A lesson in courage

Reading over the words of Kathleen Weinstein, abducted and killed almost 11 years ago, I'm in awe of her. In what had to be the most terrifying time in her life, she held it together, and she got great identifiable evidence against her killer while secretly tape-recording their time alone in her car after he carjacked her and before he smothered her to death in the woods.

She managed to get details about his life, where he was born, that his parents were in the military, his first name, his mother's problems with her hands. And she did what I imagine any psychologist would tell you to do - have this creep see her as a person. She brought up God, she brought up wanting to go back to her 6-year-old son, she told him she could help him get a job, she talked about his own mother.

Many people, I imagine, would be too terrified to speak, or do more than beg to be let go. Kathleen Weinstein, knowing she was in great danger of losing her life, was tough. She got the tape recorder going, taped their conversation then hid the cassette in her pocket. What strength and courage. And what a loss.

I'm so glad that tape was deemed admissible as evidence. She deserves to have her voice heard this one last time, to identify the man who so heartlessly killed her, just so he could have her car.