David Malcom, age 26, was found dead of multiple stab wounds in the office of the locked American Red Cross emergency shelter he managed on February 12, 1987.
The case is unsolved.
April 17, 2022: Hope’s Desire to Connect with Others Grieving David
For years after David’s murder I retreated into isolation. While I was surrounded by loving people, many also grieving intensely, something in me pulled way.back.inside, cut off from contact, even with myself; perhaps there was part of me that was just blown to smithereens.
Over the years since Vince Monticello lead a resumption of pursuit of justice and closure in David’s murder, I’ve become aware that there are many people walking around today bearing wounds from the same blows, and what followed – the impacts of the biases that directed investigators away from the trail and identity of the perpetrator, the desecration of David’s character, the decades we the unrecognized peripheral victims of this crime carried on as best we could under the burden of this untreated trauma.
In the course of the renewed investigation, Vince and his team of collaborators have met more than 150 people emotionally invested and affected by David’s murder, and I have become aware of many more. People of Ithaca, some who have dispersed since that time, who share my grief and distress.
I’ve come to desire to connect with people who have been touched by David, hurt by his murder, hurt by the lack of closure, the lack of justice, just hurt by anything about it. How that might look has and continues to take different shapes, along with my feelings. I have no idea how to do this, not really.
My vision moves from a gathering organized like a conference (Friday night: meet one another; Saturday: share our stories (with music, movement, art); Sunday: discuss establishing a memorial peace garden/monument in Ithaca dedicated to victims of violence) to “Visiting Hours” in which I come to Ithaca and let it be known that I am looking to connect with other people grieving David.
I have tentatively identified the weekend of July 8-10, 2022 to go to Ithaca. I would love to hear from you at justicefordavidmalcom (at) hotmail (dot) com:
- Would you come meet me? Introduce yourself? Share a moment with me about how it is for you?
- Would you travel to be there?
- What do you envision, yearn for, in such a gathering? To be part of a group? To be one-on-one with me?
- Do you know a place in Ithaca that would serve us well?
Thank you,
Hope Malcom Maltz