Previous: The First of Two Black Boxes
While Somni is recovering in the hospital (we wish her godspeed 😢), let us quitte California and turn our eyes to Vermont: in pursuit of poor Jamie & the hair-raising Alice.
Jamie's LinkedIn pic is so cute!
Jamie has a Master's in bioinformation from Temple U. They’ve interned at (ahem) NASA, & at a children's hospital. In their spare time, they write papers on that Rationalist pet concept, Bayesian decision theory.
Their life, until this point, appears idyllic: adopted into the well-to-do arms of Richard & Rita Zajko; raised in cozy Chester Heights, PA, in a home which the press will insist upon describing as “stately”.
Whew!
Yet beneath this well-manicured exterior, we regret to report that trouble lurks. Trouble lurks in the form of Jamie’s childhood messages— which they describe as including:
• "We abuse you because you need to be abused to be good"
• "If anyone finds out it would be humiliating for you."
Trouble grows thru the threats which young Jamie receives from their parents:
• “If you run away, we’ll kill you.”
• “We’ll put you in foster care if you displease us.”
• “In foster care, you will be raped & beaten nightly.”
Trouble takes an esp. unhinged & unwarranted tone thru the vibes which Richard & Rita bring to their family dinner table:
• In the ways they force young Jamie to eat meat, despite Jamie’s "visceral" aversion to it.
• In the ways they sneak meat into Jamie’s food- &, when Jamie *later* refuses to try meat, in the ways they object— on grounds that Jamie has *already* tried it.
• In the ways they call Jamie a hypocrite, & threaten them w/ violence if they leave the table before finishing everything on their plate.
• In the way they give Jamie "more lectures than [they] can count on how animals ‘don't have feelings’, and were put on this earth by god for us to eat, so you're ‘disrespecting the almighty'".
• In the ways they tell Jamie that their reluctance to eat meat makes them a "dangerous mentally ill person", whom they will "[need] to" lock up- "cart off to the crazy farm".
• In the ways they assert that the state will take their side, & help them in this endeavor: they are, for ex., friends w/ the local judge*.
*& this, btw, prob. explains grown-up Jamie's embrace of veganism.
On their tumblr, grown-up Jamie details all of this, & compares their parents to "comic book villains in their devotion to evil".
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You might be thinking: why didn't Jamie *tell* anyone? On their tumblr, they explain this too:
"Growing up I began fearing asking people for help"
😢 Pourquoi, Jamie?
“When I was a kid I believed I was a child of satan and thus could not trust myself…”
And further:
"because I thought they'd [their parents would] resent me or get hurt. [...] that [and] if you do there will be retaliation against you AND the teacher you tell (and then you'll assume that teacher will hate you for bringing your dad's rage to them) so you don't want to risk losing a safe space and you stay quiet.”
…In short, bc Jamie- like most abused kids!- did not want to bring misfortune to *their abusers*... but, moreover, bc Jamie's abusers *lied* to them, attempted to destroy their self-trust, & *threatened them w/ further misery* should the truth come out ☠️
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That being said: young Jamie did— bravely— tell one person abt the abuse: their aunt Rosanne, with whom they appear to have been quite close.
Aunt R. had not believed them: as Jamie will write on their tumblr, “Some people don't want to hear about the ugliness in the world, because then they'd feel obligated to do something about it.”
Aunt R.’s enabling reaction is, sadly, common: esp. for marginalized ppl who try to disclose abuse. Finding someone willing to stand up for you can be a devastating process.
In light of all this, it does not surprise us that grown-up Jamie, when given the option to tattle on the horrific abuses they have suffered at the hands of Alice Monday, chooses to remain silent.
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On that subj.— of Jamie’s silence, and of the abominable Alice— let us jump to a tumblr post from Feb. 10th, 2022, in which Jamie reveals that they have been messaging w/… ZIZ?1?! From beyond the grave?
Nooo, silly- Ziz faked her own death 💁🏻♀️
Now she's sliding into Jamie's DMs to respond to a series of, hm, provocative comments which Jamie has made on her blog.
On Jan. 31st 2021 & Feb. 2nd 2022, Jamie & Ziz have “two multi-hour phone calls”, during which they argue over whether Jamie should kill Alice*.
*With whom they appear to have broken up (whew!), but whom they still call “my friend” (💀).
To this end, Ziz recommends Jamie “use a gun with a potato as a makeshift suppressor” & “destroy the body with lye”*— but not before skyping Ziz & showing her the body as proof!
*We reluctantly note that this lye mention does not look good for our girls in Vallejo.
And if Jamie doesn’t do this, Ziz promises that she will “drive across the entire continental United States to murder” them.
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When we’d first heard this znews (Ziz news), our reaction had been
What grudge could Mz. Ziz possibly have against Alice??
Jamie has similar q.s: could Ziz’s recommendation, they wonder, mean she is “losing her marbles”?
😮💨 To the contrary, Jamie: we, having read pt. 30 of Strange New Vegan Death Cult Murders, now believe that the Zizster’s recommendation shows she is in full possession of all marbles. For what they have done to Jamie, Alice deserves
…Jamie, tho… Jamie brushes this all off as a “Sith thing”: Ziz just has “this whole Sith thing going on where she thinks Alice was her mentor, and guess what do Siths do to their mentors.” 😑
Next Jamie wonders— maybe they misheard Ziz? Maybe Ziz meant… “kill Alice in minecraft”? 😑😑😑😑 No, indeed, Ziz is quite clear: “anything less than murdering Alice will be seen as me attempting to pay less than Ziz believes the situation warrants.”
Jamie nonetheless declines, & writes a curious sentence as to why: Ziz’s “test” of them, they write, “fails to distinguish between the worlds where I kill my abuser vs the world where I’m a complete psycopath who would murder Alice if it meant getting closer to Ziz." So… on one level, they are recognizing Alice as their “abuser”, but are— for better or worse 🤷🏻♀️— turning down this recommendation on grounds that their motive for murder would not be “pure”: that it would be tainted w/ “doing so bc Ziz says”. Fair enough!
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Let it be known that in this tumblr post, Jamie also confirms that they know the dastardly John David Pressman- last seen (allegedly) harrassing Ziz & crafting The Unnamed Site. Jamie *further* confirms the rumor shared by tumblr user @donttrythisathome: that John, after getting turned down by Ziz, began to believe that every little creak & crackle around him was Ziz coming to take her revenge.
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This is, unfortunately, where we enter our second black box: where we know what goes in, & we know what comes out, but where we are terminally clueless as to what goes on in the middle.
Going into the black box, we have Jamie’s murder convos w/ Ziz. Inside the black box, we have almost a year's worth of time— from Feb. 3rd to Jan. 31st— when we have almost no info on Jamie… at least, no info to explain the grisly output of this box: which emerges late on Jan. 31st, 2022, in quiet, “stately” Chester Heights.
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