A special interactive report brought to you by journalnow.com
A Special Report
THE ATTACK AT THE SILK PLANT FOREST
NAVIGATION
PROJECT TOOLBAR
Part One: The Crime
"I'm hurt. I can't see you."
Jill Marker rests in the recliner in the corner of her living room. She is dressed in pink today — a pair of pants, a striped top and a bracelet to match. Though blind, she still cares about the way she looks.
The days pass quietly in her home outside of Akron, Ohio, her life a regimen of breathing treatments, tube feedings and physical-therapy sessions.
At 5 p.m. sharp, a nurse helps her walk from the living room to her exercise cycle in the next room. She pedals steadily for a full hour, her head keeping time to the Eagles, one of her favorite bands before the attack in 1995 that nearly took her life.
Kalvin Michael Smith cannot sit still. He rests his foot on the metal stool and rubs his eyes. A guard stands behind the door leading to Smith’s side of the interview room, watching through a window. Smith turns to look at him. He doesn’t like being watched.
Smith reads, mostly black history and Sidney Sheldon novels. He has not been a model prisoner. He was moved to a maximum-security prison in Alexander County this year because evidence of marijuana use was found in his urine one too many times.
Here then are the two principal characters whose lives were changed forever by one of the most vicious assaults in Winston-Salem history.
Nine years later, the days pass slowly for both — Marker, imprisoned in her broken body, and Smith, imprisoned for her beating despite compelling reasons to believe that he had nothing to do with the crime.
