Lost Girls

wasn't enough.

''You may well ask yourselves, 'How can two people just go missing in today's day and age?' And it would be a perfectly reasonable question. But I can tell you, Krystal and Ashley are not exceptional cases. Despite the breakthroughs of the scientific age people still disappear. All the time. In Canada, for example, sixty thousand children are reported missing each year. In the United States, it's twenty-three hundred every day. Of course the majority of these people eventually come home, but not all of them. In fact, chances are greater than one in thirty that a year later that child will still be missing. Think about it. One minute they're here, and the next they're gone.

''And when they go, too often it's at the hands of a murderer. But even this isn't uncommon. Would you imagine that in our sparsely populated country there are, on average, over seven hundred homicides a year? And that's nothing compared to the States, where they manage to get that number up to well over forty times that. And here's a couple other things you might not have imagined: ninety percent of murderers are male, and the number- one motive given for why these people decided to take the life of another is 'love.' Love. Members of the jury, I needn't tell you that there's something wrong about that. What happened to Krystal McConnell and Ashley Flynn was terribly wrong. And while it's too late to save them now, it's not too late to do something for them. We can't change the world through what we do here in this courtroom. But we can do one right thing, make one right decision. And that is to find Thomas Tripp guilty of firstdegree murder.

''But don't just take my word for it. There's going to be plenty of evidence to support the Crown's claim that these girls were brought to their ends by the man who sits at the table next to me. To show that what happened was this: On Thursday, May the twelfth, Ashley and Krystal went to Tripp's classroom after school as usual to attend a meeting of the Literary Club, of which they were the only members and Tripp their sole supervisor. At the closing of their meeting he offered to drive them both home in his car, and they accepted. But this wasn't unusual; he drove them home after school quite a lot, actually--him up front and the girls in the back. In fact, they sat in the backseat so much, they both left strands of their hair on the upholstery.

''So it is on this Thursday in early spring that Tripp decided not to drive the girls home, but take them out to Lake St. Christopher. The end of the road. Gets out the driver's side, opens the back door where the girls sit wondering what they're doing out there when their parents would be worrying about them and their dinners getting cold. Then Tripp grabs them. There's a struggle. One of the results of this struggle is that Krystal is cut, dripping blood on the backseat. How do we know this? Because she was blond and Ashley was dark haired. Because both blond and dark hair were found in the backseat, and both were sent for DNA testing along with the bloodstains. Because the blond hair and bloodstains matched .

''And now Tripp is dragging the girls off into the woods down toward the lake. But with their attempts to fight him off and all the spring meltwater flowing down the hill--well, you can imagine that it would be quite a muddy business. So muddy, in fact, that the pants and shoes Tripp wore that day were later found caked with it. But despite the girls' struggles and the slippery path he finally manages to get them down to the water's edge where he--well--what did he do? Only the accused who sits there before you knows for sure. But Lake St. Christopher is wide and one of the deepest bodies of water in the region. Deep enough to have something put down in it never come back up again, even with all the technology in the world.

''We've come to the end of the story and we're still left with the question that any right-thinking person must ask. Why? Members of the jury, nobody can know for sure what goes on in the mind of a killer, but the answer may just lie in those numbers I mentioned earlier. Maybe he did it out of love. Not the love you feel for your husband or wife or kids or friends. But a perversion of love that's been twisted by a very sick mind. Think about this: Tripp kept pictures of girls cut out from catalogs pasted to the wall in his bedroom. Girls the same age as his victims. Girls modeling underwear.

''Members of the jury, that's our story of what happened and why. Over the course of this trial you will see and hear evidence to substantiate this story. But even more important than the evidence is making a difference. It's giving some peace to the dead and to the missing.''

Goodwin collapses back into his chair and takes half a dozen noisy gasps for air. I have to hand it to him: he made it through the whole of his opening submissions without physical disaster. But it's still early yet. And now it's my turn.

''Mr. Crane?'' The bench nods, and with a humble thank-you, I rise.

''Those are undoubtedly some very disturbing statistics Mr. Goodwin cited for you all just now,'' I start, trying to keep things slow, half drawled. ''I make my living in this business, and I can tell you that I'm still shocked whenever I hear them. Shocked, yes, but I have no doubt that they're true. Because we live in a terrible world. That's quite a thing to say, isn't it? But we know it's true. You can hardly turn on the local news these days without hearing about children gone missing--most often girls, isn't it?-- and even though the police and the volunteer search parties are doing everything they can, you know if it's made it on TV it can't be good.

''No, you won't find me agreeing with Mr. Goodwin very much over the days and weeks to come, but I certainly agree with him that it's a terrible world with enough terrible things in it to give anyone a million lifetimes worth of nightmares. I have those nightmares myself. In fact, I've been having more than my fair share since I started working on this case. And not because I have any misgivings about defending my client, Mr. Thomas Tripp. No. It's because two young girls have been lost and so far they haven't been found. But all we can do, friends--all anyone can do--is be good citizens, be vigilant, and do our jobs well.

''And as for our jobs, let's summarize what we've heard so far from the Crown. Mr. Goodwin wants us all to think that this trial is really about assigning blame to someone for something bad that we suspect has happened. Sounds okay, right? But there are some serious problems here. First, a criminal trial is not about assigning blame but testing the sufficiency of the Crown's evidence. I know that doesn't sound as good, but that's our job here nevertheless. Second, while we all suspect something horrible has happened to Krystal McConnell and Ashley Flynn, we don't have any idea what actually happened. We know they're not here, but couldn't they just as easily have run away? Hitched a ride somewhere and months from now there'll be a voice on the phone asking for money or a ticket home. I'm not saying this is necessarily so in this case, and the defense is not relying on this hypothesis in any event. All I'm asking is that you keep this possibility in mind, ladies and gentlemen.

''But let's do the Crown a favor for the moment and take a closer look at their take on things. Mr. Goodwin told you about muddy pants and bloodstains, but--hoo boy! --there sure were a lot of holes in his tale, weren't there? Members of the jury, convictions of those accused of firstdegree murder cannot be based on suspicions alone. And in this case this is all the Crown has. Well, maybe not all. They've got some circumstantial curiosities and crossed fingers--but not a single piece of direct evidence relating Thom Tripp to the disappearance of Krystal and Ashley.

''Now, I want to make it clear to the court that I use the girls' first names because, after the extensive research I've put into the preparation of this case, it feels like I know them. I've even met their fathers and conducted friendly interviews with them both, and as you can appreciate, such interviews are unusual indications of shared interests between parties in our respective positions. And I think it's because there are shared interests here. An interest in mourning the disappearance of two children from the community. An interest in having the Crown present its evidence before an impartial jury. And, most essentially, an interest in seeing justice done.

''Seeing justice done. Now, that's a phrase we hear a lot, isn't it? But what does it really mean? It's tempting to let our search for justice slip into a hunger for vengeance. But you must resist this temptation. Because seeing justice done isn't about having somebody who doesn't have the right look about them put away because we've got a hunch that they've been up to no good. No. It's about determining the guilt or innocence of this one man in this one case on the one set of evidence tabled at the end of the day. It's a hard job. Nobody's denying it. But for the next while, it's your job. And so it is with respect I ask you, members of the jury, not to merely see that something's done to somebody. See that justice is done.''

I sit. Not bad. Ripped a few pages from the Graham Lyle Opening Submissions Handbook, but enough of my own thrown in to be proud of. Visible nods of agreement from the jury, and even the press keep their mouths and laptops shut in the gallery behind me. Justice Goldfarb herself offers an audible sniff of congratulations before