Mourning One of Their Own

For two straight weeks, New Yorkers were engrossed by the sensational murder of Imette St. Guillen, a beautiful student, ironically studying criminology, at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The public became enthralled by photos of a promising student, grisly details of her murder, and the anguish felt by her family in Boston. Everybody got to put their CSI practice to work, while the twentysomethings who hop from bar to bar along the side streets of Soho, the Lower East Side and the Bowery, which is where St. Guillen was last seen, expressed a new anxiety and made resolutions to be careful when they left a bar.

Finally, after several days of criticism, the Police Department were able to announce a break in the case: Darryl Littlejohn went from being "a person of interest" to "the prime suspect." Littlejohn, a bouncer at Bowery bar The Falls, turned out to be an ex-con with a seemingly endless rap sheet-and supposedly the last man seen with Imette. Last Sunday, the cops said they matched some blood on her plastic shackles to some of his blood. Now all that's left is the trial, where the world will get to see Littlejohn, aka Johnny Blaze aka John Handsome attempt to prove his innocence.

But some people are going to be stuck at the beginning, when a beautiful young woman lost her life just as she was entering adulthood. If Littlejohn is convicted, the case will be closed, and that's something. But it will probably provide little relief to St. Guillen's colleagues at John Jay, a college that sits along 10th Avenue, within sight of the gleaming new Time-Warner Center and Lincoln Center. The venerable school remains the most respected higher institution specializing in forensic sciences and law enforcement.

The entrance to one of the buildings in John Jay's small complex has a poster on a stand, like a shrine-a picture of St. Guillen, smiling, as usual. Around the picture, her name and the years of her life on earth are written. A book in front of it is a remembrance where students have been writing down thoughts or condolences. By the beginning of the week, the book was completely full.

Forget whatever you have seen on all of those CSI shows or Without a Trace: At John Jay, students learn how to handle some of the nastiest, most gruesome crimes without flinching. But there's no training that can prepare them for what happens when violence crashes through their front door. Somehow, it's different when the body belongs to someone you know.

"Fortunately," sighed one staff member, "it doesn't happen a lot." That's good, because most of these students will go on to dangerous careers that put them in the front lines.

That doesn't mean, however, that the school is a stranger to mourning. "We have lost members of the John Jay community," said the same staff member, who did not wish to be identified. "The last couple of years, former students died in the line of duty. We lost 66 members of the John Jay community on 9/11."

Danger is a part of the job for these people, but it's not supposed to be like this. "This," she said, "is a very unique situation for us." Sometimes, even crime fighters-in-training need help: Counselors have been on hand to help the school as it struggles to make sense of it all.

St. Guillen will live on at John Jay. A scholarship has been started in her name. A memorial is planned for April 7, something the administration been working on with the family.

On top of the private grief felt by faculty and students, the constant presence of the media hasn't made dealing with it any easier. "We're trying to be as respectful as we can," the staffer said. The open investigation isn't distracting them, though. "It's in the capable hands of the NYPD."

Many of John Jay's students matriculate directly from the city's high schools. They resemble students at any one of the city's institutions of higher learning that cater to its progeny. They're either wearing jeans too loose or too tight, and those new puffy jackets against this last streak of cold weather.

When asked about the case, they affect an air of distance. The police "are doing a thorough job," one student said flatly.

"We're instructed to remain objective," said a grad student. Still, there's some things that a book can't teach, like staying even when a classmate is butchered. "I was actually watching [TV] that morning," the grad student said. "I couldn't believe it."

For many students, this story is just another crime tthey have to deal with in class. That it has hit so much closer to home doesn't seem to register as strongly as it might at another school where grisly death isn't such a large part of the curriculum. A student starts to say, "I feel bad, but..." and trails off. She shrugs, then picks back up again. "Every day, you see horror."

For those students and for the rest of this city, St. Guillen's memory will sink beneath the ink of the next unfortunate victim of a sensational crime. A State Assemblyman has proposed a law with her name on it that would set up security cameras outside of bars. Other people are protesting every Friday at The Falls, which they blame in part for her death. None of this will bring St. Guillen back. But, as the faculty at John Jay knows-and the students are learning-the best way to mourn a death is to work to prevent similar tragedies.