Apart From Death

Do coincidences exist?

I want to write a book about the death and life of a woman I watched be murdered, so I buy and read books to learn how to write. I order a second hand copy of My Dark Places by James Ellroy to research. The book is about the author’s mother who was murdered when he was a child.

I pick the book up, flip it open and there lay the receipt for its original purchase:

It was originally purchased at a book store called Small World Books in Venice Beach, California. I live in the state of Washington and ordered it online through Amazon.

The last known address of the missing woman that we believe is the murder victim was – yep, Venice Beach, California.

Is this a coincidence?

I hired my own detective and this is taken from his report:

Every online resource for Madeline Lynn Babcock has her living in Venice Beach, California, when she went missing. Lyn was a divorced mother of four. Her children lived in Goldendale, Washington. The only highway to get to Goldendale in 1968 would have taken her through Vancouver, Washington, where she most likely ran into my father.

She never made it to her children because I believe she never made it out of Vancouver alive.

The word coincidence (or by chance) is found only once in the Bible in Luke 10:31, when Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. In this story, Jesus said that a man had been set upon by robber and left by the road badly injured and “by coincidence or by chance, as several translations read, a priest walked by.”

And by coincidence, several others walked by including the Good Samaritan who helped the injured man.

Am I her Good Samaritan?

Apart from her death and some day mine, I will continue to carry her story with me trying to bring her honor and remembrance.