It happened on November 17, 1973 in Gitchie Manitou State Park in the far northwest corner of Iowa, only a few miles from Sioux Falls, S.D. Five teenagers from Sioux Falls were hanging out in the park, two were brothers, two other boys one of whom was with his 13 year old girlfriend, Sandra. Three brothers discovered the teenagers, shot and killed the four boys, abducted and raped Sandra but then, inexplicably, dropped her off at her home. While she is riding with the sheriff, seeking to identify the farm where her abductor stopped for gas, they meet him and she is able to identify him so he is arrested. Through countless interrogations and testifying at the trials she gives amazing and consistent accounting of that terrible night. The three brothers, in separate trials, are all found guilty, sentenced to life in prison where they remain to this day.
The story is told by Phil Hamman and Sandy Hamman in Gitche Girl Uncovered: The True Story of a Night of Mass Murder and the Hunt for the Deranged Killers, published in 2019. Forty years after the terrible night and its aftermath Sandra forged a new and meaningful life.
On a more cheerful note this poem captures the reality of a long, healthy relationship.
Long Term
by Stephen Dunn
On this they were in agreement:
everything that can happen between two people
happens after a while
or has been thought about so hard
there's almost no difference
between desire and deed.
Each day they stayed together, therefore,
was a day of forgiveness, tacit,
no reason to say the words.
It was easy to forgive, so much harder
to be forgiven. The forgiven had to agree
to eat dust in the house of the noble
and both knew this couldn't go on for long.
The forgiven would need to rise;
the forgiver need to remember the cruelty
in being correct.
Which is why, except in crises,
they spoke about the garden,
the little ailments and aches
their familiar bodies separately felt.
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