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Evidence: Excerpts of Letters from Trevor O'Shea to Andrea Stover
 

YOKNAPATAWPHA COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT

Investigating Officer(s): Det. S. Murphy. Det. T. Armstrong
Incident No.: 000133-14A-2002
Case Description: Andrea Stover Homicide

As recorded in the Inventory of Items Taken into Evidence from the Victim's Residence, the Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Department collected as evidence five hundred forty-eight (548) letters addressed to Andrea Stover at the Yoknapatawpha County Adult Local Detention Facility. Included in that number were five (5) letters from Trevor O'Shea (Evidence #s000133-21-341 through 000133-21-345). Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Department representatives have examined those letters and selected the following O'Shea letters as potentially relevant to the Andrea Stover Homicide investigation and typical of the content of all letters from Trevor O'Shea.


Letter 1

Postmark Oxford

June 5, 2000

And,

This is rotten luck. I can't know what you've gone through in the hour before you read this. Every scenario I imagine is dire - rotten food, rotten cellmates, rotten gray walls, water stains on the ceiling, a treeless caged yard.

Do you have a window? I need to know - for some reason I am desperate to know if you can see the sky. I'm feeling awfully guilty, And. I should never have sent those kids your way. They were my responsibility, and I failed. Not only failed, but dragged you into it. I'm responsible, and yet you're in jail - not me. So if you only had a window, I'd feel better.

I see as I write how selfish this is.

Forgive me.

Trevor

End letter

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Letter 2

Postmark Oxford

June 22, 2000

And,

I don't know what to make of your letter. On the one hand, you're right - who am I to be mooning around, complaining about feeling guilty, when you're feeling a thousand times worse?

But what is this - a contest? You win the misery award and so you're the only one who gets to feel rotten?

But how do you know you've won? Because things aren't exactly breezy for me. For starts: The school board. You don't think COP would pass up such an opportunity, do you? I could lose my job, And. Even if I don't, do you think parents are going to allow their college-bound seniors to run the risk of being embroiled in a sex scandal? It's all over. Do you know how happy I was? Do you know what it meant to me to have a roomful of students, who outside the class are jocks, tech nerds, wallflowers, track stars, poets, stoners, all transfixed by a rhyming couplet? I loved it, and now it's gone.

Next: Lucy. Now she tells me she has some thinking to do. Plans are on hold. The dress has been put in the back of the closet. She isn't sure about me, all of a sudden. Am I the right man to father her children? Now, because of what's happened, the future is evaporating. At least you know in 18 months you'll escape your hell.

So when I said I was responsible, when I said I was guilty, I had all of this in mind as well as your dirty cell and your dirty play. How about you? Do you feel at all responsible? Did it ever cross your mind to warn me about what the kids would see? Did you ever wonder if it was worth it to contest those charges so vigorously, so goddamn nobly - even if it meant taking others down with you? "And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by/He call'd them untaught naves, unmannerly/To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse/Betwixt the wind and his nobility."

Annoying, I know. But perhaps if you'd acted a little more responsible, we wouldn't be exchanging these rotten letters.

Trevor

End letter

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Letter 3

Postmark Oxford

August 12, 2000I've officially renounced you to save my job. I could have resisted writing to tell you that, but I didn't feel like it.

I know thee not.

For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,

That I have turn'd away my former self;

So will I those that kept me company.

Trevor

End letter

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Letter 4

Postmark Oxford

May 14, 2001

And,

There are 14 students in my Shakespeare class. We are studying "The Tempest." For the past three classes we have been discussing one passage. You know which it is:

You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort,

As if you were dismay'd. Be cheerful, sir.

Our revels now are ended.

Etcetera. I would like to go on, but I know how you annoyed you'll be. And I don't mean to annoy you with this letter.

It's not a favorite of mine, this play. But like all his later works, there's a preoccupation of what's to come: nothing. And so I've been contemplating the distant horizon and thinking of nothing. How long can I hold hate in my heart?

Lucy is my wife. I have this bounty. You have nothing, except the same rotten cell as nearly a year ago.

I'm responsible. I take the blame. Now, will you forgive me?

Trevor

End letter

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