Today, I was thinking about an old friend, Stephanie Eve Bernstein. She was one of my best friends in graduate school, at UC Irvine, 1970-72. We got our MFAs at the same time, and she gave the commencement address for master's degrees that year.
We hung out together a lot, and she was one of our rising stars in the literary world. The prestigious Paris Review published one of her short stories, and she met George Plimpton and Gina Berriault and other literary lights.
She was smart and funny and fun to know. I loved her as a friend and wondered if we should be romantic together. One time, sitting outside at UCI, I asked her to marry me, knowing she would say no.
She did, and suddenly the world came into sharper focus. The trees looked like cardboard cutouts, like a stage set, and I was relieved. Nothing focuses the mind, they say, like that.
After graduate school, she moved to L.A. and then New York, as I recall, then back to L.A. She worked for Jeremy Tarcher and I think she worked for Harper & Row (now Harper Collins).
She got New Agey and dragged me to a couple of events involving some guru with a name like Swami Satchidananda or something. I said, "Didn't he play third base for the Brooklyn Dodgers?"
She laughed, but we never saw eye-to-eye on that stuff.
Anyway, I loved her, and the world lost her on April 23, 1990, when she was brutally raped and murdered in her Venice apartment, apparently by a guy who was out on parole for rape and robbery.
The cops arrested a suspect, and the newspaper printed his name, Kermis Taffy Thompson Jr., 29, of Venice. I tried off and on for years to find out what happened to him, but I never was able to. (See note below.)
If he was guilty--and there seemed little doubt--I hope he was executed. I know that is barbaric and all, but she was my friend, and she didn't deserve to die.
Anyway, over the years, I think about her once in a while, maybe once or twice a week, and wish she could have lived to fulfill the promise of her life.
It's too bad she didn't. I wish she had. I miss her, even now.
-- Roger
PS: Two friends, Phil and J.B., found Kermis Taffy Thompson Jr. for me. He was convicted of Stephanie's murder on May 22, 1991, and sentenced on June 13, 1991. He is currently serving life without parole in Calipatria State Prison, in the desert south of the Salton Sea. His prison number is C17112.
Copyright © 2013, Roger R. Angle
1 comment:
Hi Roger,
I was a friend of Stephanie’s as well. I think of her often. I just sent you a request to connect via LinkedIn and would be honored if you were to accept.
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