"You know those people who always have a smile on their face, so that just to see them makes you happy? Such people are very rare. My sister was one of those people. She had not an enemy on earth, she wouldn't hurt a fly, she wouldn't even eat meat because of what she felt was the horrible treatment of animals. My daughter's name is Rebekah-Marie Bales Zask. We call her Bekah. I am here today to remind the court, the attorneys, any other interested parties, and the defendant in this case that Bekah lived.
She was a human being, barely 21 years old. She walked and talked and thought and felt and ate and drank and loved and laughed and learned and danced and drove and cried and cared, about a lot of things. But more than anything Bekah cared about people. She respected people and the sanctity of life. She appreciated that life is a precious gift. And Bekah was happy in her life.
Bekah was not this nameless unmentioned "victim" "decedent" "fatality" until while crossing a street in San Pedro on July 19, 2001, she was killed by Lynn Woolever. A healthy 21-year-old woman was taken out of her shoes, dragged down the street, run over, and dumped in a huge pool of blood to die as her killer drove home. The defendant left some of my daughter's grey matter on 25th Street and took some more of it, along with hairs from her head and plenty of her blood, home with her, where she went to sleep.
Killed Bekah; went to sleep.
Since July 19, 2001 I have done almost nothing but mourn my only daughter. My grief has been intensified because Bekah was killed at the hands of this defendant. Woolever has exhibited nothing but contempt for an innocent 21-year-old woman who never did anything to deserve it.
The contempt with which this person killed my only daughter baffles me and keeps me asking why months after logic has convinced me I will never know. And just as unfathomable as why to me is how:
Obviously I cannot choose to die in place of Bekah. And Bekah cannot choose to stay alive and fulfill all of her promise to this world or realize its promises to her. Bekah celebrated her 21st birthday thirteen days before she died all alone in the middle of the street, so gruesomely we were excused from identifying her body and precluded from having an open casket at her funeral. You are 32 years older than Bekah was - almost 33 years older than she will ever get to be, because of the choices you made last July 19. Now you have chosen to volunteer for four years in prison rather than to stand trial for the crime I firmly believe you committed that evening.
During the minutes, hours, days, and months since her death I have looked to the Court for justice for my daughter, Rebekah-Marie Bales Zask. This result falls far short in my opinion. Lynn Woolever ended Bekah's life violently, senselessly, with no more respect for her victim than if she had stepped on a bug. The defendant's actions before, during, and since Bekah's death, I believe illustrate "an abandoned and malignant heart," such that I have no doubt that this woman murdered my daughter.
As helpless as I am to bring Bekah back to life,
so it appears that I'm equally incapable of procuring justice for her death.
I cannot choose to die instead of Bekah; I cannot choose for you to die
instead of Bekah; I cannot choose how to adjudicate the "People's" case
against Lynn Mary Woolever. All I can choose is my words, and no words
will ever suffice to express the scope and the magnitude of your crime
when you killed my only daughter, Rebekah-Marie Bales Zask. Bekah
[The last part is paraphrased, because it was ad-libbed. It was only finally that morning that we did learn for a certainty that the terms of the plea bargain had been misrepresented to us]
Your honor, that was to be the end of my statement. But I only recently learned that the amount of time the defendant will spend in prison was misrepresented to us as eighty percent when in reality it is only fifty percent. If you have been made to believe that Bekah Zask's family is okay with this agreement you have been misinformed. Consequently I must beg you to please sentence this woman to at least six years, so that she does the amount of time the family of the victim was led to believe she would do, or you throw the bargain out and let her be tried for the crime I still believe a jury will agree that she committed.
Thank you your honor.
Barbara Bales 2002 all rights reserved
I Wish - 
- Email <
Get your own Free Home Page
how i feel about poetry - Night - 
barbtries a blog - 
Who can Ballet in Birkenstocks/Can You Tapdance in steel-toed Docs? - 11-14-96 - 5-23-95 - Bekah, Someday - Half & Half - Daughter - This Special Hell - An Amateur Map for Mothers of the Recently Murdered - poems - diary entries - poetry tag results - Bales Law - my Wish List!