are all markers," Bloom said, "rites humans must go through during the grieving process, the opportunities to reorganize and get on with life."

Trials are among the most critical of these rites, giving the grieving family a chance to achieve justice and confront the killer.

For five long weeks, John and Kathy Polec relived each swing of the bat, faced grisly photos of their son Eddie's mangled skull, and heard accusations the victim, an alter boy at St. Cecilia's Church, was a boozing tough who bought beer for underage friends.

In the end, Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan pulled the trigger for the aggrieved family.

Anthony Rienzi and Nicholas Pinero: The maximum, 15 to 30 years for third-degree murder and criminal conspiracy. Thomas Crook: 14-and-a-half to 30 years, also for third- degree murder and conspiracy. Dawan Alexander: Eight to 30 years for voluntary manslaughter and conspiracy.

Also convicted: Carlo Johnson and Bou Khathavong: Five to 10 years for criminal conspiracy.

Though they sought first-degree convictions, the Polecs "accepted" the verdicts. "We accept it, but do not understand it," John said. The trial's end also gave them a chance to address the killers.

Since "my brother was the most forgiving person you will ever meet," he must have spoken "to the jury saying: 'These kids are 16, make them think about what they did, but one day let them go back to heir families,'" said Billy Polec, Eddie's younger brother.

John Polec damned the convicted killers: "In the next life, when you are judged for your actions here, I'll be there to make sure He punishes you in a way that can't be done here."

Kathy included a shot at the lawyers who dissected her son.

"You murdered Eddie on the steps of his church in the eyes of God just as some of your attorneys brutalized Eddie in the courtroom in the eyes of justice," she said.

Knowing Crook wanted to apologize for his crime, John Polec, speaking first, said the admission of sorrow would not be accepted.

The Heils never had the opportunity to refuse Olsen.

"Even when we were out there for the trial, Olsen never approached us, never apologized," Dee said. "`It was just a mistake,' his attorney kept saying. Every time I heard it I wanted to smack him in the mouth. When you fire a gun, it's not something you can take back, something you can erase."

Olsen served two years of a four-year sentence for negligent homicide. "And that was after two-and-a-half years" of appeals, Jack noted.

Though the Polecs personally appealed to District Attorney Lynne Abraham to arrest those who drove the attackers to Fox Chase, Abraham closed the case in September. Frustrated, they moved on to the other issue hanging over their case. The Polecs agreed not to sue over the breakdown of the city's 911 emergency system the night of Eddie's death.

In return, the Polecs requested the city install Mobile Data Terminal computers in every police cruiser. The lap-top terminals would allow officers to run checks of stolen vehicles and arrest records. That would free 911 dispatchers to concentrate on emergency calls.

In a letter to the Polecs, Rendell said the computers would be installed in all 506 police cars by February 1997.

Since June, the IBMs have been tested in patrol cars from the 12th and 18th Districts. They apparently work. From June to September, the districts reported 276 more stolen car recoveries and 192 more arrests than during the same period in 1995.

But all is not well. Last week, a frustrated Polec complained the city wasn't moving fast enough. With the testing period extended, complete installation will not occur until March 1999.

"We're just trying to fix a problem that had to do with my son's death," he told reporters.

It's another sign the Polecs are nearing the end of the recovery process.

"Our capacity to create meaning in tragedy is limitless," Bloom said.

Answering 'Why?'

On July 29, standing alongside John Polec at a Center City rally against teen violence, Greg Lewis stepped to the microphone and spoke:

"I know the first question (Christa) would ask. `Why? I'm only 16. I haven't even lived my life.'"

Jack Heil has an answer:

You can ask why forever

and no answer you'll find.

Why God has chosen our

children and left us behind.

And someday when we leave here

and say our last goodbye.

I believe then we will find

all of the answers to Why.