Was My Teacher Murdered?

L eslie Buck had just arrived home from a meeting with her teacher's sorority, warm from conversations with old friends. There'd been a celebration for one member's 90th birthday, and she'd snagged a piece of cake for her mother; it would be a nice treat when she went to check on her the next day.

As Leslie closed the door of her white Buick, she heard someone familiar utter her name from the corner of her three-car garage: Russell Kirby, her husband Charlie's friend and handyman, who had no reason to be lurking on their property at that hour. She'd never liked the man. Before she could ask what he wanted, Kirby attacked, striking her on the head and shocking her in the neck with a stun gun. He punched her in the stomach and tied her hands with white rope so tight the fibers cut into her wrists. Then he tackled her to the ground, bound her feet, and forced her into her own car.

Her knees, beneath the smart cranberry skirt she'd put on only hours ago, were bruised from the attack. Her personalized key chain — a metal heart engraved with "Leslie" — jingled as he sped by Angie's Pizza, where she and Charlie ate dinner every Friday.

Kirby had stopped at his ramshackle home briefly, but they'd been driving for hours now, and Leslie had no idea what he wanted. He had demanded nearly $10,000, but wouldn't let her write a check. He was "thinking," he kept saying. But as the car traversed the backroads of her hometown of Mystic, Connecticut, she realized he was stalling — and hatched a plan. She had a spare car key in her jacket pocket; she just had to get to it.

As they zoomed down I-95 again, Kirby said he felt the car shimmying; he pulled over to check out the problem. This was Leslie's chance to escape. Kirby even untied her hands when she complained that her wrists hurt. And as he circled the Buick to check on the malfunction, Leslie wriggled into the front seat, jammed her extra key into the ignition and peeled off toward home. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

When she burst through the door, Charlie rushed to meet her. He had already called 911 twice when she didn't come home. Instead of falling into his arms, though, she yelled "I hate you and I hate Russell Kirby!" Charlie called the cops for a third time as she wailed in the background.

At 4:37 a.m. on May 3, 2002, Kirby, 64, was arrested for the kidnapping of 57-year-old Leslie Buck. In Leslie's car, they found an olive-green duffel bag holding a stun gun, a bottle containing some kind of alcohol, gloves, and a Colt 45 revolver, among other things.

Still, after a trip to the emergency room, Leslie went back to teaching grade school at Dean's Mill School that day. Her students needed her. And it was important to her that people understand what she had just gone through.

"She wanted people to know that she was kidnapped, and she was showing me the bruises," says Barbara Hatch, who taught with Leslie. She also wanted her friends to know that her husband of nearly 25 years had been stepping out on her. "Charlie's got himself a girlfriend," Leslie told Hatch, adding, "If I should die in the next couple of days, I want to be buried with all my money. That bitch is not getting anything of mine."

BACK IN MAY 2002, I DIDN'T KNOW any of this. I was 17 years old, no one had asked me to dance at the previous night's junior prom, and I had to study for an AP Bio exam. When I came down to the kitchen that morning, feeling sorry for myself, my mom was sitting at the table in her flannel nightgown crying, the newspaper spread out in front of her. My first-grade teacher was dead, she told me — her husband had found her crumpled at the bottom of her stairs the night before. Related Content Inside the Desperate Search for Nolan Wells How to Watch the Lindsay Clancy Trial and Documentary Online Without Cable for Free Zohran Mamdani: ‘If You Aren’t Willing to Fight, You Will Never Win’ How to Watch A&E’s 'Scott Peterson: The New Evidence' Online for Free

Everyone in town seemed to walk through that day in a daze; Leslie's name was spoken in hushed whispers. I remember rushing out of the grocery store, upset, when I heard two women murmuring that Leslie was in a better place. I cried with my fourth-grade math teacher during yoga at the YMCA; she'd been friends with Leslie.

Nothing seemed real; I'd just seen Mrs. Buck at the library. In my memory, she was hand-cutting colored paper, a voice reading Clifford the Big Red Dog . And that kind of thing didn't happen in Mystic, a touristy escape from New York City complete with bobbing boats and sea lions doing tricks at the aquarium.

I've spent 20 years writing around Leslie's story — from the true-crime blog I started in grad school to memorialize shooting victims who the papers ignored to my work with Rolling Stone and the young-adult novel I based loosely on her death. I never really felt like I could tell it outright; I worried about hurting people, reopening old wounds, or sullying her memory. Still, I've been haunted by what happened for decades — by her death, yes, but also what a dramatic end does to a person. How it becomes entertainment.

I once asked a friend and fellow crime writer, Sarah Weinman — who also writes for this magazine — how she chooses which stories to tell. "A crime story only appeals to me if there are deeper questions to pursue, and they generally seem to revolve around 'Who is this person as a person?' What responsibility do artists have with respect to real-life trauma and pain?'" she told me. That hit home. There were definitely lingering questions about my teacher's death — and she deserved to be remembered beyond the dusty newsprint.

And so I started asking around my hometown, determined that if I got any pushback from Leslie's loved ones, I would drop the story. But, as more and more friends and family wrote back to me, the...

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