Jon
Happy Birthday Jonathan. Today would have been the 26th birthday of my cousin Jon, who was brutally murdered in 1998 in Alabama.
I would have to say Jon was the closest thing I had to a brother growing up, since from birth to the age of 14 I was an only child. We did everything together that kids do when they are little. We’d go romping through the woods pretending to be warriors and great swordsmen. We’d play with baby animals, we’d race our 4-wheelers, we’d get muddy and think it was fun to stomp on skunk cabbage, which would of course get us in trouble and our parents would never let us in the house. We’d play tons and tons of video games together. He was a wizard at them, and often competed in video game competitions. He ranked pretty high in the nation, and always beat me at every game except racing games. I often got frustrated.
We also went to school together, though we never really talked during school since we were in different grades. In elementary school we took the same bus, and when we came home, we had a small ritual that we performed precisely everyday. We had a little black and white tv that sat on the corner of his mothers kitchen counter, and we’d pull a huge wooden chair over to it, his job was to get the orange juice or milk, and my job was to get the cookies. We’d both take a section of this chair and sit together watching Duck Tales -every- single day after school. It eventually became routine we could probably do it blind.
In middle school I moved away, just the next town over, so we didn’t see each other as much. We did take karate together though, but again he always seemed to beat my ass at that too. Damn him.
We would have went to different high schools but the highschool territory he was in was actually a pretty bad school, so instead his mother used my address and had him enrolled in mine instead. So we were able to go to highschool together. Unfortunately we had already started to lose touch, and when you’re in highschool, you have different groups of friends that you hang out with. He started to get into the wrong crowd, people I knew of course, and were friends with, but I never “hung out” with them because they were trouble. I guess he started getting into drugs, got some DUI’s, and the stories -I- heard from the guys he hung out with were pretty disturbing. But Jon always was kind of extreme, moreso than I considered myself to be.
He started dating a friend of mine, Mandy, who was for a while a part of the Crew I hung out with. I don’t know if they had broken up or what, but she got pregnant and claimed it was his. I took her to one of those free clinics and had her tested, and sure enough she was pregnant. When Jon was confronted about it, he refused to believe it was his, which started to create a lot of tension between he and I. We eventually had a fallen out, along with his mother and I getting into it. His mother wanted a paternity test, but Mandy was getting an abortion so she didn’t think it mattered.
Now that I think about it though, she became obsessed with him and they eventually had to block her calls, so I’m pretty sure she was just a lying whore. I’d also like to note that after Jon was killed, I did run into Mandy not long after, and she told me that she heard Jon was killed, and I said “Yeah.” She had the gall to smile at me and say “Oh well” and I don’t really remember what happened after that, but if people weren’t there to pull me off of her, I might have killed her. Let her call the cops, just let her.
So Jon started getting into a lot of trouble. He’s always had some mental issues since he was a child, but they started to get somewhat worse. I remember one time they admitted him to a psych ward somewhere, and his mother called me and said she had a shotgun and she was going to go get him out. She was a bit mental too, and always believed her son to be innocent of anything.
Man I have some psychotic people in my family…
I guess as a last resort, my aunt and uncle decided to move to Alabama, since we have family there. I was pretty upset when I heard because I didn’t want Jon to move away, but it was needed if he was to get away from these people that were destroying him.
So just after Jon graduated, they moved. I was still in highschool, this would have been my senior year. From what I understand, the move to Alabama is exactly what he needed. He started to clean himself up, got accepted into a really good technical school to become an electrician. Was teaching some sort of dance class and helping out younger kids.
From what I can recall of the story behind his murder, he became friends with a boy who had a pretty estranged father. I guess he and this boy had a falling out and Jon and another guy went there to pick up some of Jons CD’s. As they were leaving though, the estranged father decided to take his shot gun and shoot at the car. I’m not sure what set him off…it doesn’t sound like much was needed to.
So Jon was to testify against him in court, since the guy has a history of this type of behavior. At one of the hearings the guy came up to Jon and told him, “You will never testify against me in court.” My aunt became upset and tried to get some witness protection against him, but apparently Alabama doesn’t offer a witness protection program. Or they denied it for some reason.
Now Jon drove a truck that was pretty unique looking, easy to pick out in a crowd. It was a white dodge ram with blue racing stripes. As Jon was driving down the road one day, the estranged man saw him, and decided to follow him with his son. They followed him to a grocery store parking lot, where Jon got out and the father and son duo started yelling and cursing at him. Jon was never one to back down from anything, so he stood his ground. The father pulled a rifle out of the truck and put it to Jons head and shot him. Right there in front of all those people.
According to witnesses, the guy just -stood- there and watched him die.
I wish I could remember the guys name. And I wish I could remember what they did to him. I think they both got life in prison, but I don’t remember. I’ll have to try to find out.
God it tore me up inside when I heard. Jon was braindead in the hospital, and all of my family flew down to see him. My mother wouldn’t let me go, so all I could do was stay home and cry. I had convinced myself if I had gone, maybe I could pull him out of it, knowing full well he was already dead.
They eventually pulled the plug, and he died. They had his body shipped up here to Maryland, and he is buried down the street from me at Lakeview Memorial in Sykesville. I will probably go visit today, since I haven’t in a while. Most of my mothers family is buried there.
You know, I think about it now, and wonder what his child would have been like, had Mandy not gotten an abortion. If it was in fact his.
The last conversation I had with Jon, was a few months prior when my aunt had a stillborn baby. He had come up for the funeral in his new truck, and he was helping the older women at the funeral up the hill. Afterwards when you have the dinner party or whatever, he came up to me and asked me how I was doing. Said he wanted to race his new dodge truck against my bronco. I told him as long as it’s offroad, I’d be all for it. He laughed and gave me a hug, and went upstairs.
I’m glad that our last words weren’t in anger like before he moved. And I think it’s fitting that it was about trucks and offroading. Just like when we were kids.
Entry viewed times. Posted in Fond Memories
2 Responses to “Jon”
September 5th, 2005 at 3:30 pm
[…] I also saw in some of the letters where I talked about my cousin Jon and some of the crazy stuff he used to do. How he was arrested for DUI’s, how he put a shotgun to my uncles head, how emotionally unstable he really was. […]
June 11th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
[…] My cousin visited me yesterday, she’s in the U.S. visiting from Germany. We caught up, gossiped, went to visit our cousin Jon’s grave, grabbed a hot fudge sundae while taking a ride in my mustang, and just overall hung out. […]