Christopher F. DePasquale
Image courtesy of Santa Clara, California Police Department / Cold Case Number 81-5582
(PostScript: I have to tell you that after posting this about ten days ago I have started to realize that very few actually give a flying f@uck about Chris's murder. The police department provides no access to the 42 year old evidence or even a summary of what they might have. Requests to local media to look at an old cold case go acknowledged but are largely ignored. Even the university we once attended can't be bothered to acknowledge Chris's death or the need for for an updated "In memoriam." Sadly, Chris's death and his unsolved murder are being relegated to history's forgotten pages. We tried Chris. Rest in peace, brother.)
We genealogical types tend to have a lot of bad habits. I say "genealogical types" only about myself because I have no degree or certification in the subject. (I barely qualify to fetch an actual genealogist’s coffee on a bad day.) However, like anyone with a true interest in the subject, I may have developed some "genealogical bad habits" or made a mistake or two along the way. I’m not talking about screwing up on my “double-dating” or misremembering a generation when trying to recall my connections in the Baldwin genealogy. Heck, I’m not even talking about that insidious disease of “copy and paste” that (whether we like to admit it or not) infects us all at one time or another. No, I’m talking about the bad habit of perhaps looking too far and finding the unexpected.
That’s the thing with genealogy though. It is about finding the unexpected. Even the proverbial “brick wall” has to be discovered for being what it is - unexpectedly thick. Indeed, we genealogical types are curious by nature to a fault and may on occasion let our superpower of innate digging and curiosity get away from us as we look for that next unexpected thing. Hence, the bad habit. Further, I’m going to go out on a limb here and venture to say that there aren’t many of us here who haven’t “taken a look” back to where and when maybe we shouldn’t have - or afterward regretted having done so.
Truly though, who hasn’t been curious about, say, that lost high school sweetheart? Wouldn’t it be interesting to see those vital records that prove they’d found true love for the last fifty years, or conversely, that they’d never gotten over you by evidence of their subsequent seven marriages? (LOL) It’s curious and perhaps a bit of a bad habit to look back to see just where their life might have led. Do their family lines connect to one’s own? Or how about that horrible boss from the 1990s or that nosy neighbor way back in ’72? Is there some form of closure in finding out that even they have passed on? Talk about genealogical bad habits. Who among us hasn’t used our "genealogical superpowers" to piece together the story of someone’s life with whom we’ve gently (or not so gently) crossed paths? What are those "tales of the unexpected" in all our lives?
So if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'd like to tell you a tale about one of my adventures with my own genealogical “bad habits” and one of those “look-backs,” involving an unexpected story and what I did not expect to find. I’d like to tell you about Chris, a young man I went to college with nearly a half-century ago.
We were students at Santa Clara University in California in the early 1970s. His full name was Christopher DePasquale, and no, he was not my friend. I certainly would have never wished ill will upon him, but suffice it to say that back in the day he and I ran in very different social crowds. He liked to play in the rich kids' sandbox, and I was lucky to play anywhere at all. He made no secret that he found me to be as strange a fellow as I found him to be one full of himself. Nevertheless, at the time I knew very little about him - and that was okay. I knew he had some connection to Hawaii, but more than this we never spent enough time around each other to learn or say. We simply didn’t know each other very well. Heck, we didn’t even know “of” each other all that well. For the most part, I haven’t thought or considered those days of “not knowing “ Mr. Christopher DePasquale for many years.
However, this past week, and realizing that like all of us here I see dead people (or at the very least hear them) I indulged myself in my genealogical “bad habits.” For some reason I remembered Chris, and, much like that horrible boss from the 1990s or that nosy neighbor from back in ‘72, I wondered what had become of him. Perhaps he’d been married seven or eight times too, or I’d discover him to be the illegitimate son of some 1930s movie star. What fun! What I did not expect to quickly uncover was a California death record for him. 1 However, the date on the death index didn’t look right. It said 1981. Did I have the right guy? Waxing nostalgic and somewhat saddened by the death of a classmate I wanted to know more. It was then that the old newspaper articles began to surface and I could see in print that yes, unexpectedly, I had found the correct Christopher DePasquale.
Now I know what you must be thinking. After all, we “genealogical types” deal with one heck of a lot of “death.” And maybe it’s callous to say, but the discovery of the death of someone we might have known briefly years ago really shouldn’t be unexpected. I am an old man now, so these “passing away events” really shouldn’t come as all that much of a surprise. The trouble with the discovery of this death record for one Christopher DePasquale was that it turns out that he died at the tender age of twenty-five. You see he was murdered.
Okay, while an utterly heinous event, to the dispassionate genealogist or the objective family historian the unexpected discovery of a murder of a young person (even one as recent as forty-two years ago) is often met with an “Oh, how sad,” or “Gee, that’s too bad.” Then, and probably at best, a notation is made for a future reference elsewhere and then politely moved on from. After all, we all die, right? And in most circumstances, I would generally agree that this is all we can do - that is to move on. This might be okay save for those "genealogical bad habits" that force us to look past the expected outcomes for the unexpected. You see, my bad habits wanted to know more.
What am I missing here?
Okay, that doesn’t work for me. Yes, I know that I didn’t even particularly like the guy, but in terms of relevance the fact that Chris’s case remains a “cold case” now forty-two years later doesn’t work for any part of the “genealogical type” in me, or as I suspect, for any of us here. It’s not okay at all.
So you’re probably asking yourself why I am posting this to the blog. I mean, you didn't even like the guy, right Jeff? Is a cold case murder always a genealogical problem? I guess it’s because I don’t want the fact of Chris’s unsolved murder to be forgotten. Remember, we see dead people, right? I’m throwing Chris’s story out to my genealogical brethren with hopes that someone out there might guide me in the right direction to at least try and help solve this. I don’t know anything about “investigating” a cold case. What knowledge can I obtain? What forensic evidence did they collect in 1981 and what of it remains gathering dust in some police department basement? What might be available to us “genealogical bad habit types” that I might lend another set of eyes to? I realize that all of this sounds like utter folly, but what else can I do but try and to give it over to the Wisdom of the Crowd?
I’m not expecting any "DNA help" phone call from CeCe Moore or legal advice from "The Legal Genealogist" Judy G. Russell anytime soon, but I would like to know where to start. Hello, Skip Gates, of Finding your roots, are you out there? However, there’s a murdered guy somewhere out in the ether that needs help. I mean, why the heck would anyone care? What does it matter that some dumb post-college grad probably got himself into trouble over sex, drugs, or rock and roll? The thing of it is, I do care. Even after nearly fifty years, he deserves better. More than this though, I just don’t want Chris to be forgotten. Everybody deserves to be remembered. Every cold case deserves to be solved.
I hear you Chris and I'm listening.
Notes:
1. California, U.S. Death Index, 1940-1997, Ancestry.com, for Christopher F. DePasquale, April 1, 1981
2. The Silicon Valley Voice, at svvoice.com, and as taken from the Santa Clara Police Department, December 27, 2019
3. Santa Clara Police Department, Santa Clara, California, as taken from santaclara.ca.gov, and as posted December 19, 2019
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