I find very little on the
web. There are some yellowed newspaper
clippings in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet and that is about all to mark
a tragedy that took two lives and never needed to happen.
In the mid ‘80’s I was living
on Capitol Hill in Denver, engaged in the long process of trying to repair my
life after a hard and bitter fall from grace.
I was attending AA meetings and tenaciously supporting myself by driving
a hack. I knew Dana Sue. Not well.
I had sat in the rooms with her and her lover, Paulie. I saw
her on the street one day and gave her a ride to a meeting in my cab. I found her to be a pretty, affable girl, big
boned and muscular. Hardly the brooding hulk
described in the newspaper. She was a
bewildered little girl in a woman’s body.
That she had problems was evident but who in AA didn’t? Or on East Colfax or on Denver’s
Capitol Hill or in America? She appeared to be heavily medicated.
I hadn’t seen her for a
while. I had moved to the Barrio and was
attending a different meeting. As I have the story, second
hand, (it’s in the newspapers of he time but I am unable to provide a link) someone
talked Dana Sue out of taking her psychotropics. She was desperately trying to control her illness
that was caveing in on her. Ultimately
it didn’t work.
Paulie came home one evening
to find Dana Sue, naked, covered with blood and holding a bloody knife. She had picked up a man. A one legged man at that and she had taken
him home with her. His body was tied to her
bed. He had been stabbed 117 times and
her initials were carved into his chest.
Dana’s absolute rage had taken over.
I do not know what went into the inception of that fury but I think I
have a better idea than most.
It could have been
prevented. The woman was obviously
insane. Anyone would know that. Except the people who might have done
something. The mental health system and
the Denver
police dropped the ball. Mental health lawyered
up and the police actually admitted it, after throwing the lowest man on the
totem pole under the bus.
Except for a sensible judge
who ruled that Dana Sue was legally insane and committed her to the Colorado State
Hospital in Pueblo.
The last time I saw Paulie
she was walking alone toward the rougher edge of Larimer Street in Denver.
End of story. Not by a long shot. Dana Sue got off the leash. After a couple of years in Pueblo she got out with the help of a female
employee of the hospital either willingly or under duress. After a couple of weeks and a drama filled
Thelma and Louise chase throughout the Southwestern United States, Dana Sue was
found in a motel room in Albuquerque with a bullet through the roof of her
mouth.
That kid got a raw deal her
entire life.
The people we send to Washington to represent
us are not doing their job. They succumb
to greed and worse they sell us out to special interests. Our government is not proactive, they are
reactive. Dear God, the answer is right
there, so plain, and yet our president and our congress refuse to act. They play partisan politics instead. Tell me why I should have any respect at all
for those we send to govern us. What is
happening today is only an escalation of what happenened to Dana Sue
Jones. Dana Sue Jones went down only a
few years after the mental health budget was drastically cut under Ronald
Reagan, who is not my favorite president for reasons already stated. See my post:
The Lifeblood of a
generation. Dec. 8th.
WHO KNOWS
WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEARTS OF MEN?
THE
SHADOW KNOWS
