Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Setting The Record Straight :)

It's been about 41 years since I read my Mom's copy of A Murder In Paradise in it's entirety and really did grasp what I was reading. From a little girl on up, Marian Louise Baker's smiling face shone out to us from the photo album at my Nanny Kelley's house in Conestoga.
Marian and her story have been with me the better part of my life. I guess I shouldn't say "her story" because it's taken this long to understand and know her story.
Everything happens for a reason and everything in it's own time....that is an absolute truth.
Coordinates have intersected. People have been at the keyboard, reading, surfing and clicking at the precise moments they were supposed to.
After all these years, everything is coming together to lift the fog, the lies and the fallacies.
And under the horror of the brutal murder, the truth still exists. And it's now time to tell it and to set the record straight.
Words are very powerful. Words that were written just a few short years after Marian's death are still reverberating today. And not setting well since they aren't based in fact.

To state one truth as simply as I can at this late hour........

Marian Baker was a beautiful little girl, born in New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania.
When she was 21, on an errand for her employer, she accepted the offer of a ride back to the F & M campus from Edward Lester Gibbs.
Edward Lester Gibbs was a predatory animal who had urges and a severe personality disorder.
He brutalized her, murdered her and hoped to get away with his crime.
Marian Baker was the victim.
Ed Gibbs was the pathological, perverted killer.
Marian's innocence was her only contribution to the events that led to her heinous murder.
Because of the goodness she possessed, she would have never even suspected that she was in any danger.
Until Gibb's car left the main road.
And then the day passed a threshold that could never be altered.
A good girl accepted a ride from a monster.
Gibbs was a monster. Not simply "off balance". He didn't simply "go out of his head" as he killed her. Yes, it was a sudden brutal attack. But it was fomented in the sickness of his depraved mind.
He choked her, he struck her with a lug wrench.
And when Ed Gibbs was done rendering her lifeless and brutalized, the media took their turn at her.
There's so much to say.....
It's late and I will be working on this again tomorrow afternoon.


Marian,
I know full well that right now, you're better than fine. You're there :) And the things we all worry and fret about or get so riled up about just don't seem all that important to you now, given the big picture and what you now know about life.
But I think you know how much you still matter to those who love you and have never forgotten you. And for at least my very own mundane, earthbound reasons, it's time to tell the truth about you and about what happened to you.
You were the quintessential good girl. Fact.
But to sell copies of a salacious and sloppily researched book, innuendoes and intimations were printed and shared with the world.
Those that knew you have never been at peace with that.
It hurts to remember what happened to you that day. It hurts them to know that you were ripped from them.
But what love there is! Sixty years after your passing you are still so very important.
And it seems that for some reason, the time is right.
It's time to set the record straight.
Your story is not limited to that horrible January day in 1950. It's filled with laughter and hugs. It's filled with tears and difficult decisions. It's filled with the love of family and the sacrifices that never felt like sacrifices when done with love.
Marian, I am so sorry for what happened to you as a child and as a young woman.
I'm going to do all I can to tell the truth, finally about you.
It's a love story :)
For your brief stay among us, you certainly planted much love. It still grows to this day.

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