Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 5, Issue 6 | Page 8

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Life Stories (CONT’D)
but rigid rules—made me his sex slave and enforced complete control over every aspect of my life? Who
would have believed me?
My mother became so weak that she spent every day sleeping on the sofa in the living room. Still a child
myself, I had to take over being mother to my younger sister Joann and keep up the house. I cooked,
cleaned, guided my sister and then, after that first time when I was fourteen, was subjected to sexual
relations any time of the day my father felt the urge—sometimes three times a day or more.
As an adult, I realize teenagers don’t perceive things like adults. Life and death have di fferent meanings. Back
then, the thought that dominated my every waking hour was that I had to get my father away from Joann
permanently. I had to protect her. Even if it meant he had to die.
When I hired a classmate to kill him, it didn’t seem real. I never thought of it actually happening, but it did.
He shot my father five times. We were both arrested and charged with murder. Reporters buzzed around us
like a swarm of bees. Some accounts in the media painted me as a bad, cold person, others a bit air-headed,
and some actually gave me a fair shake. Through it all, my boyfriend Rob Cuccio was there for me, even
though so many people urged him to walk away.
I’d focused on the day I would be released from jail. Once I was free, I tried to pull together a life, deal with
my PTSD and be a good person. I had all I could do to make it through each day, but our love endured
everything. After I got out of jail, Rob and I became engaged. Nine months later we were married.
In November of 1988 a book was released about the case, written by an investigative reporter who covered
the trial for the New York Times. She also used information obtained from the transcripts and some
interviews with others. Publisher’s Weekly called it “fair and even-handed, written with compassion for
human suffering.”
I tried to read the book, but couldn’t until now. She had put words in my mouth without ever knowing me.
Fair and even–handed? How could she have any idea of who I really was or what my life had been, other
than testimony from a teenager in shock and what other people told her. How could that be fair? When you
are grilled on the witness stand and you’re a scared teenager, what you say is likely to be nowhere near
accurate. To me, her book was awful. I’d lived it and felt so much of it was wrong. Back then I was too
traumatized and too young to even think about writing my own book so I could tell my story as I’d lived it.
As for the compassion for human suffering, maybe if we had actually talked to each other she would have
understood more about me. If she had walked in my shoes, I believe she would have understood the way an
abused teenager thinks. Ask other abuse victims. That book wounded me to the core.
FINDING THE STRENGTH TO SAVE ROB
I’d lived a normal life for several years before disaster struck again. Rob and I had a good marriage and two
beautiful daughters. He was strong as a rock, and I naively believed nothing could ever happen to him. Never
in a hundred years did I think there would come a time when I would be the one to save Rob. But it did. On
my forty-third birthday, May 14, 2012, he suffered a massive heart attack and after more than half-an-hour
without a pulse, oxygen or brain activity, the doctor pronounced him dead. My screams were probably heard
in the next county.
I don’t know where my strength came from, but I couldn’t let him die. He was too young. He had saved me
so many times, I had to save him. There was no way I’d let the doctors give up on him. I begged, I prayed,
and at last the doctor gave in and said, “I’ll try for ten minutes more, but then you’ll have to let him go.”
Ten minutes. So many other events in our lives had been governed by ten minutes, and now there were only
NOVEMBER
-DECEMBER
2015
WRITERS
’ TRICKS
OF short.
THE TRADE
ten minutes
left to
know if he
would live or die. My heart pounded in my ears,
my breath
was
I have
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never been so afraid in my life, not even when I was found guilty of ordering my father’s murder.