There was some speculation that, after murdering Northington, the killer cut off his head and then held it underwater to drain out the blood. The headless corpse was discovered the next day a mile downriver from James River Park. Visiting the park one afternoon, I make my way across the footbridge where Northington's remains were found. I trot down the steps to the riverside park where, in better weather and better times, the gay people of Richmond have gone to enjoy themselves. Picking my way through the muck and scrub at the river's edge to a place where police believe that Northington met his end, I find myself imagining the degree of premeditation it would require to murder someone with such baroque fury.
Heads are heavy.
It can't be easy to hack one off and drain it, then haul the thing like a lunchpail through a dark wood. Although a soft rain is falling this late afternoon, the sun breaks through the gray skies abruptly and lights up the James River. The shallow water in a bankside canal suddenly becomes a long pewter ribbon. It occurs to me that hierarchies of worthlessness are deployed in order to render the killing of Eddie Northington an anomaly, another unsolvable episode in the ongoing Grand Guignol of the South. That its context is plain for anyone to see would hardly appear worth remarking.