My deepest condolences to you and to the rest of Alissa Blanton's family.
Those who search for cause and effect in the victim's behavior (or their own dark histories with judges) must realize the act against her was
arbitrary: A decision to take a human life based on the whims and pathology of a killer. It has nothing to do with the trajectory of Ms. Blanton's life. There will never be good reason to hunt individuals for sport. Those who commented on the news story with slander might have told themselves they needed to offer perspective, but their need was never that: grief is the only humane perspective, vindication and remembrance, the only motives. Of course this is the worst possible time to strike out at the victim; on some level, the commenters knew that.
Like other bigots who project personal degradation onto the structure of the world around them, those who despise female independence and youthful beauty are welcome to writhe in their own invented torture gardens. But they are so breathtakingly wrong that everyone who reads them will recognize the error. The rest of us will always mourn the loss of an individual taken from the world. It was not a sacrifice. It was an injustice.
I believe I have some sense of what you might be feeling. In the past, I've experienced such loss twice: Women who had been bound inextricably to life -- theirs and mine -- torn from it senselessly, arbitrarily, their killer never found. I will always be touching phantoms, reaching out for shoulders that are not there. It is a hole that can never be filled, their futures, a mystery that can't be known. You weep and shriek to yourself in solitude, and find some way to arise from your bed with eyes like wounded rags. Detectives, and journalists in search of titillation, will make the attempt to trace events. But only you can testify to time how much your loved ones mattered.
If there is a thread of salaciousness in your lost one's history, then journalists will sniff it out. Know this and do not waste energy and good will reacting to it. Speak of Ms. Blanton's accomplishments and virtues whenever possible. When in the public eye, emphasize them, and the meaning of her time on earth. Do not allow minor carrion the privilege of meriting your anger.
One thing I do know: Allssa will continue to speak to you.
After more than a decade, the women I mentioned before are still with me. Perhaps this is partly guilt haunting my conscience -- the feeling that, had I done something differently, perhaps they would still be here. There is also the possibility they exist as angels: I leave the devout to that certainty and atheists to that impossibility. I myself am an agnostic and cannot be the judge.
But I can tell you this: I still picture them as clearly as if they were still here. Photographs are secondary: In the imagination, I hear them speak; when I write or lie abed, they sometimes answer my questions. Our memories resurrect those who are torn from us, that the beloved may linger beside us. Take comfort in this: she'll be with you as time winds down.
"Dirge without Music," by Edna St. VIncent Millay
