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Yong Jones looked to the sky and saw her husband and son standing
before a polished golden gate. Laurence Jones Sr. wrapped his
arm around his son and told him: ''C'mon, Junior, you shouldn't
be outside.''
The father pushed the gate open. Then he and Laurence Jr. walked
beyond it, disappearing into a white cloud.
Yong stood by her husband's freshly dug grave as the vision
faded. Later, she would wonder whether it was the tranquilizers
or her mind playing tricks on her.
It was a crisp September morning, and she had just buried the
man she had dearly loved and married 31 years ago. He died two
years after their son had been murdered in Baltimore, shot in
the face during a robbery.
Doctors said her 58-year-old husband had suffered a heart attack.
Yong was certain he had died of a broken heart.
Their sorrow over their only child's murder had tormented both
Yong and her husband. But it hurt even more to know that after
nearly two years the Baltimore police had not found their son's
killer. And as more time passed, Yong knew chances were good
there would never be an arrest.
Too distraught to return to her job at a local paper mill, Yong
quit. Now she rarely left her home in Bangor. The only trip
she made each day was to the cemetery.
Her obsession to save her son's soul had robbed her of her appetite
and sleep, but since her husband's death Yong had grown more
restless. She had begun sleepwalking in her empty Bangor home.
Sometimes she awoke in the darkness sitting on the second-story
deck outside her bedroom. Above: Yong Jones visits the site
of her husband's and son's graves in Mount Hope Cemetery in
Bangor. Larry Jones Sr., 58, died almost two years after their
son was killed; Yong Jones believed his death resulted from
a broken heart, and the bitterness he felt over his son's unsolved
murder.
Fearing that Yong might fall, her younger sister, Yong Im, who
lived next door, began staying with her sister. Before they
went to bed each night, Yong Im tied the bottom of her nightgown
to her sister's bedclothes so she would feel a tug if her older
sister left the bed.
Yong Im also began cooking dinner for her sister, preparing
Yong's favorite Korean foods: spicy vegetables, beef soup, rice
and seasoned fish.
For most of her life, Yong had mothered Yong Im. A shy, quiet
woman with large brown eyes, Yong Im had vague memories of her
older sister carrying her on her back as the two of them fled
the bombs that rained on Inchon during the Korean War.
Now, Yong Im hoped to repay her sister, caring for her as if
she were her own child. ''Eat, eat,'' Yong Im told her sister
each night. But Yong could barely eat more than a few spoonfuls.
Often, she vomited the little bit she had swallowed.
Worried that Yong would soon end up joining her husband and
son, Yong's close friend, Brenda Lawson, stopped by even more
frequently than she had over the past two years. She tried to
bolster Yong, telling her that their fight was far from over.
Brenda suggested they turn to the media and the public for support
in getting her son's case solved.
One night while visiting with Yong, an idea popped into Brenda's
head.
''What about a petition drive to pressure the police?'' she
said.
''What if no one wants to sign it?'' Yong asked.
''This is Maine,'' Brenda said. ''People here care about one
another. They care if someone's son or daughter is murdered.
They'll sign it. Don't worry.''
The two women toiled from early afternoon till midnight, calling
and writing more than a hundred civic groups and churches in
towns large and small in the Bangor area.
Within a month, nearly 1,700 people had signed a petition urging
the Baltimore police to keep the Laurence Jones Jr. murder case
open and to renew their efforts to find his killer.
Hundreds of the families and strangers also agreed to contact
the Baltimore police. As letters and calls deluged the Baltimore
homicide office, an exasperated Sgt. Roger Nolan called Brenda.
''I can't answer all these letters,'' Nolan moaned. ''I'm not
getting any work done.''
''I'm sorry, sergeant, but people in Maine really care about
this murder,'' Brenda told him. ''They want this case solved.''
Besides putting pressure on the police, the petition gave new
hope and strength to Yong. Each day, as new pages of signatures
arrived at her home, Yong taped them together. In the middle
of the night, she ran her fingers over the names, reading each
of them aloud.
''All these strangers care about my son,'' she told herself.
Night after night she would fall asleep, clutching the petition
in her arms.
On the last day of February, Brenda and Yong delivered the petition
to Republican Sen. William Cohen's office in Bangor. Two of
Cohen's staffers took it to Baltimore and planned to deliver
it to the police commissioner during a press conference.
But the commissioner refused to meet with them. He wanted no
part of the media's glare. The police felt harassed.
''We continue to investigate this case with no leads, no witnesses,
no weapon,'' police spokesman Sam Ringgold told the Baltimore
Sun. ''It's a difficult homicide to solve, as many of them are.
To suggest the department has not aggressively pursued the case
or pushed it off to the side is not true.''
Ringgold later asked a Baltimore Sun reporter about Yong. ''Who
is this woman from Maine? Who is she connected to? Is she friends
with the governor up there?''
''No,'' the reporter answered. ''She's just an ordinary lady
who worked in a mill in Maine.''
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