“And the Lord said: ‘What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.

And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.’”

- Genesis 4: 10-12

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There’s a child curled in bed trying to cry himself to sleep. In six hours he will be dead. Until then, he’ll wait in crippling pain and in darkness, terrified and alone.

Today is February 13th. A Tuesday. For the next three days, the boy’s brother will return periodically to this room, open the door, and ask his brother’s corpse how it’s doing. Then he will close the door and retreat downstairs where he is entertaining a friend, assuring him that everything is all right.

The boy will be found three days later on Friday, February 15th.

I.

“He watched a lot of what happened. It screwed him up inside.”
- Carol Wilber

The newspaper headline on the morning of Sunday, February 17th, 2008, took everyone in the small town of Endwell, New York by surprise. It read: BROTHER CHARGED IN BOY’S DEATH. The subtitle: ENDWELL SIXTH-GRADER MAY HAVE DIED AS A RESULT OF ‘HORSEPLAY’. The power of these words shook foundations as surely as any natural disaster. This disaster was manmade.

At only 12, Peter Munck’s young life had just begun. But on Tuesday, February 12th, his 22-year-old brother snuffed it out. Or rather, it was allowed to wither slowly and brutally. It was an agonizing, inhuman death.

Sometime Tuesday evening, Peter’s older brother Shawn had placed his foot on Peter’s midsection, pinning him to the floor of their Endwell home, and had exerted enough pressure to cause internal bleeding. Peter had then dragged himself to his bedroom and spent six hours dying alone.

The quiet town of Endwell is a small suburb of Binghamton. You won’t find it on a map, so it seems only to exist within the minds of the people that live there. It has never been associated with high crime.

When people, many decades my senior, speak of Endwell, they tell me that it is a wonderful place to grow up or to raise a family. I keep my cynical comments to myself, admitting only that the town is useful because it’s far enough away from civilization that it won’t present a likely target for any kind of attack. I have never lived anywhere else and therefore cannot judge objectively. Still, I had been comfortable in our pantomime of safety. In all of my years living there – all the years I have been alive, in fact – I have never heard of anything like this happening so close to where I lived.

Neither, apparently, had deputy James Addison. Addison, a family friend and a Broome County police officer, was the first person on the scene when it first became apparent that all was not well with young Peter Munck. It had been indicated to me that he was having difficulty speaking of the incident, so I was surprised when he agreed immediately to an interview.

“It was February 15th, 2008, at 7:15PM. We received a call over the radio that there was a twelve-year-old not breathing and unconscious. I was in Endwell working at the time and I was the very first person to arrive on the scene, just expecting to find a twelve-year-old that may have choked or something. I walked in the room, he was crumpled on the floor, and his lips were completely blue. I thought maybe from choking. And I was gonna start giving him CPR when the paramedics checked his pulse and said, ‘He’s dead. He’s gone.’ And I was kinda shocked for the most part. I’m like, ‘Can I try something?’ He’s like, ‘Naw,’ cause lividity and rigor mortis had already set in and the rigor mortis was already starting to leave…”

Deputy Addison is visibly agitated as he begins to tell his story. He starts and stops, speaking slowly, unsurely. He gradually becomes more confident as he speaks with me, though, eventually ceasing his periodic glances at the running tape recorder. His words come faster, as though he is sensing some kind of closure drawing near as he allows the words to tumble from his lips.

“On the scene was the great aunt of the boy, a cousin, the boy’s brother, and a friend. I tried to determine what happened and the brother, Shawn, wasn’t speaking at all. He had his head down and he was mumbling. He appeared to be under the influence of marijuana. We asked him when the last time was that he saw his brother alive, and he said he thought it was Wednesday he heard him in the room. This was Friday that we were called to the scene.

“I ran in and once I knew he had died, I was kind of in shock. I walked out, ‘cause I had to walk to my car and use the radio to call a Code Black. That means that a person has expired. And then a trooper arrived on the scene and he says, ‘What’s going on?’ and I’m like, ‘Uhhhh…’ I was in kinda like a trance. I’m like, ‘He’s gone. It’s a Code Black.’ I couldn’t believe it. And then I, um… it kinda made me want to go home and hug Jennifer, because you have a kid there…”

I nod appreciatively when deputy Addison mentions Jennifer, his stepdaughter. It hadn’t occurred to me that this incident would have any fatherly resonance with him; they’re not even blood relatives.

“Um… took me a couple nights, actually, to really get it out of my head. I kept seeing the kid lying there with his blue lips, that’s all that sticks out. I had a little trouble with depression, I guess you could say, ‘cause I was working out constantly all the time, and after that, I just… I still haven’t completely gotten back into it, but it’s getting better and better every day. It was just kinda disbelief that it happened. I’ve only been outta the academy since November. I had just graduated.”

At the time of Peter’s death, deputy Addison had only been on the force for four months, since his graduation from the academy in November of 2007. I assumed this would give him a distinctly unique perspective compared to his peers, but I was surprised at how well he had managed to keep his emotions in line. Having been a member of the armed forces for several years, and then taking a job in state corrections, deputy Addison was familiar with death and violence. The violence of this particular case, then, was not what bothered him. What stayed with him was the fact that the body he was looking at – the body that he had been a moment away from attempting to resuscitate – was that of a young boy. This was the first youth death that he had been involved with, and hopefully the last.

II.

Peter Munck’s body had been lying in bed for three days by the time deputy Addison was called to the scene. At the time, the legal guardian of the Munck brothers was their 71-year-old grandmother, Carolyn Mitrus, who was being hospitalized after heart surgery. Peter Munck had been left in the care of his older brother Shawn. Shawn’s friend, Joe Menard, was spending a few days with the brothers.

According to a statement by Menard, which appeared in the front-page article that first told of Peter’s death, “They weren’t fighting. He had a good relationship with his brother.” Menard conjures images of affectionate brotherly horseplay gone wrong, while Deputy Addison’s account painted a slightly different picture when I asked him about Shawn’s motives:

“Unintentional. They were only able to charge Shawn with manslaughter in the second degree because the intent was not to kill him. The intent was to potentially hurt him. Because I guess he’s tried to choke him out in the past, put him in a headlock, and once the body went limp, he would let Peter go.”

This, apparently, was how Shawn Munck had attempted to explain away the death of his brother. He claimed that, on Tuesday evening, he had put his brother in a headlock and had allowed him to pass out. When he came to, says Shawn, he had carried Peter to his room and put him to bed. Shawn claimed that his brother was still alive by Wednesday morning.

For the three days that Shawn Munck and Joe Menard shared the house with Shawn’s dead brother, Menard was kept in the dark about Peter’s condition, as he later told police. Shawn would periodically return to Peter’s bedroom, open the door, ask him questions, and then return downstairs to keep Menard convinced that all was well. By the time Peter’s story began to be told in the newspaper, Menard had not been charged with any crime, and police said that they had no plans to do so.

Although Menard was left oblivious to Peter’s fate, Shawn Munck did confide in one unidentified person, as deputy Addison explained:

“We found out later that evening, when a couple of our detectives interviewed Shawn and his friend Joe at one of our substations, that Joe had seen a MySpace account. One of our detectives checked it out, and… he pretty much described what he did to his brother.”

After retrieving the password from Shawn, the detectives discovered a number of messages, sent by Shawn to an out-of-state girlfriend, that told exactly what had happened between the brothers, and contradicted Shawn’s previous statements that he didn’t know when his brother had passed away, and that the boy’s injuries were a result of a headlock. Shawn not only knew that his brother was in critical condition, but that he was “definitely stone cold dead.”

These malicious tendencies, according to Shawn’s former foster mother, Loretta Grubb, were part of his character. In 1991, Grubb cared for a five-year-old Shawn and his younger sister Cara for about six months. Grubb told newspaper reporters that, even at this young age, “Shawn could all of a sudden become aggressive for no reason. He would just sit there and stare and push a kid for no reason.” It was no secret that Shawn’s parents were alcoholics, and Shawn was routinely subjected to the fights that would erupt as a result of their substance abuse.

Grubb had served as a foster parent from 1990 to 1996, and has cared for 36 children over the course of those six years. In a Press & Sun Bulletin interview, she expressed her increasing frustration with the system, claiming that it “routinely fails the children it’s meant to protect.”

“These kids don’t stand a chance,” said Grubb. “They’re bounced back and forth. The parents might get them back temporarily and then they’re taken again.”

III.

I am reminded of my own brother as I reflect on Peter Munck’s death. The distant years of brotherly camaraderie and dissension return to me with equal fondness. George and I have grown up and grown closer over the years; we’ve loved and we’ve hated. My mother told me growing up that my brother was my best friend. I never believed her.

We’ve had our petty disagreements over the years. We’ve fought bitterly and laughed later as we remembered the quarrels. If looks could kill, we’d both be dead by now. We’ve inflicted violence upon each other, and perhaps harm, but never with any lasting consequences. We’ve woken the parents on quiet Sunday mornings when our playful roughhousing became aggression. We’ve reduced each other to tears.

Being his senior by almost three years, I’ve always had the potential to hurt him. And God knows it’s crossed my mind. Maybe I was blessed with some kind of restraint that Shawn Munck lacked. Maybe my almost-normal childhood wasn’t quite traumatic enough for my parents’ violence to spill into me.

I imagine, as the weight of Peter’s death settles upon me, the many times that my momentary lapses of reason could have resulted in tragedy. I count my brother’s youthful tears as occasions that my misplaced fury could have become catastrophe.

Sixteen years after his birth, it pleases me that George and I are as close as we are. My mother may have been right after all. I remember what we’ve left behind – the mistakes, the fights, the laughter – and I love it all.

Ultimately, though, I wonder just how different Shawn Munck and I truly are. We’ve both wished ill on our brothers and we’ve both followed through with impulses that resulted in physical and emotional wounds. Was I the smart one or just the lucky one?

IV.

In the three days that Peter Munck’s body was lying in his bed on Hastings Avenue, officials from the Maine-Endwell school district called Broome County Child Protective Services twice. According to Joseph Stoner, the superintendent of the Maine-Endwell school district, school officials were aware of Carolyn Mitrus’ heart surgery. Peter was in school on Tuesday, but the school called Child Protective Services anyway, concerned about who exactly was taking care of him.

The following day was a snow day for Maine-Endwell schools. Peter was already dead, but it wouldn’t be until Peter missed classes on Thursday and Friday that red flags would be raised at last. When Peter wasn’t in school on Friday, district officials called CPS again.

When a CPS employee was finally dispatched to the Munck home on Friday to check on Peter, he was completely unaware of Peter’s condition. By this time, he had been dead for three days.

According to the February 19th issue of the Press & Sun Bulletin, Shawn Munck greeted a CPS worker at the door and revealed nothing about what had transpired earlier that week. For reasons never thoroughly explained, the CPS employee left the house that day unaware that Peter was dead.

Said detective lieutenant Patrick Isenberg: “Whatever the worker did to verify the well-being of Peter, he wasn’t able to detect that Peter was deceased.”

After the CPS visit, another official did call Shawn’s aunt, who went to the Munck home early Friday evening and found Peter’s body. After three days of miscommunication and misdirection, the truth had at last begun to unravel.

V.

Erik Munck, the father of Shawn and Peter, has been in a New York state prison since 1999, serving a 10-to-12 year sentence for attempted burglary, criminal possession, and attempted assault. Both he and his wife, Carol, were alcoholics, a vice that plagued their 17-year marriage with violence and unrest. Eric Munck even stabbed his wife once, although she chose not to press charges. He has been in and out of jail three times since then, where he remains today.

VI.

“I didn’t just lose a son; I lost two. One to the prison system, one to the grave. I haven’t seen Peter in about eight years, and now I’ll never see him again.”

- Carol Wilber

Carol Wilber heard the news of her son’s death on television. After losing custody of her children in 2000 to their paternal grandmother, Carol Wilber (then Carol Munck) was effectively erased from the lives of her children, which she herself admits was likely for the best. In an exclusive interview with the Press & Sun Bulletin, she admitted that “motherhood wasn’t her best thing” and that she and her husband exposed their sons to “more hell than any child should experience.” In the intervening years, she has remarried but has remained inexplicably absent from the lives of her children.

When her husband went to prison for the third time in 1999, Wilber understood that she could no longer care for her children. The boys were handed over to their grandmother, and Wilber was jailed briefly for failure to pay child support.

For the last eight years, Carol Wilber has lived less than 10 miles away from her estranged children and has not seen either of them even once.

According to Deputy Addison, Carol Wilber arrived at Peter’s funeral drunk and attempted to climb into the coffin with her dead son, hoping perhaps, to regain one moment among all those she has lost.

VII.

“Heaven is now a brighter place with your smile.”

- Anonymous student

On Thursday, February 28th, 2008, an article appeared in the Press & Sun Bulletin, this time several pages in, entitled BOY’S SMILE LEAVES LASTING MARK. It is a eulogy of sorts, chronicling a tribute that took place in Peter’s honor at Maine-Endwell middle school.

On the evening of February 27th, over 400 students, parents, friends, and Maine-Endwell teachers attended a memorial service for young Peter Munck. One of Peter’s friends, Josh Terboss, became so choked with his grief that he became unable to read the speech he had prepared in Peter’s honor. Tom Burkhardt, an English teacher at Peter’s school, comforted the boy with an arm around his shoulders as he completed Josh’s speech:

“Instead of thinking about how Peter died, we should think of how he lived. Peter had no voice to tell anyone what was going on at home. So maybe next time we should be that voice.”

Peter was a quiet boy at school, often remaining shy until he knew someone well. Still, it is undeniable that he left a powerful and lasting impression. When the school chorus sang songs in Peter’s memory Wednesday night, their eyes shimmered with tears. Many students expressed their profound sorrow at Peter’s passing, remembering the perpetual smile he wore in the hallways, in the cafeteria, and in his classes.

Peter’s soul, shining as brilliantly as it did at school, betrayed nothing of his troubled life at home. Since he was an infant, Peter had been juggled between foster homes. He watched his parents wallow in violence and self-pity while they surrendered to alcoholism. He watched his father go to jail three times. He watched his brother grow more and more sullen and distant with each passing day.

Whether these trials dimmed Peter’s spirit the way they did his brother, the world may never know; Peter’s legacy is not one of personal anguish and despair. More than simply denying these trials the stranglehold they demanded, he seemed to rise above them.

Something Deputy Addison said to me is still haunting to this day. He spoke of Peter’s trials in detail, recalling his difficult childhood, his estranged and absent parents, and his sometimes-abusive relationship with his brother. He spoke of these trials as though they were crippling.

“Fortunately, the boy didn’t have that good of a chance anyway. He’s probably somewhere, in a better place.”

Was the tragedy of Peter’s death diminished by the fact that his life, so full of youthful energy and promise, was so often not worth living? Would his death be more devastating if he had lived a better life? Then again, maybe this was simply a cop’s perspective at work. He’s seen things some of us can only imagine; he’s witnessed violence and depravity. Maybe he caught a glimpse of the bleak future that may have been Peter’s if he had survived. Does anyone escape from a brutal childhood unscathed? What kind of scarred man would he have grown up to be?

Maybe Deputy Addison’s words were not a product of coldness, but of a clinical attention to detail that accompanies the job of a police officer. Peter was the victim of a broken family, of broken relationships, and of a broken system that was meant to protect him. Yet, whatever turbulence may have boiled beneath the surface, Peter never allowed it to show in his public behavior. That truly is the only way we can judge Peter Munck, if in fact it’s our place to judge him at all.

“I know my mornings will be a little dimmer without him,” said Tom Burkhardt, Peter’s English teacher. Matt Gallagher, a sixth-grade social studies teacher, never even had Peter in a class. Yet, he still remembers him fondly: “It’s just a shame. He was awesome… he was always smiling.”

VIII.

For the last 14 years of my life, I have lived less than two miles away from the house in which Peter Munck died. Closer, in fact, than his estranged mother. I may have ridden my bike or driven past his house a hundred times over the course of my lifetime and never foreseen the tragedy that would take place there. Neither did anybody else.

No matter how small a town is, it’s never small enough. In a village with fewer than 60,000 citizens, Peter Munck was still just one face among many. He lived in a house that could have belonged to anybody, nestled between similarly faceless and impersonal homes. He went to the same middle school that I did. Maybe he looked past his small town to the horizon and hoped with the same intensity that I did that he would one day have success.

Maybe. Thinking on it now, I realize that Peter probably lived the way I did when I was 12: day-to-day and oblivious. I entertained no thoughts of life after school. If I had any youthful ambition, it had yet to solidify into something I could imagine clearly. The future was as far away as I willed it to be.

Whatever we may say about Peter’s character, it will never replace the ability to hear it from him. We can speculate all we like, but in the end, that’s all it is. Speculation. I know more about Peter Munck now that he’s dead than I ever would have if he had survived.

Some of us will depart this world fatigued and defeated, buried under a lifetime of failures and regrets. Others will be wrenched from their lives greedily, long before their time.

People like Peter Munck.