Meghan Burkheimer waited for the phone calls.
Her parents call every afternoon. They tell her what has happened in court, where the last defendant stands trial for killing her little sister.
She listens to details she doesn’t want to hear. She’s heard them before in two previous trials.
She knows she needs to hear them anyway.
“I just need to be able to put the pieces together. Even though what happened to my sister doesn’t make sense, I need to hear it,” she said. “I need to know what took her from me.”
So she waits for the calls.
This is the first trial in which Meghan Burkheimer will not sit next to her family day after day, hearing how Rachel Burkheimer, 18, spent the last hours of her life.
She decided her sister would understand.
Just three weeks ago, Meghan Burkheimer, 23, gave birth to a son, Julius. Her daughter, Jaida, is 3 years old. She feels she needs to think of her children and do what’s best for them. She needs to stay home.
“My duty is to my children,” she said.
Every morning during the first two trials, Meghan Burkheimer, a single mother, would drive Jaida to her baby-sitter in Marysville, then go to Snohomish County Superior Court. She was in court every day, until two days before Julius arrived.
Now she fills her days with her children. She tries to catch up on sleep and housework, but can’t keep her mind from wandering to what’s happening in the courtroom.
She wants to be there for her family. She wants to be able to hug her mother, Denise Webber, and hold the hand of her father, Bill Burkheimer.
She also feels a sense of duty to her sister.
“I want the defendants to see me. I’m not my sister, but I’m the closest living resemblance of her. If for an instant they see Rachel in me and think of her, I want that.”
Meghan Burkheimer faced John Whitaker on Wednesday when she testified in the last trial of the eight men accused of kidnapping and murdering her sister.
She knew the questions that were coming. She knew she would identify the four silver rings Rachel wore. They were stolen from her just before she was shot. Now the rings are smashed and charred.
Meghan Burkheimer told about the only ring her sister pleaded to keep. It was given to Rachel after her best friend, Cory Haynes, died in a car wreck. His mother gave Rachel the ring.
She had identified the rings in front of two earlier juries, where she concentrated on keeping her jaw set and her legs still and focused on what she would say.
This time, she wasn’t nervous.
This time, she couldn’t stop the tears.
“I saw those rings and saw her senior picture on the table, and reality hit me like a freight train,” she said. “My sister is gone.”
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