Haunting Memories

By: Alysia TateShe had lived in the second-floor apartment at 66th Street and South Parnell Avenue for almost six months, but Paulette Bonaparte still didn’t like sleeping in the bedroom. It was at the back of the house, overlooking the Metra tracks and a patch of land filled with overgrown weeds and trees. It resembled a small forest preserve, and Paulette had forbidden her three young children from playing there.

Looking out the bedroom window at night, Paulette, 24, could see only blackness. With her husband working the overnight shift at a South Side factory, she felt safer on the couch, closer to the front of the apartment.

Paulette followed her normal routine on Tuesday, July 28, 1998. She left the house at 7:45 a.m., caught three buses and spent her day loading trucks at the United Parcel Service warehouse in west suburban Willow Springs. Coming home, she caught the 3:10 p.m. bus and was back in Englewood by 4:30 p.m. The work is tiring; most nights, Paulette and her children fall asleep by 8:30 or 9 p.m.

As she walked home from the bus stop that day, she overheard three older women talking. "You know, they found the little 11-year-old girl they were looking for at 66th and Parnell," one of the women said. Paulette tried to picture it in her mind as she walked home.

When she got there, she saw a sea of people stretched across her block. She wove her way through the crowd to her building and found her husband and brother-in-law sitting on the front steps. Where were her kids? What happened?

The children were inside, her husband told her. They found that missing girl behind our building. She dropped her work bag in the doorway and ran upstairs to check on her children. Then she looked out her bedroom window, down to where Ryan Harris lay below. The sight of Harris’ dead body snapped her back 10 years. Paulette was only 14 when her twin sister, Paula, was killed by an angry cousin of Paula’s boyfriend. Paula had fought with the young man’s girlfriend a couple of weeks before. One day, he pulled out a gun and shot Paula in the face as Paulette watched. Thinking about her sister still made Paulette cry. Now another innocent girl had become a victim.

Police questioned Paulette, her husband, his father—who owned the building—and her brothers-in-law, as well as the children. Some in the community pointed fingers. How could she live in that building and not know anything about the murder? She must have had something to do with it, they said.

The accusations baffled and angered her. "You know, I didn’t know anybody around here, and people were saying, how come I didn’t hear anything, didn’t see anything," she said. "I wouldn’t be listening or trying to hear for something like that."

Three days later, she was on her way to work when two young women walked up behind her. "Bitch," they called out. "You know what happened." When Paulette turned, they hit her with a 2-by-4. She stayed home from work for more than a week. She didn’t know who else might try to hurt her. She refused to talk to the television reporters who parked their trucks outside her house every day at 6 a.m. She didn’t like to leave the house at all.

The anger in the neighborhood turned to mourning. People brought flowers and placed teddy bears beneath a banner draped across the apartment house in Harris’ honor. Paulette joined others at a memorial gathering on the block. Later, she got to know Harris’ mother. Paulette’s life began to return to normal, and she went back to work.

Then one day at work, a supervisor called her into an office where someone was watching the news. Two neighborhood boys, ages 7 and 8, had been charged with Harris’ murder. On the way home, Paulette began to worry. Her sons were 5 and 6, and they hadn’t been at home when Harris’ body was discovered.

"I was thinking, what if they try, you know, to point the finger at us? I mean, you never know how people think," she said.

She changed her work schedule to be home when her children finished their after-school program. Her supervisors understood. But Paulette had to do more to prepare the children. For the first time, she told them about her sister. Her 8-year-old daughter, named for the aunt she never knew, cried.

"My kids had never experienced anything like this," she said. "Never."

After Harris’ death, there were changes on the block. Porch lights came on at night. The city tore down the abandoned building next door. Paulette and other parents on the block watched each other’s children, keeping them in sight as they played.

Prosecutors eventually dropped charges against the two boys and charged a man already accused of attacking other young girls with the crime. Paulette was encouraged and relieved. But mostly, the news left her sad and angry.

"It takes an innocent life to be taken for everybody to realize, you know, if we all work together, we wouldn’t have this problem."