I AM THE MOTHER OF A MURDERED DAUGHTER
Heather Pepe is in pain. She bears a pain that time cannot heal, an anguish that causes her insides to boil and her usual composure to dissolve in a sea of tears. Hers is a pain that only a mother who has lost a child could understand. It is a pain that she wishes no other human would ever have to bear.
At 38, Pepe is slowly coming to terms with the loss of her firstborn daughter and best friend, Kitty Nickole who was murdered in 2005.
Earlier this year on May 16, 28-year-old Tobagonian Sean Antoine, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on the lesser count of manslaughter. He is expected to serve 19 years as the previous six were spent awaiting trial. According to media reports, Antoine claimed he was in a relationship with the young Pepe before her death.
Her mother tells a different story.
Prior to her daughter's death, Pepe, who is North American by birth, lived in Charlotteville with Kitty where she was actively involved in the conservation of sea turtles.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Express Woman from her home in Melbourne, Florida, Pepe said she first visited Tobago together with her daughter in 1995 and immediately fell in love with life on the island. She said an early decision was taken to stay longer on the island and eventually make it home.
When the mother and daughter first moved to Tobago, Kitty was enrolled as a student at the Seventh Day Adventist School in Charlotteville. She later attended Speyside High School.
Kitty's education was not only academic, as her mother was often involved in a number of environmental projects on the island.
In 1998, Pepe, a registered fisherwoman in Tobago, who was always passionate about environmental preservation, became involved in the protection of sea turtles and joined the newly formed group Save our Sea Turtles (SOS) in 2000. As her work in North East Tobago grew, Pepe joined the board of Environment Tobago and was about to be named Honorary Game Warden. Together with Kitty and fellow environmentalist Patricia Turpin, they formed a group assisted by Gervais Alkins and Tanya Clovis of SOS. The group was registered as North East Sea Turtles (NEST) in 2008. Kitty never knew of the group's official formation.
"She was my only child," Pepe could barely contain her emotion as she spoke about the daughter she had lost. "I don't think I will ever know unconditional love that strong again."
To Pepe, Antoine's sentencing brings a clichéd and anticlimactic conclusion to six years of torture — his sentencing could never erase the pain she felt or bring her daughter and best friend back. She would never see her daughter grow to become an adult, get married, have children or even realise her dream of becoming a marine biologist and seeking employment in Sea World in the US.
"I dreamed she would always be right there in my life," Pepe's laughter was sad.
As she spoke of the days leading up to her daughter's death, her voice became heavy with guilt. She blames herself for failing to take more decisive action earlier when they first sensed trouble.
According to reports, the man who took Kitty's life was in a close relationship with the teenager. Pepe says differently.
"I know that, as with any teenager, there is a possibility that something went on that I didn't know about, but I believe with all my heart that nothing was going on sexually between them," her voice trembled as she spoke.
Nevertheless, Pepe said she knew something was not right.
"I know that days before she was killed, he was acting strange and Kitty had told me that he was bothering her and trying to be around her every time he saw her," she said. "I understood that he had tried to give her a watch and that he was upset that she refused it. I was going to talk to the police about it, but Kitty said that would upset him and it would just make it worse. Charlotteville is so small and everyone is family and I knew she did not want to create a scene, but my God, that was the biggest mistake I ever made and I will live with that forever."
On the day of Kitty's death, Pepe said she had left home with her Tobagonian boyfriend (now husband) Dasa to watch tamboo bamboo in the village. Kitty remained at home.
"She locked the door behind us and I told her she could have no friends over," Pepe said. She sobbed. "I made her unlock the door three times to kiss her. She turned to my boyfriend the third time and said, 'Oh my God, my mom has Mommy OCD, she has to kiss me 100 times before she goes away!' I rattled the door to check the lock and walked away."
That was it.
Later that evening, as Pepe and her boyfriend listened to the mesmerising beat of the tamboo bamboo drums, Kitty's life was snuffed out. It was a cross she carried alone in the years following her daughter's death.
Pepe said she learned of Kitty's murder later that evening when, walking up the hill to their apartment, she noticed a large group of people gathered outside. She sensed immediately that something was wrong, though at first she feared there had been a fire. As her knees weakened, her first thought was for her daughter, but nothing could prepare her for the news she would receive and the manner in which it was delivered.
"A guy passed us and said, 'Like Kitty's dead'," Pepe said simply.
Just like that.
No preamble.
No conciliatory gesture.
Just the exchange of casual news from one villager to the next.
Struck by the news, Pepe said she was thrown almost into a stupor.
"I do not know if I even understood the words," she said through her tears. "My blood got hot and a burn started in my belly as I tried to make my way up to the house. The police wouldn't let me in and I was hysterically screaming for my baby. I was screaming to my boyfriend to see if Kitty was in there, if she needed me, if she was dead. He jumped up to look in the window and when he did, he collapsed to his knees and hung his head down. I knew she was dead. I screamed to go to her and that she belonged to me. A sergeant showed up and walked me to the door and as he was prying the door open, I saw her body through a crack. What I saw, what a mother should never see, is imprinted in my mind forever, but I still cannot process that it was real. It's too awful for me even to describe."
Trapped in her own hysteria, Pepe attempted to hang herself with a clothesline. The next she remembered, the young mother was lying in hospital and screaming for her daughter's body again.
With Kitty's death, the nightmare that trapped Pepe had only just begun. She then had to undergo the torture of learning the identity of her daughter's killer, making the connection with the man she had previously thought of reporting to the police and then suffering through six years awaiting the trial and conviction of manslaughter.
And while she left the island after Kitty's death, returning to the US where she would be closer to family, for several years Pepe was unable to shake the nightmare that clutched at her heart.
She described the ordeal suffering through the trial and reading reports of the case as sickening and exhausting.
"People were told what the murderer who was facing death row said and the papers printed it," she said. "I was never asked and I don't think I was ever quoted. Most of all, Kitty could not speak a word for herself. It really was disgusting and painful. What made it worse was a few of the comments to the misleading articles that said I should also be held accountable… don't they think I was? Other than Kitty, who suffered the greatest loss? I have taken much of the responsibility, not because of what people heard was going on, but because as her mother my only job in this world was to keep her safe and she is dead. I did not need the added insult of speculative reports and the comments to them insinuating that I let her have sex with some older guy and got her killed."
Still, despite the anguish that she continues to bear, Pepe said she has forgiven her daughter's killer. She has however expressed dissatisfaction with the court's ruling.
"I never fought for the death penalty," she said. "If I could trade his life for hers, I certainly would have, but it would not bring her back. I did want it acknowledged that he murdered her and that he should be imprisoned for life for taking her life and mine and for the pain caused to all those who love her. I understand there is an automatic death penalty in Tobago for murder, so I understand the lesser charge of manslaughter, even though that's not what it was. I even understand the sentence, BUT the lesser charge due to provocation both shocked and infuriated everyone. Provocation means that any reasonable man would have done the same thing. Really?"
With her daughter gone and the case concluded, Pepe is slowly rebuilding her life.
"Before Kitty died, I always felt I would die if she did," she said sadly. "I didn't die. I kept going. I became very close to God and asked to be forgiven my trespasses so I could meet her again. God asks us to forgive those who have injured us in order to be forgiven our trespasses. So, as much as it hurt me, I did the best I knew how. I gave it all to God and let Him take it from there. There is always pain, always a storm and a constant longing for my precious daughter, but I was also given friends and family who love me, a husband who supports me and a son (born 2009) who I love very much. If I sit in anger about it every day, I will only paralyse myself and hurt those who love me."
Today, to ease her pain, Pepe is writing a book on her life with her daughter, promising to include stories of pirates, fishing and the turtle flippers that her daughter thought was a mermaid when she was little. She continues to view the people of Charlotteville, Tobago as family.
"Families argue and go through tough times and good times and weddings and deaths and that's what we had been through together," she said simply. "Although things and people are changed in my eyes forever, I will always have friends in Tobago."