Burn in Hell, Philip Markoff

It was 2008 I believe when I met Julissa Brisman. She was a friend of a friend. I remember she was an aspiring actress who was also dipping her feet into modeling. She had a big smile and deep down eyes. Julissa was very pretty in person, so an acting career wouldn’t be a stretch. We laughed as I remember she told me she was a Taurus, determined and a fighter. She laughed when I said fighter. Looking back that was ironic in how her life ended. Julissa had coffee with a friend of mine and myself. She dressed nicely and seemed to have an awful lot of money on her for an aspiring actress. Down the line it was revealed she was giving massages on craigslist, a job that would lead to the end of her life.

I met Julissa two or three times after that. A young woman who had taken a wrong turn or two, she was desperately trying to get her life back on track. Julissa was attending AA and going to school to be a drug and alcohol counselor. Life wasn’t easy for her it seemed, everything was a struggle. Julissa never complained, took it in stride, and was always very sweet when you saw her. One woman on a message board said after her murder, “It’s not like she was some kid selling candy. She was a hooker.”

I wanted to stop this judgmental wench of a woman and inform her that while her six cats could keep her all the company in the world, he who is without sin may cast the first stone. Also, sometimes life isn’t as kind to everyone as it has been to you. Addiction and alcoholism are continual and progressive diseases. Recovery comes sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly and it takes time to shed the lifestyle. But more than anything, regardless of what she was doing to pay the bills she didn’t deserve to be murdered in cold blood.  Julissa was someone who fought through life and could never seem to get a break. Things were starting to turn around for her when she died.

Fast forward to the spring of 2009 when she got murdered. I was looking at the paper and reading the reports and at first I didn’t recognize her because her hair was blonde. A minute later I got a call from the mutual friend who said, “April, you know Julissa was murdered, right?” I took a moment. I did a double take. She was the girl I had met a handful of times, the aspiring actress and drug counselor who was trying to get sober. The one with the sunbeam smile. The Taurus.

Days later details emerged. Her killer was a medical student named Philip Markoff. White and clean cut, there were photos of him getting his white coat in the paper. Like my brother and sister, he was on his way to helping people and saving lives. Somewhere on the course he deviated and decided his time and energy would be better spent taking them.

In this photos Philip Markoff appeared stoic and cold. They attributed the fact that he robbed two prostitutes and preyed on transgendered individuals selling sex services was that he was in debt between student loans and a gambling problem. Unlike the others he had robbed, Julissa fought back. She had been a fighter. She fought against drugs and alcohol to get sober. Now she was fighting this creep who pointed a gun at her. As I saw this I thought, “Jesus, why didn’t you just get robbed safely sweetheart?”

On the other hand, I think she knew he was a monster, a demon. He was going to kill her. Julissa was a Taurus and they never give up. I could only imagine how terrifying the last few moments of her life were. I read she scratched him on the neck leaving a long, bloody gash. I found myself hoping it would leave a scar, letting this predator know that he wasn’t God, he didn’t have the right to decide who lived and who died. To someone like Philip Markoff these women were easy prey. They were sex workers. They didn’t matter.  He was going to be a doctor. So what was a dead hooker, right? Philip Markoff was going to be sipping champagne on the veranda, and in that equation Julissa Brisman didn’t count.

Of course Markoff had it all planned out. He had a fiancé at home, who was pleasantly ignorant as it can be seen in the police tapes. Sheltered and a tad spoiled, she probably unknowingly ignored some of the big red flags her man was putting up. While this psychotic charlatan was probably a master of disguise, on the other hand there is only so much one can hide. I can only imagine her horror and disgust as she realized the truth, she was about to marry a sexual sadist. Megan McAllister is now in medical school in St. Kits. She is probably unable to trust men. She is probably shaken forever. She probably has nightmares. And sometimes I bet she probably feels like she has Julissa’s blood on her hands.

Philip was set to go to trial. There were delays because as we know, in our great country’s judicial system victims have zero rights. As proceedings kept being delayed, my mutual friend began to have a meltdown. She claimed Julissa spoke to her in her dreams. Watching the news was hard for her. Eventually this friend took a job in Florida to clear her head. It seemed the only thing Mr. Markoff was ever capable of was destroying lives. Maybe he should have gone into practice with Jack Kevorkian.

However, Philip would never face trial. Being a coward, he took the coward’s way out and killed himself. Apparently on the one year anniversary of what would have been his wedding he suffocated himself with a bag. Before that he scrawled his name as well as his nickname for his fiancé on his cell wall. In a way this was actually a blessing. Massachusettes is quite liberal when it comes to criminals so Markoff would have gotten off easy. Not to mention he claimed he was indigent and the state was paying for his defense. Also, Julissa’s family would have had the pain of not just rehashing her last moments, but also some male defense lawyer dragging the poor thing through the mud. To top it off, the media would make it even worse as they kept highlighting that she was a sex worker. In the end it worked out for the best.

In his passing there was no justice for Markoff’s living victims, the two women attacked in the hotel room. Like Julissa, life had been unkind to them as well. No one wakes up, goes to first grade, and tells their classmates about how they dream of selling sex on craigslist. It happens because life hasn’t been kind to them and they have been pushed there. Same with the transgendered women he preyed on. Social outcasts who barely have rights, they had the pain of facing a sadistic bully like Markoff. Much like Julissa, he didn’t feel they counted either. Where is the justice for those victims?The answer, there is none. There are only horrible memories and nightmares.

I felt compelled to write this because I saw the Lifetime Movie The Craigslist Killer recently. About a year after his death, I caught wind of the making of it at the time through an actress friend. Just this past weekend, I came across it on youtube. The film portrayed Megan McAllister, his fiancé, as the nice girl, while Philip Markoff seemed like the perfect man trying to be the perfect fiancé with a dark secret. The movie gave him more of a sympathetic edge in an attempt to make him real and human. Bravo for making him human, but I found it as offensive as hell. Maybe it was because I had crossed paths with Julissa Brisman. Either way, in her character’s brief appearance on screen when I saw her get shot it made me ill. I remember reading the headlines and knowing that the young woman I had coffee with had been gunned down like she was an animal in the woods, simply erased because she was nothing. I remembered her smile, her laugh, and her nodding when I said Taurans were stubborn as hell and that they were fighters.

The fact she was a fighter was the reason that he killed her. Bullies don’t know what to do when someone fights back. She wasn’t going to let him rob her. Julissa was going to ID him and expose his secrets. Philip Markoff’s perfect life would be in shambles. His fiancé would leave. He had to kill her. Seeing that part of the movie upset me so badly that I actually got nauseous and almost lost my lunch.

When Philip Markoff died people were upset that there no answers into why he did what he did. Profilers had different explanations. They struggled to know, to understand. They want to know if it was something rooted in childhood, something so that they can make an excuse. There is only one answer and that is plain and simple, Philip Markoff was the closest thing to pure evil that many people will ever come into contact with. In Dante’s Inferno, there is a layer of hell where the physical body is still on Earth but the soul is in hell. My Humanities teacher, Mr. Tietz, explained that you could see it when you peered into a person’s eyes, like crime Godfather John Gotti, because there was nothing there but darkness. I remember seeing the pictures of Philip Markoff and he possessed the same sort of blank stare, the darkness behind his eyes. It was because there was nothing there. No soul. No regard for others. Robbing and killing were easy for him. Ironically, he was trying to help people by becoming a doctor, a job where one has to regard human life. By the Grace of God he never practiced medicine which is a miracle for all mankind.

I can say one thing for sure. I know there is a hell and Philip Markoff has finally come to join his physical spirit. He is burning and suffering in a place so terrible no one can imagine it. It’s indescribable. However, he deserves every horrific minute of his fate. God decides which of His creatures matters and which does not. Philip Markoff tried to play God and thought he could eliminate Julissa because how dare she fight back? How dare this hotel room masseuse stand up to the good doctor? As for those who will throw stones when I say this citing Julissa was not perfect, that is true. No one is. However, there was a difference. Julissa Brisman was an innocent struggler. Philip Markoff was nothing short of the devil.

I know Julissa is finally at peace. She is in a place where she doesn’t have to sell sexual services on craigslist. Since her death the erotic section of the site has been removed. Prostitution is legal in other places around the world and there are things done to protect those women in those countries, it was nice to see we were taking a step in that direction here. Just because they sell their bodies doesn’t mean that they are people who don’t count.

And to Philip Markoff, the afterlife is a bitch, isn’t it? Just like the word you probably commonly used to refer to women while you were alive. I hope you enjoy hell asshole. It is rumored the devil is a woman. You could kill yourself and escape jail and a trial that way. But eternity is forever, assweed. Satan is always on PMS. Hope you enjoy her, mutherfucker!

 Love, April

I Came, I Saw, I Sang: Memoirs of a Singing Telegram Delivery Girl

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Fear 'n' Faith

This past week and a half has been a doozy. I have been sick as a freaking dog. To top it off I gave up being a part of something that has literally helped define me for the last several months. Then there is all this uncertainty about what is next for me. While it looks like we might be inking on something that might be good, it is pre-approved. While I am supposed to be publishing a book, we are a tad behind schedule. And things are coming together and falling apart as far as the music video goes. That’s when the fear creeps in.

The crazy thing about fear is that it dictates so many of the bad things in the world. Most prejudice stems from fear as a matter of fact. Whenever I hear a hateful remark against any group it turns out either the person had a bad experience with just one or they have never met any of those whom they openly slander. People drink, do drugs, eat too much or too little, or have wreckless sex because they want to escape the fear of not being good enough. Or they enter a relationship with someone who is wrong for them because they are afraid of being alone. Sure, sometimes fear is healthy. Like looking both ways so you don’t get hit by a mac truck. But it’s also very bad.

During these fear periods I get scared that I will never work again. Nevermind I am as sick as a dog. I also get scared of the fact that I am getting older. Nevermind my late teens and early twenties were a shit show of insecurities stemming from an imaginary battle with my weight which was really a real battle with myself. While in reality I don’t want that time in my life back again, I begin to get afraid that I will go to that island with six cats and gain three hundred pounds as I snack on my container of Lard ‘n’ Chocolate Delight. I also get afraid that I won’t get what I want. I have been working hard for sometime. Yes, despite the exposure and growing fan base I work the odd jobs. I ask myself what if I never have the career I want and am stuck as a whining actor and comic in the back of the clubs whining about how the ship sailed and marooned me? Worse yet, there is this gaping part of me that feels as if everyone is doing better.

When that gaping part of me sets in, it’s usually when I am sick and have nothing to do. Like the rest of the world, my head becomes a dangerous neighborhood. I don’t need to walk through a gang infested territory naked, I just spend an hour in my own mind. I went on facebook to see an old boyfriend of mine got fat. While he got fat and has a fat new lover girl, he has a new girl and here I am stuck, single, and looking like I could scare people in public. Then of course I go to a page of a girl who is a friend of mine and she is doing marvelously with her career and rest of her life. I begin to get jealous and wish evil things on her. Then I see another girl I know and like most of the time doing well and I just am scowling like Satan’s daughter.

Then I remember the first girl walking down the street, seeing me, giving me a big hug and telling me how great I looked. She also told me how she and her friends saw me on TV and how she was so proud of me for doing so well for myself. The second girl has always been my friend and on several occasions stood up for me when people were ripping me down online. When these realizations come to me I feel like an asshole. It’s like the devil himself has entered my body. I not only want what they have but want to see them fail, when these women are my damn friends. That’s when I start crying. It’s the cough medicine and overdose on Lifetime Movies making me go apeshit.

The crazy thing is, when I find that I am happy for people I usually get what I want. I am not some greedy witch angling like a hag in a cave for some ruby slippers she will never get. I guess it’s the law of returns. The universe is kinder. Plus I have been on both VH1.com and Gawker. I know all about what it is like to have people want to knock you down. I had people claim to know me from certain parts of my life that I never met. And just to be heard they made stuff up about me. It was their way to say “Fuck you, you’re on your way up and I don’t want to be left out of the party.” That being said I feel asinine doing it to anyone else.

Then I think of all the things going for me. I have appeared on NBC, ABC, CBS, E!, TLC, Bravo, The Travel Channel, New York 1, Fox 5, PAX, PIX, and Koldcast. Although my bank account doesn’t reflect it I have been around. I have fans all over the world. I have people who have flown to NYC and brought me and my puppets presents because we have changed their lives. I have worked with celebrities. I have done photo spreads in British magazines. I have had two comedians I look up to say wonderful things about me, and both are legends. One I got to work with, the other defended me live on a radio show where I was being ripped to shreds. My songs have gotten radio airplay. I am close. Things aren’t exactly terrible.

On my way to one of my deliveries today I walked past a dress store where all the clothes were just exquisite. I told myself that I would never look good in one of those. I began to just want to fade away into the sidewalk of NYC. There was that voice again from my late teens and early twenties telling me how ugly and stupid I was. That voice comes out usually when I see beautiful dresses and remember who I wasn’t in high school. I was weird and popular because I did stuff, not because I was pretty. I felt this vulnerability that an ugly duckling feels as they become the wallflower at the school dance and creep out back to cry.

That’s when I heard the voice of Betsy Parrish, a teacher of mine my first year of college. I was basically being asked to leave my acting studio because of a conflict I had with another teacher. Betsy was giving me some sort of pep talk and I started crying. I remember she told me I was enough constantly and I didn’t believe her. Then I heard her say in the back of my mind, “This is what we need to be seeing onstage. You just remember-I believe in you-now go!” Suddenly the vulnerability didn’t seem so horrid. It actually made me feel human in a bizarre sense. But damnit, after all these years it still sucked.

It was weird I thought of Betsy Parrish, the Broadway veteran because earlier that day I had thought I had seen her. I hadn’t but perhaps I crossed her mind. The crazy thing is, I heard a former movement teacher at that particular place in question is a fan of mine. I know the woman wasn’t a fan of mine when she had me as a student. But apparently when some students asked her about me she said she loved my work. I just think it’s crazy. I just want to message her and remind her she was the one who told me perhaps I didn’t belong at said studio.

I ended up delivering the telegram and I think the crazy woman who hired me thought I was a stripper. They had no idea of what they wanted me to do. I was given one set of orders and then they were to bring out a cake. Instead they brought out the cake and had me do my thing. I did my thing, I tried. But I think they thought I was going to be more a stripper. The crazy woman shooshed me with her hand and the guys told me I did a good job. Overall they were very weird people. I was honest and told my boss. I am worried they will rip me up online but I don’t think they know how to read. One girl did actually, but it wasn’t about what I did despite the review. It was in retaliation because she recognized me from a TV appearance. People are nuts when you are visible. They either want to be your friend/fan or they want to fight with you to say they did. I know this nutty bitch did because I heard her tell her friends. Todays girl, I would be worried except I don’t think she knows how to read. I think she was more angry at her coworkers for not being clear about what they ordered and for not doing things the way she wanted.

While that sucked I told my boss who was like, whatever. I went to my next delivery which actually made up for the suckiness of the last one. On this particular delivery I delivered to a nice set of people having fun after work. As a matter of fact they laughed, took photos and even had me pose with the guy in handcuffs. To top it off, I got a very sweet tip. Yes, sweeter than I have gotten in sometime. After leaving that particular assignment it not only made up for the suckiness of the last delivery but for being sick. And most importantly, it made me realize I love my job and I love what I do.

It also made me realize that good things are ahead for me. And the bad things havent been bad but rather gifts. My abusive ex fiancé made me find my voice, brought me back to my puppets and ultimately got me off the self-destructive track I was going. Being broke a few years ago got me to put my nose to the grindstone and to be better at my craft. My public debacles have made my sense of humor stronger and let me know that no one could take me down. In essence, everything happens for a reason.

So while I don’t know what is next for me I know I am doing the right thing with myself. Like a kid on Christmas I am shaking that present, wanting to open it. But it’s not time yet. However, when it is I know God will give me something good.

Or as they say, more to be revealed.

Love April

Dealing With People Who Suck

This is an open note from April and May. We are dealing with some people who hurt our feelings,typically an alcoholic sociopath who has been stalking us and spreading lies and hatred. He is stupid and makes us feel insignificant. I know being a bully makes him feel better about himself but what kind of man picks on two little girls trying their best to make it? We are so poor we have to pay for our Prada with laundry quarters. April's current squeeze is unemployed and May has yet to find a sugar daddy. This man claims to be much more accomplished than us, but he is stalking us. Plain and simple, he wants us both sexually. While this man claims to be gay, we believe he is only gay for pay and really wants to bone us. We both find this disturbing and not only hope this individual accepts his sexuality, whatever it may be regardless of money, and get the love and help he truly needs.