Alice’s things, at the bottom of the closet in my room. It’ll never be found there. I’ve got good at concealing things recently. It’s become what I do.
I begin my search with James William Cutler. Battery, burglary, grand larceny, sexual assault - a real animal. Just looking at his photos makes my stomach turn over. His facebook page hasn’t been set to private, so I have several pages of information about his life, where he works, where he went to school, who his friends are, what kind of things he likes, the posts he’s commented on and the events or parties he’s gone to. He doesn’t look like a gangbanger, he looks like a weasel.
The internet is an incredibly powerful data mining tool, and within less than ten minutes, I have his home address, his rap sheet, his mobile phone number, almost everything down to his last known whereabouts.
We live in an age where everything about us is accessible. We volunteer that information for free, because we are led to believe it makes us happier, our lives, by turn, less complicated. Privacy doesn’t exist in the same way now as it did even ten years ago. After Alice was murdered, I went through the process of erasing her from the internet in the wake of a glut of newspaper articles and media coverage about the story.
They were digging up and using private and personal information that they had absolutely no consent by any of us that knew her to publish. It took me a long time to finally remove every trace of her I could, and if Martin hadn’t have been there to help me, there would have been no way I could have done it at all. A week after that I did the same for myself.
Traces and echoes of a person that no longer exist, both in my memory and by extension the collective memory around us they call the internet. Alice, myself, everyone else who ever had an online personality and is now no longer with us.
I killed my facebook account because I couldn’t control all of it. I still can’t control who wants to remember Alice, but I can control my own access to that information.
I don’t want to forget about Alice completely. I couldn't, even if I did. She forms as much a part of me as any physical element of my body. It’s like she’s another sense, always there and activated by trigger responses i’m not consciously in control of. I don’t want my memories erased, but I don’t want to share them with anyone either who can use them against me.
James William Cutler takes less time than I expect to find. I recognize him instantly from the photos he has on his facebook account, the others I found with a simple google search for his name. My heart leaps to my throat when he passes the car I’m sat in, close enough for me to reach out and touch him. This could be the man who raped and killed my wife. This could be the man that destroyed my life.
The gun is in my lap, already loaded, squashed between my thighs and hidden by a newspaper I pretend to read. I don’t have a plan other than to watch, to see him, to see how I would feel seeing him, to work out what to do. I know immediately that I’m out of my depth. I bury that feeling and concentrate on the other one. The darkness consuming me. The rage I feel, the fear Alice felt.
Cutler is alone. He strides confidently past the car, crosses the road and heads towards his apartment block. He doesn’t see me or if he does, he doesn’t make it apparent. He has no reason to believe his life’s in danger. Less than half a minute later he has disappeared inside, and I’ve lost him to the inner workings of the building.
I’ve been parked here for only an hour and a half. Sixty four days and the police have done nothing, I’ve spent a couple of weeks collecting names and less than two hours to find one of them. Maybe the police have already checked him out, but maybe the police didn’t ask the right questions either. That crosses my mind. Cutler may turn out to be innocent of my wife’s murder, but he’s not
I begin my search with James William Cutler. Battery, burglary, grand larceny, sexual assault - a real animal. Just looking at his photos makes my stomach turn over. His facebook page hasn’t been set to private, so I have several pages of information about his life, where he works, where he went to school, who his friends are, what kind of things he likes, the posts he’s commented on and the events or parties he’s gone to. He doesn’t look like a gangbanger, he looks like a weasel.
The internet is an incredibly powerful data mining tool, and within less than ten minutes, I have his home address, his rap sheet, his mobile phone number, almost everything down to his last known whereabouts.
We live in an age where everything about us is accessible. We volunteer that information for free, because we are led to believe it makes us happier, our lives, by turn, less complicated. Privacy doesn’t exist in the same way now as it did even ten years ago. After Alice was murdered, I went through the process of erasing her from the internet in the wake of a glut of newspaper articles and media coverage about the story.
They were digging up and using private and personal information that they had absolutely no consent by any of us that knew her to publish. It took me a long time to finally remove every trace of her I could, and if Martin hadn’t have been there to help me, there would have been no way I could have done it at all. A week after that I did the same for myself.
Traces and echoes of a person that no longer exist, both in my memory and by extension the collective memory around us they call the internet. Alice, myself, everyone else who ever had an online personality and is now no longer with us.
I killed my facebook account because I couldn’t control all of it. I still can’t control who wants to remember Alice, but I can control my own access to that information.
I don’t want to forget about Alice completely. I couldn't, even if I did. She forms as much a part of me as any physical element of my body. It’s like she’s another sense, always there and activated by trigger responses i’m not consciously in control of. I don’t want my memories erased, but I don’t want to share them with anyone either who can use them against me.
James William Cutler takes less time than I expect to find. I recognize him instantly from the photos he has on his facebook account, the others I found with a simple google search for his name. My heart leaps to my throat when he passes the car I’m sat in, close enough for me to reach out and touch him. This could be the man who raped and killed my wife. This could be the man that destroyed my life.
The gun is in my lap, already loaded, squashed between my thighs and hidden by a newspaper I pretend to read. I don’t have a plan other than to watch, to see him, to see how I would feel seeing him, to work out what to do. I know immediately that I’m out of my depth. I bury that feeling and concentrate on the other one. The darkness consuming me. The rage I feel, the fear Alice felt.
Cutler is alone. He strides confidently past the car, crosses the road and heads towards his apartment block. He doesn’t see me or if he does, he doesn’t make it apparent. He has no reason to believe his life’s in danger. Less than half a minute later he has disappeared inside, and I’ve lost him to the inner workings of the building.
I’ve been parked here for only an hour and a half. Sixty four days and the police have done nothing, I’ve spent a couple of weeks collecting names and less than two hours to find one of them. Maybe the police have already checked him out, but maybe the police didn’t ask the right questions either. That crosses my mind. Cutler may turn out to be innocent of my wife’s murder, but he’s not
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