At Least They're Committed

Ugh. About to put Rich’s obit on the internal communication newsletter and I popped open the photo and it wasn’t the one where he’s talking to prospective students, with his lips moving and his eyes turned. It’s a black and white and his dark eyes are staring right at me and smiling like they always did and I wasn’t prepared for that and it took my breath away and I cupped my hands over my mouth and choked back a sob. He was only 57.

We seldom got to see each other after my last office move, and when we did it was always in passing and we’d promise to get caught up.

He was one of my first interviews here and we talked often about the cases he worked on from a forensic perspective and a media perspective. Cases such as JonBenet Ramsey, Kobe Bryant and the case at the high-security prison in Florence where two inmate cousins dismembered and disemboweled another inmate and decorated the cell with his body parts and entrails. We also talked about the little cases, like how he vindicated a kid who RTD claimed pulled I knife on a passenger (video analysis showed it was just the kid flipping a pen around in his fingers). He told me about movie sweetening — how every sound of a footstep or rustle of a leaf is placed in the movie by an audio expert. He was such an profound expert in audio forensics that attorneys in high-profile cases would hire him at the outset whether they thought they’d need him or not, just so the other side couldn’t enlist his services. He was fascinating and he was kind.

I don’t think he knew about the cancer when we talked on the phone a few weeks back. I’d gotten him 15 copies of a magazine he was featured in and was sending them along with my intern, who was interviewing him about his work in the national audio forensics lab. It was just nice to hear his voice. You never know, I guess, when it’s going to be the last time.