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Thomas Geoghegan

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 22, 1996, at 3:02 AM ET

Day One
Monday, Oct. 21, 1996
Called M. last night, she ran into a high school classmate of mine at a funeral.
"Is Tom still doing the same thing?"
"Yes, still doing the same thing."
No, I'm not, I thought. But of course I am.
A week ago Sunday met two hours with food-service workers trying to organize. Then to a bar, Resi's, for a beer with Tony.
"Hear about this Romanian immigrant, the murder-suicide?"
"No."
Down the street. Our friend M. went. Even the police were sick. Blood all over. He'd decided that certain colors were demonic, etc. "The wife left, then came back. And there was a niece, 17, over from Romania."
She had gotten him to some counseling, but they somehow failed to get him on drugs right away.
So one night, with a knife, he hacked the wife, the niece ... then stabbed himself, in the heart, over and over.
"How do you get a knife over and over through the rib cage, you know?" Tony said as we left the bar.
Ed R.'s remark, a while back, at the Abbey Pub: "A man's life is buried deep within him."

Posted Tuesday, Oct. 22, 1996, at 3:02 AM ET
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Thomas Geoghegan, a lawyer in Chicago, is the author of See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation and other books.
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