Sad reminder

Pam Nater was a bright girl with a bright future. She was a neighbor when I was growing up in Clearwater, Fla. We graduated from high school together, and both of us went off to the University of Florida. Her dorm was across the street from mine. We ran into each other often and chatted about how things were going.

I dropped out of college after two years and joined the Army. When Pam disappeared in October 1966, I was in basic training. My mother sent me the newspaper clippings. Pam and a friend had gone to Ocala State Forest on an excursion and were never seen again. Pam was 20. Her friend, Nancy Leichner, was 21.

From time to time over the years, a story would appear in the local papers about their unsolved disappearance. Those of us who knew Pam came to assume the worst. Sadly, it now appears we were correct.

Today’s St. Petersburg Times carried a story under the headline “41 years later, killings solved.”

A suspected serial killer abducted the two women by knifepoint and gunpoint and killed them, according to authorities. The man, a former sheriff’s deputy named Gerald J. Schaefer, was himself slain by a fellow prison inmate in 1995.

Schaefer was serving a life sentence for a double murder. “He liked to do doubles,” a sheriff’s sergeant told the Times. Schaefer often bragged about his exploits. He told another inmate about the murder of Nater and Leichner, and that inmate made detailed notes of the conversation.

The notes were lost in the files for more than 20 years but turned up recently. The details in them fit with other evidence in the record.

The solving of the crime was bittersweet for all involved. The bodies were never recovered. Leichner’s father and both of Pam’s parents died without knowing what had happened to their daughters.

For those of us who knew Pam, the news confirmed what we had long speculated. But it was also a reminder of what a gift life is, and how much death at a young age steals from not only the victim but also from society.