ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 24, 1997 TAG: 9703240100
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE THE ROANOKE TIMES
Claudia Brenner survived a 1988 shooting that killed her lover, graduate student Rebecca Wight. She returned to Virginia Tech last week to talk about hate crimes against gays.
"Do you have any scars?"
It's a question only a child is brave enough to ask. This one, a girl of about 8 with lots of little blond braids and wearing denim overalls, asked it during a book signing in Virginia Tech's Squires Student Center.
"You can see one here, on my cheek," said Claudia Brenner, pointing to an inch-long scar near her dimple. "And on my neck, where they had to go in and do surgery." That one stretches vertically for about 5 inches.
"And my arm," she said, taking off her overshirt and twisting her upper arm around to show the indentation. "See, this is where the bullet went in, and here, that's where it came out again. I was lucky, because it went right through the muscle."
In fact, it took luck to survive all her wounds. Had one of the five bullets that hit her neck and head struck a quarter-inch to the side, she could have been blind or paralyzed - or dead.
The man who shot those bullets was a loner and fugitive from the law who lived in the mountains of Michaux State Forest in Pennsylvania. That's where Brenner and Rebecca Wight went for a weekend camping trip on the Appalachian Trail in May 1988. That's where Wight died, from a gunshot that punctured her liver.
And that's where Brenner began her long trek: beginning with the four miles she walked to find help, continuing through a trial that convicted Stephen Roy Carr of first-degree murder.
The case brought national attention to the issue of anti-gay violence; Brenner spoke to audiences across the country and appeared on television shows such as "Nightline."
She has been baring her scars to the world for almost nine years. Last week, she brought them home to the place where it all began.
Wight and Brenner met at Tech a decade ago. Both were on a committee to plan Women's Week.
Wight, 28, had come to Blacksburg as an undergrad at Tech. She was an avid camper; she volunteered her time taking phone calls at Raft Community Crisis Center. She was back at Tech, pursuing a master's degree in business management, when she met Brenner, who was beginning graduate studies in architecture.
"It was a wonderful, falling-in-love time for me," Brenner recalled.
The two were apart for much of their relationship. Brenner spent a year in Israel, researching her thesis, and returned to her home in Ithaca, N.Y. Wight stayed in Blacksburg but was accepted as a doctoral student at Penn State a few months before she was killed.
They had an extensive network of friends. Brenner called Blacksburg an oasis in an area that wasn't accepting of gays or lesbians. At a memorial service a week after Wight's death, 150 friends gathered in the woods outside Blacksburg to remember her life.
Brenner returned for brief visits to complete her master's, but she never stayed long. Returning this time, speaking to hundreds of people at Tech and at Radford University during what is now Women's Month, was particularly significant for her.
"At times I could see Rebecca and hear her very clearly. It was an experience that I welcome," she said. "It brought her back to life again."
"When the first bullet hit me, my arm exploded,'' Brenner read to the silent Tech audience of almost 200. ``I saw a lot of blood on the green tarp on which we lay and thought for a split second about earthquakes and volcanoes. But they don't make you bleed."
Brenner read from her book, "Eight Bullets, One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence." It's a passage she has repeated to audiences for six years. She recounted where each bullet hit, the confusion and screams, the instructions Wight gave her - "Get down. Run behind the tree" - that saved her life.
The 40-year-old stood casually on stage and occasionally ran a hand through her layered hair, blocking the microphone attached to her blouse. Her light blue eyes pierced through even the stage lights; her words were accentuated by her New York inflection.
She's told the story a thousand times, and she knows the details people are curious about, like the fact that Stephen Roy Carr cried when he heard she had survived his bullets.
"What happened was something like this," she said, revealing the scars she has endured since May 13, 1988:
Brenner had just returned from Israel to Ithaca; Wight was still in Blacksburg. The two decided to meet halfway, at a state park near Chambersburg, Pa.
On the first morning, they woke to find a man in the Appalachian Trail shelter they were camped near. He had seen them walking around naked; he had asked Wight for cigarettes.
They left him there, hoping to find a more secluded place on a four-mile loop off the AT. But they saw him again, this time with a rifle slung over his shoulder, asking, "You lost already?"
They said no, and then "he went south and we went on the side trail, and I never expected to see him again," she said. "I know now that he must have known it was a loop trail and just waited for us."
The women found a campsite a few miles later, dropped their backpacks and stretched out on a tarp by a stream. They were making love when the first shot rang out.
The first five hit Brenner, the next two hit Wight and an eighth missed. Wight was too weak to move, so Brenner wrapped her in a blue sleeping bag and left her by a tree. Doctors told Brenner later that Wight would have died even if immediate medical attention had been available.
As soon as the shooting started, she said, the two women knew who was pulling the trigger. As Brenner walked the four miles out for help, she had no way of knowing whether the man would shoot her again.
But he was gone. Police later found 25 rounds of unused ammunition, a hat and other items left within sight of where the two women were lying.
Two weeks later, Carr was arrested by police in a Mennonite community where he had been living under an alias. One community member "who wasn't as pious" saw an artist's sketch of Carr on television, which no one else watched, and called the police.
"I like to think of that sinner as my particular favorite," Brenner joked.
The odds in court were in Brenner's favor. She was a white, middle-class professional with family and friends who supported her. Carr was clearly an outcast, with a criminal record.
The court proceedings were successful. Carr was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole, a result Brenner said she felt good about.
But "this was the exception, not the rule," she said. Too often, violence against gays or any other minority group goes unpunished. Police or the courts are sometimes unsympathetic to the plight of gay people, she said, or the perpetrators are backed by sophisticated hate groups with power to influence proceedings.
Brenner hopes her story will illustrate the potential for hate crime against anyone, anywhere.
Common occurrences such as gay jokes are the fuel that lead to physical harassment, she said. Hate works on a continuum, she said. "What I didn't know was that the continuum goes on to murder."
"People need to consider where to draw the line," she said. "Anything other than completely eliminating intolerance is totally unacceptable."
She mentioned the two women who were killed in Shenandoah National Park almost a year ago. The two experienced campers, who were said to be having a romantic relationship, were found with their throats slit. No one has been arrested.
"The purpose of [crimes like this] is that it instills fear, and it's successful."
She hasn't hiked since the shooting, and she misses it. She does have her own architecture business in upstate New York, and she said she has been able to have romantic relationships again.
She still has problems with her teeth and gums as a result of the fourth bullet. It's a daily reminder of what she never imagined could happen: being killed for loving someone.
LENGTH: Long : 151 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. ALAN KIM THE ROANOKE TIMES. It has been a longby CNBjourney for Claudia Brenner from the blood-drenched tarp where her
lover was shot to death. color. 2. COURTESY OF CLAUDIA BRENNER.
Rebecca Wight (left) and Claudia Brenner fell in love at Virginia
Tech.