Meeting a murder victim

While most of these blog posts are frivolous and even amusing, here is a memory that is shocking and sad.

On February 22, 2008, I recorded in my mission journal, "We contacted a less-active, smoking, former pothead young person."

I don't remember a whole lot about that visit. We were looking for people we didn't know on our ward list, and there were several at that address. I think it was a yellow house. The only person home was one Tanner, who was very friendly and let us come in and chat. He hadn't been to church in a long time; I think he was a prospective elder, meaning he had been ordained to an Aaronic priesthood office but not beyond. He was very friendly, and I think he told us that we could come back some time. I don't think he was interested in church, but he was fine with us visiting.

On March 1, I was on an exchange, meaning I was in my area with a different missionary. I was driving around a neighborhood, and my temporary companion noted that there were news cameras and lots of flowers in the yard of the house we were passing. I was just focused on driving and getting around the traffic, so I didn't really pay attention to where we were.

Then that evening, we had dinner at our bishop's house. We had reported the previous Sunday about our visit with Tanner, and our bishop told us that he had been murdered! He and his girlfriend had been murdered by another man, who then tried to burn the house down. The firefighters had discovered the bodies.

It was quite shocking, of course, and sad. Tanner had seemed like a nice young man with a great potential. As my journal entry indicates, he was apparently overcoming drugs. That night I met up with my companion again and he was shocked.

In the ensuing days, there was discussion about his funeral, since he lived in our ward. His mom didn't want anything religious at all for the funeral, while his dad, who lived someplace else, still attended church, as I believe Tanner had told us. Thus it was hard for his dad.

Another missionary in our district knew someone who had been a firefighter or a detective or something, and he told us that the murderer had stabbed the two together with a samurai sword. Turns out that wasn't entirely true, but it was close. He also said that they found the murderer because he left a bloody handprint on the wall. I can't confirm the veracity of that.

I'm not sure what got me remembering that incident this week. You can read some of the articles here and here.