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The Murder of Adam Wese:
Article 1
Article 2

I didn’t know Adam, because at the time the lower class students were down at the old Norfolk Catholic building while Granby High was being renovated. I did know Louis Pino. Not well, but he worked in the library and one day I was checking out 1984 by George Orwell and he was slothfully languishing behind the counter. I remember his eyes were watery, but not like he was crying. I stood there for a moment and then I said something like “I want to check this out.” and he sprung up and snatched the book.

“You want this book?” he said.

“Yeah. I’d like that book.” I said, kind of being patronizing. Then he rubbed the RFID tag across the mat and handed it to me. He never checked it out.

“Take it.” And he went back to his nap.

A few weeks later, he turned himself in. I always feel weird when I touch that book. He had a dead kid in his closet when he gave me that book.

For the life of me I can’t understand why Granby didn’t just tell us what happened. It was in the paper, but there was never any effort made by the school to inform us that one student had been killed by another student. Mind you this incident pre-dates Columbine and VT, and I am sure things would be dealt with differently now. At the time no one really knew what happened– not definitively– and it allowed all sorts of rumors to circulate.

Later that year another student killed and raped a 73 year old woman. I didn’t know him, but this happened down the street from me. I have no idea what the hell was going on at my school. When I think about it, there was a regular routine of suicides and suicide attempts. There wasn’t a lot of gang activity, there was just fucked up kids everywhere.