On Wednesday, July 8, I woke up depressed. The previous morning we had sent the newspaper to press with the lead headline on Page A1 “Mildenberger guilty of murder.”
I started covering the story of the Usherville murder of Gwen Gregory in September 2012, less than a month after I started working for this newspaper.
I followed it through all the adjournments and false starts until the voirdire started June 1.
From June 8, when the actual trial started—coincidentally three years to the day after Jaycee Mildenberger was arrested for the crime—until the verdict came down on June 30, I ate, drank and slept the trial.
I could not be there for every minute of it, but when I wasn’t, I was thinking about it, talking about it and writing about it.
In the evenings and on weekends, I listened to the court recordings of the stuff I missed.
It was, without question the most fascinating thing I have ever covered as a journalist since I changed careers in the fall of 2002.
On July 8, with my verdict story hitting newsstands, ostensibly the last one I will write barring an appeal, it was over and I was depressed.
It wasn’t because the trial was over, it was because I was finally able to let it sink in what a horrible story it was.
My wife characterized my grief as a mild case of post-traumatic stress.
Journalism can be kind of a dichotomous experience. For example, on the one hand you recognize the tragedy of a car wreck, but on the other, you have to take pictures, kind of like a professional rubbernecker, in a way.
I am no stranger to gruesome scenes. I worked for a police department for five years. Through my position as keeper of computer systems, I was privy to many crime scene photos.
In my time as a reporter, I have covered trials and inquests and attended the scenes of deadly car wrecks.
Like doctors, nurses, firefighters and police officers, you kind of get inured to it. You kind of have to if you’re going to do this kind of work.
Early on in the trial, I was informed that the family was very upset with the first trial story we published. I sympathized, I really did, but you kind of get inured to that too. You kind of have to if you are going to be able to do your job.
With the job done, though, my sympathy turned to empathy. I am not claiming by any means that I felt the depth of horror and loss that these people did and still do, but I suddenly understood it on a visceral human level.
That is not a totally new thing.
When I interviewed for my first newspaper job for the Smithers (BC) Interior News, one of the interview questions was: If there was a fatal crash on the highway and you had to talk to the family of the victim, how would you go about it?
I got the job and arrived in Smithers on a Saturday and checked into a hotel. I was supposed to officially start on the Tuesday.
On Sunday, I got a call from my boss. The wife and children of a man who was drowned in a ditch on Hwy 16 after he lost control of the camper trailer he was hauling were checked into a room at the same hotel at which I was staying.
It was the very first story I ever did as a newspaper reporter. I had not even officially started work. It was brutal. I empathized with this poor woman who had just lost her husband, I felt her children’s confusion and pain. It was extremely difficult.
If I had not learned to put that aside, I would not have lasted long in this business. It is not just the emotional strain, though, there is also the matter of objectivity.
I didn’t really think about writing this column; I just started writing. As I come to the end of it, my question is why?
I suppose it is a form of catharsis.
