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Loss of more than a child

Joye Brown

September 12, 2006

Jennifer and Neil Flynn skipped breakfast yesterday, hours before testimony began in the trial of a man charged with second-degree murder in the death of their eldest child, 7-year-old Katie.

The Flynns rose early. And Jennifer moved, gently, to wake their surviving daughter, Grace, now 6 years old.

"That wasn't hard," Jennifer told me later in the day, during a break in testimony in a Nassau County courtroom in the murder trial of Martin Heidgen, 25, of Valley Stream. "All I had to do was roll over."

So much in this family has changed since July 2, 2005, the day Katie died after Heidgen's pickup, heading in the wrong direction on the Meadowbrook Parkway, slammed head-on into a limousine carrying her family. Katie was killed, along with the limo driver, Stanley Rabinowitz.

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What's life like now for the family, 13 months later? Grace, one of the surviving passengers, hardly sleeps in her own room anymore. Neither does her brother, 4-year-old Eamon.

"The children," Jennifer said, "have nightmares about the 'Bad Man' and what he did to us."

Sometimes, she said, Grace "wishes the 'Bad Man' had died instead of Katie."

Other times, "She wishes we had died together," Neil added in an interview during a break in the testimony.

"My six-year-old," he repeated, staring into the distance, "wishes we all had died."

Yesterday morning, as the family prepared for school, for a babysitter and for court, Eamon had a question for his father, who had donned a neat brown suit:

"Are you going to work today?" the boy asked.

"No," Neil answered. "I'm going to court to put the 'Bad Man' in jail." Eamon asked whether he could help.

By the time Jennifer and Neil got to County Court in Mineola yesterday, news reporters were everywhere.

The couple overheard an attorney for Heidgen tell reporters Heidgen was sorry. They heard Heidgen's mother tell reporters he is not a monster.

And in the courtroom, they heard Heidgen's attorney use the term "accident" in talking about the crash, and compare the events of July 2, 2005, to "a perfect storm" - a chance confluence of events, in other words.

They sat in the front row of the courtroom, silent but deeply disturbed.

"The attempt to paint the defendant as a victim of circumstance is wrong," Neil told me later. "He compared my daughter's murder to a natural disaster. The defendant didn't make a mistake; he made a series of decisions that ended up taking two lives. He has to be held accountable for it."

Jennifer was the second witness called. She told the courtroom about that night, about how she sat by a guardrail by the side of the parkway, cradling what she could of Katie. She sat with her child until every other member of the family was pulled from the wreckage.

But she didn't cry until authorities said it was her time to go. "I cried," Jennifer told a courtroom of strangers, "because I knew I would never hold her again."

Neil was waiting when she finished testifying. They went to lunch with family members, although the couple still didn't have much of an appetite.

They will be back in the courtroom today.

Last night, Jennifer and Neil fed Grace, Eamon and their youngest, 2-year-old Colm, read them a story, made sure they brushed their teeth.

And then they did what they do every night.

"We put three children to bed," Jennifer said.

"And wished four children good night."

joye.brown@newsday.com