It was 1986, my (then) husband had graduated from college
and we were off to Shawnee, Kansas to begin our new life. I had found the perfect apartment in the
perfect location, we settled in quickly and comfortably.
After a few months in our new dig, my two year old daughter
had started waking me up in the middle of the night, telling me there was
someone in her room by her bed. Kids do this all the time; the early years are
wrought with multitudes of imaginary monsters that lurk in the shadows of the
night. It wasn’t long before she began
waking up abruptly, screaming inconsolably for extended amounts of time. Over
the next few months, it was becoming more frequent and more specific-- “Mommy,
the girl needs help, she’s crying”, “That girl needs my doll, she misses her
mommy” or “That girl told me she was hurt”.
I would comfort her until she fell back asleep, with no idea on exactly
how to handle it or where it was coming from.
Her father and I were becoming exasperated about what to do.
Strange things were happening in my room at night also. I
was experiencing frequent nightmares in which I would witness a violent rape and
murder that petrified me so intensely I began to dread bedtime. Numerous times,
I was awakened with a strange sensation that someone was sitting or laying on
me. I would sit up and ask “What? What
do you need me to know?” accompanied by a dreadful feeling that I really didn’t
want to know or an answer was going to be forced upon me. I had also begun
feeling someone over my bed also, leaning over as if they were trying to wake
me up. Ironically, there was a sort
of vitality attached to the person, as if this wasn’t the only part of
them. Occasionally, I would hear a
distant weeping as if I was hearing it from far away, with a kind of “tinny”
tone to it. I always got up, thinking it
was my daughter, it never was. The
entire experience was exceptionally strange-- sometimes the “someone” felt as
if it was a male and other times a female. I never would have called it a
“haunting” by any means, it merely felt as if my attention was being drawn to something.
There was a distinct urgency that felt sickening,
funeralistic and cold. It was as if
someone was trying to tell me a story or make me understand an experience, but
I wasn’t sure what was happening. I thought I was going crazy. Literally. How do you tell anyone this without
being thrown in a straight jacket and put away? It had gone on for almost a year and I was
exhausted from the nightly emotional overload.
Our lease was about to expire and it was time to move. I wanted our family as far away from that
place as possible.
After we moved, the dreams stopped. Ashley returned to normal. Life had taken on its once normal balance and
things felt quiet again.
Twenty some odd years later, I was watching an investigative
report show, I can’t remember which one. The lead story documented the 1979
rape and murder of Tracy Fresquez, a young woman from Shawnee, Kansas. It caught my attention, because we had lived
there years ago.
At the time, the
story had hit the media by storm--in 1998, Daniel Crocker, a born again
Christian had come forward and confessed to the crime. He alleged the guilt was too much and he
needed to clear his conscience. As the
story evolved, I watched a quick pan of the apartment complex she had resided
in at the time of the murder. That was
where we had lived! I broke down and
cried, feeling immense sadness for Tracy’s family, yet thankful, at best, the
crime had been resolved for their sake.
That family endured so much pain, they had to experience the phone call
that none of us ever want to receive.
We had lived at Arrowhead Apartments in 1986, so the crime had not been solved
yet. Had Tracy been trying to tell us her story? Was she communicating with Ashley too? I say
yes.
Recently, I spent two days searching for the original
episode I had watched. I could not find it.
Instead, I found a video on YouTube—On
the Case with Paula Zahn, a story called The Ultimate Sin that documents the story. The address, although blurred out, gave
enough information to give me confidence that she had lived in our building or
the building on either side. It was
validating, yet the kind of validation no one really wants.
The crime had been solved and almost thirty years later I
had some answers regarding what had gone on that year.
The lesson in this story is that sometimes you just don’t
know what is going on. The message may
be loud and clear, but the pieces never quite fit. I look back on the experience with much
regret. Could I have done something? I genuinely wished I could have. I realize now that the confusion I felt over if this person was male or female was a way of expressing how the event was experienced...she was trying to tell me about Daniel Crocker, the male that was involved in this incident.
Rest in Peace, Tracy.
You will never be forgotten.
