The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
for my parents
A Note on Source Material
I have reconstructed Ricky Langley’s life from a mix of public court documents, transcripts, newspaper articles, and television coverage, and in one case a play that was based on interviews. In that extensive record, there were many instances in which I faced two or more competing facts, and I had to choose one in order to fashion a coherent narrative. In many more instances, I decided to include competing facts, claims, slippages, and ellipses, and to hold those contradictions and absences up to the light. More information on sources is detailed in the “sources consulted” section at the end of this book.
For every event I record here, I have at least one person’s statement that it happened and their description of it, or it is a composite event constructed from several different descriptions as detailed in the “sources consulted” section. Wherever I have worked from a transcript, I have edited the dialogue for clarity and pacing. A good portion of the events I write about here occurred publicly and with a great deal of press attention, but I have nonetheless changed some names. The two research trips that form the backbone of the third part of this book were actually many trips that occurred over several years. I have compressed them, but the events depicted on those trips occurred as written.
While I have not invented or altered any facts, relying instead on the documentation I’ve used as the primary source for this book, at times I have layered my imagination onto the bare-bones record of the past to bring it to life. Where I have done so is made clear in the “sources consulted” section at the end of the book. In all cases, what is offered here is my interpretation of the facts, my rendering, my attempt to piece together this story.
As such, this is a book about what happened, yes, but it is also about what we do with what happened. It is about a murder, it is about my family, it is about other families whose lives were touched by the murder. But more than that, much more than that, it is about how we understand our lives, the past, and each other. To do this, we all make stories.
Legal Note
This work is not authorized or approved by the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center or its clients, and the views expressed by the author do not reflect the views or positions of anyone other than the author. The author’s description of any legal proceedings, including her description of the positions of the parties and the circumstances and events of the crimes charged, are drawn solely from the court record, other publicly available information, and her own research.
Prologue
[I]t is always possible that the solution to one mystery will solve another.
—TRUMAN CAPOTE,
IN COLD BLOOD
He was just our Ricky, you know.
—DARLENE LANGLEY,
SISTER OF RICKY LANGLEY
There is a principle in the law called proximate cause, taught to first-year law students through the case Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. A woman stands at one end of a train platform. Picture her: The year is 1924, and Helen Palsgraf is taking her two little girls to Rockaway Beach for the afternoon. The day is very hot, and the brick row house where the girls, their older brother, and their parents live is stuffy. With school out and nothing to do, the girls have been whining all day, and Helen has finally decided to take them to the beach. Perhaps she has buttoned a cotton dress up over her bathing suit and donned a wide-brimmed straw hat to block the sun. Now she leans against one of the station platform supports and fans herself with the hat. A few feet away, the girls play together with a doll one has brought. Helen watches them idly.
At the other end of the platform, thirty feet away, a young man runs to catch the train that is now departing, an express to the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens. Perhaps he has plans to meet his pals there for a night of carousing. They will drink beer; they will listen to a band play; they will dance with pretty girls. Maybe he will even kiss the girl his cousin has told him about, a looker from Connecticut. He is with two other young men, and they all run for the train, but the man we care about carries under his arm a slim package wrapped in newspaper, fifteen inches long.
The train has already begun to leave the station, its large metal wheels turning at an ever-increasing clip, but the man does not want to miss tonight. He runs faster. Can he make it?
The train pulls out. There’s a gap between it and the platform now.
The man leaps.
From the train, a conductor leans out to catch his arms and pull him aboard. From the platform, a porter gives him a shove. The man lands safely on the train.
But the package falls—and, when it hits ground, explodes. The package contained fireworks.
The next morning, newspapers report dozens injured. A teenager’s hair caught flame. A mother and daughter suffered cuts all over their arms and legs. And at the other end of the platform from the train, a large metal scale used for weighing baggage shook and tottered. The woman standing beneath it, holding a wide straw hat, screamed. The scale fell.
When Mrs. Palsgraf recovers, she sues the railroad for her injuries.
What caused her injuries? Let’s start with the scale’s falling. This is what in law is called cause in fact: If the scale had not fallen, Mrs. Palsgraf would not have been injured.
But there’s a problem. Scales don’t just fall. The explosion caused the fall.
And explosions don’t just happen. The young man’s fireworks caused this one.
But fireworks don’t just go off. The porter made the young man drop his fireworks by pushing him. Mrs. Palsgraf’s injury must be the porter’s fault—and thus that of the railroad that employs him.
All of these possible causes are causes in fact. The causes in fact are endless. The idea of proximate cause is a solution. The job of the law is to figure out the source of the story, to assign responsibility. The proximate cause is the one the law says truly matters.
The one that makes the story what it is.
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