“The Events of October”: Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus

6 This Endless Night

105 6 THIS ENDLESS NIGHT 1 At about 11:20 p.m., something prompted Navin Anthony to check on his neighbor. Not realizing that Maggie was already there, he went through the bathroom, knocked on the door, opened it, and stuck his head in. Neenef rose from his computer and came to the door, and Navin took a step into the room. Maggie was sitting on a couch in the room, facing the bathroom door. Her face was red. “I could see that she was crying. I saw her look at me. She definitely looked at me.” Neenef said, “Yeah, we’re kind of talking right now,” and promised again to stop by later. “And immediately I just closed the door and went back to my room.” He was the last person to see either of them alive. Downstairs in DeWaters 110, Erin and Leza were in their room watching When Harry Met Sally with their buddy Jeff Hopcian. Around midnight , they heard a loud sound overhead, “a sound like a dresser falling over.” They were startled, but, as Jeff put it, “One doesn’t find these types of noises unusual after a few years of college dorm life.” CHAPTER 6 106 At that moment, Brandon Chuchran, who lived directly upstairs from Neenef in 302, was walking down the second-floor hallway toward the back stairs, headed outside for a smoke. He was about fifty feet from Neenef’s room when he heard loud screaming that, to him, sounded like a wounded dog. He also heard loud banging, like something being knocked over or thrown against the wall. But neither sound alarmed him enough for him to stop, and he continued outside. Directly across the hall from Neenef’s room, in 202, Aaron Beckwitz, Mark Brooks, and John Evans also heard the eruption of sound, which Aaron described as being “like pots or pans or dishes hitting the wall.” He and Mark also heard a woman yelling. John leaned out into the hall to see what was going on, but saw nothing. In the room adjoining theirs, 204, Eric Snyder heard yelling and what he thought were objects being thrown around, as well as a female voice saying something like, “I’m sorry, Neenef!” Neenef’s “little sister” Heather Barnes was on her way outside with Mike Calhoun, who lived in 206, and Will Burkhill, from 304, for the popular midnight smoke break. Mike heard screaming and two loud bangs, and froze. Heather heard something like, “Neenef, no!” and the loud noises. She pictured Neenef sweeping everything off his desk, computer and all. After pausing in the stairwell, they continued downstairs and outside. Back in 205, Heather’s roommate, Alisha Serras, was typing on her computer when three loud bangs—two close together, the third after a short pause—shook the walls of the room. Across the hall in 206, Kathleen Mitchell, who was visiting Vaughn Preston and Mike Calhoun, heard a muddle of loud noises and a female voice: “No, Neenef, no!” Her roommate, Elizabeth Weakland, was on the phone in their room, 207, with the door open, when the three loud bangs sounded. In 208, Anthony Pagorek thought that someone was nailing something into the wall. His roommate, Mark Pietka, thought someone was probably kicking a soccer ball around the corridor, as Neenef was known to do. Annoyed, Anthony looked out but only saw John Evans, doing the same. Back in 203, Navin heard the screams, and the words, “Neenef, don’t do that!” followed by the loud bangs. Like everyone else, he reached into the realm of the known to make sense of the sound: THIS ENDLESS NIGHT 107 It was kind of like he was taking a bat and hitting it against the wall, you know? I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t understand what was happening. I know he had a bat in the room, I remember seeing a bat in the room, I thought he was hitting it against the wall, that’s what it sounded like. No clue what was going on. It just kept going, and all of a sudden there was nothing. It was just, like, silence. And then I just kind of smelled some smoke. I was so naive—I had never even smelled gunsmoke before—I didn’t understand what it was. Navin went out into the hall, where people had started to...