Last night, I watched the 20/20 Jodi Huisentruit documentary, and I found myself instantly transported to another time. Everything was familiar: the news anchors, the landscape, Jodi Huisentruit, the sense of absolute innocence and disbelief.
Strange how a face can affect you so much, how just the very sight of it can reduce you to tears.
I cried as I watched the old news footage: Jodi in front of a red barn on a snowy day; Jodi walking through a clothing store; Jodi at the anchor desk; aerial shots of Mason City; wide-angle shots of the flat, vast Iowa countryside. Part of my tears came from watching Jodi, part from watching familiar landscapes pan across the television screen. I know the small towns and wide open spaces in those shots. I grew up in Iowa, and even though I never want to move back, I miss it sometimes.
Something else moved me, too. So many of Jodi's fellow reporters shared stories of threatening letters and emails - most from viewers who felt intimately close with the local news anchors. Too close.
This is a threat I know well, a feeling I tried to forget over all these years. Back when I wrote columns for a small local newspaper, people recognized me everywhere I went. They approached me in coffee shops, at the grocery store, on the sidewalk, and even in the bathroom. They invited me to lunch, asked personal questions, stepped into my personal space. Sometimes, they blocked my path, and I never knew if it was intentional.
Then there were the letters. They arrived addressed to me personally, not the newspaper. One man described his knife collection in alarming detail, inviting me over to see it. Another told me he wanted to pry open my mouth, wire the jaw wide, and dump alcohol down my throat.
I never reported them, although I double-checked my door locks at night.
One of Jodi's colleagues said she felt guilty just for surviving - for not being the one the stalker chose. Even though nobody close to me went missing (with the exception of one great aunt who literally vanished from our lives, but who nobody ever reported as actually missing), I feel the guilt, too. As I wrote in Interstate Radiographs: I traveled the same dangerous highways as anyone, and I made it alive to the exit ramps.
That is something I have been exploring lately, and I will post notes soon.