This is an absolutely true story and I hope I don't make anyone mad. It's told entirely from my own perspective. There's a rich kind of book in here.

In 1976--1977 I became close friends with a woman commonly called "the purple lady" because almost everythig she wore was a shade of purple though there was some pink in there. She was New Age before New Age became a thing, and that pretty much defined her. She gave tarot readings and often talked about our fates and destinies and such things like there was a power she was in touch with that she could so easily share.

She was of the non-violent variety, in her very nature - I never really heard her say anything bad about anyone. She didn't seem to have any enemies and most people knew her and liked her.

Around that time I met her son, who was a kid maybe ten or older, a soft-spoken kid, nice. I got a brief explanation that he didn't live with her, but presumably with his father, but they seemed to get along fine, and they were happy to see each other when he arrived. It seems I was discouraged from asking too much about his father or whatever divorce precipitated their separation. I have since concluded that maybe his father was a dark and mysterious character because the kid would have been entirely sweet if she had more to do with it. But sometimes those small towns around Iowa create very controlling families and maybe that one was unable to let go of that kid when she became new-agey and needed to drift off and find her way. That's as good an explanation as any.

I left the village for many years and heard only traces of what had happened: there was a fire, the kid was involved in a tragedy; she moved off to Taos never to return. Though I too was living in New Mexico I never looked her up. She had renounced Iowa entirely.

It turns out the kid was involved in a murder-suicide in which he killed his girlfriend and a dog. This story gets stranger now with every step. It is not clear where this happened because I simply cannot find a trace of it in any newspaper. I've got names, date (May 1993), some details, but not some important ones like where.

Stranger yet, a very good writer wrote a book about it (called An Iowa Murder), but took it off the market and it appears to be the only account of it even though it's admittedly subjective. The author, as a girl, knew him and couldn't believe he would do such a thing. That's kind of how I feel, except I have even less to go on when it comes to finding the truth.

Perhaps I have the place wrong, or one of their names; I seem to get entire dead ends when I go looking. One newspaper article mentioned it at the end, almost an afterthought, as if it was in this tiny town (Vinton), but too obscure to notice.

He could have grown up there - family there, etc., and very easily had a double life, one with his dad in a small town, one with his mom in the village with the tarot readings. One can imagine that people were cruel to her after the murder and that's what caused her to move to Taos, ok, I'll buy that. Iowa can be cruel that way although I must say, if he had a dark side it didn't come from her. In Taos she was an icon, quite famous, but had no one, and when things got bad there was no one around to look out for her, until one of my old friends' daughters came around and took are of her until her death quite recently. That's when I started looking into this murder-suicide. And this book that was written about it, apparently.

In the time I knew her she didn't want to talk about her marriage (if she had one) or her son, or the hard parts of being split up. She wasn't even that tuned in to mothering although she got along just fine with the kid and he seemed to have what he needed. After I left the village, there was a fire, in which she saved some of her fellow residents but at the expense of all her possessions including lots of purple clothes. And after that, the son moved into the village to be near her and know her better. He didn't stay, though, the murder-suicide was not in the village. Not sure where it was, but it wasn't there.

The details of the killing are horrible, of course. How could a person do that? Drugs, is one answer. and it's possible.

She died in bad shape a couple of months ago. Dementia, and not taking care of herself, and having no place to go, and apparently it was sad, though there was a very nice service for her after she died. None of the above was really her fault, in my figuring, because it seems to me she was probably forced to leave for one reason or another and not allowed to take the kid with her. That's just how I read it. The kid was never able to restore the bond that was cut when she was forced to leave him. Of course that's speculation. Why would she never tell us more?

People have these stories. You never know it by looking at their lost, confused faces later in life. But things happen, and we never forget, we just sometimes fail to record them well. There is no record, no record, of this one. Why, I have no idea.