whose proslavery ideologies had torn the nation apart.
42 / Kathryn Casey
“By conservative, I mean there are things we just don’t talk about here, things it would be impolite to bring up in conversation, like race and infidelity,” the man went on to explain. “But please, don’t confuse that. Not talking about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If a man or woman has a dalliance, it’s of little consequence. More important is to keep up appearances. We have a sense of Southern pro-priety in Virginia. How one presents oneself is uppermost.”
Those who travel northwest through Richmond eventually enter Henrico County, a half-moon crescent surrounding the northern half of the city, dead-ending on both sides at the James River. In Henrico, the population is predominantly white and prosperous. In this affluent setting, the West End—a patchwork of subdivisions cut out of the thick forest—is among the wealthiest and quietest. It was here, in 1994, that Professor Fred Jablin and his wife of eleven years, attorney Piper Rountree, purchased a red- brick and wood-sided two-story house with shutters, set back from the street, in the thirty-year- old Kingsley subdivision, at 1515 Hearthglow Lane.
Richmond’s West End was a calm place to live, one without the crush of the city. On weekday mornings, fathers and mothers drove off to work, after watching their children board school buses. At the nearby Gayton Crossing shopping center, West Enders shopped for groceries at Kroger or the upscale Ukrop’s, and wine, bakery items, clothing, toys, or gadgets at small specialty stores. In the local Starbucks, customers queued up for morning lattes, half-cafs, and mochas and talked neighborhood news, their children’s soccer teams, and school events. Occasionally the subject turned to more private matters, including what they saw or heard happening at the houses next door.
At first glance the Jablins with their two young children—
Jocelyn, five, and Paxton, two—fit in well. From the outside, DIE, MY LOVE / 43
they were a picture perfect family, with a house full of bookcases, couches, lamps, and all the latest appliances. They installed a dark oak table with a sideboard in the narrow dining room, and Piper turned the bonus room—a converted, attached one-car garage—into a craft and sewing room with an aquarium. Fred claimed a room built into the detached garage as an office/workshop. In the large, treed backyard, Fred planted a cutting from his grandmother’s favorite rose-bush, as he had at each of his homes. With his Ford Explorer and her brand new Chrysler Voyager minivan in the driveway, they appeared a happy family. Perhaps, at least in the beginning, they were just that.
“At first, they seemed like a really good couple,” says a neighbor. “Fred was smart and successful, excited about his work. The two kids were darling, nice kind of quiet kids.
But then there was that Piper thing. From the beginning, she never fi t in.”
“Piper was this petite woman with blond highlighted hair.
The rest of the moms wore khakis and loafers, but she wore skintight jeans and cowboy boots,” says another neighbor.
“She was out there, flamboyant. Everyone noticed her.”
Some neighbors found the difference in Piper a welcome change. “My husband said, ‘At least she’s not just another typical West End Southern belle,’” says a neighbor. “I wasn’t insulted. I knew what he meant. Piper, well, Piper was . . .
different.”
In the mornings, Fred drove off to work at the University of Richmond, a fifteen-minute trek through the woods on winding residential streets. The campus was breathtaking. Founded by Baptists in 1830 as a men’s seminary, it had been moved to the shores of Westhampton Lake just after the turn of the next century, on the site of an abandoned amusement park. With 360 acres of forest and rolling hills, the university hired Ralph Adams Cram, an architect who’d designed major
42 / Kathryn Casey
“By conservative, I mean there are things we just don’t talk about here, things it would be impolite to bring up in conversation, like race and infidelity,” the man went on to explain. “But please, don’t confuse that. Not talking about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If a man or woman has a dalliance, it’s of little consequence. More important is to keep up appearances. We have a sense of Southern pro-priety in Virginia. How one presents oneself is uppermost.”
Those who travel northwest through Richmond eventually enter Henrico County, a half-moon crescent surrounding the northern half of the city, dead-ending on both sides at the James River. In Henrico, the population is predominantly white and prosperous. In this affluent setting, the West End—a patchwork of subdivisions cut out of the thick forest—is among the wealthiest and quietest. It was here, in 1994, that Professor Fred Jablin and his wife of eleven years, attorney Piper Rountree, purchased a red- brick and wood-sided two-story house with shutters, set back from the street, in the thirty-year- old Kingsley subdivision, at 1515 Hearthglow Lane.
Richmond’s West End was a calm place to live, one without the crush of the city. On weekday mornings, fathers and mothers drove off to work, after watching their children board school buses. At the nearby Gayton Crossing shopping center, West Enders shopped for groceries at Kroger or the upscale Ukrop’s, and wine, bakery items, clothing, toys, or gadgets at small specialty stores. In the local Starbucks, customers queued up for morning lattes, half-cafs, and mochas and talked neighborhood news, their children’s soccer teams, and school events. Occasionally the subject turned to more private matters, including what they saw or heard happening at the houses next door.
At first glance the Jablins with their two young children—
Jocelyn, five, and Paxton, two—fit in well. From the outside, DIE, MY LOVE / 43
they were a picture perfect family, with a house full of bookcases, couches, lamps, and all the latest appliances. They installed a dark oak table with a sideboard in the narrow dining room, and Piper turned the bonus room—a converted, attached one-car garage—into a craft and sewing room with an aquarium. Fred claimed a room built into the detached garage as an office/workshop. In the large, treed backyard, Fred planted a cutting from his grandmother’s favorite rose-bush, as he had at each of his homes. With his Ford Explorer and her brand new Chrysler Voyager minivan in the driveway, they appeared a happy family. Perhaps, at least in the beginning, they were just that.
“At first, they seemed like a really good couple,” says a neighbor. “Fred was smart and successful, excited about his work. The two kids were darling, nice kind of quiet kids.
But then there was that Piper thing. From the beginning, she never fi t in.”
“Piper was this petite woman with blond highlighted hair.
The rest of the moms wore khakis and loafers, but she wore skintight jeans and cowboy boots,” says another neighbor.
“She was out there, flamboyant. Everyone noticed her.”
Some neighbors found the difference in Piper a welcome change. “My husband said, ‘At least she’s not just another typical West End Southern belle,’” says a neighbor. “I wasn’t insulted. I knew what he meant. Piper, well, Piper was . . .
different.”
In the mornings, Fred drove off to work at the University of Richmond, a fifteen-minute trek through the woods on winding residential streets. The campus was breathtaking. Founded by Baptists in 1830 as a men’s seminary, it had been moved to the shores of Westhampton Lake just after the turn of the next century, on the site of an abandoned amusement park. With 360 acres of forest and rolling hills, the university hired Ralph Adams Cram, an architect who’d designed major
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