CONCORD, N.H. — New Hampshire victim advocate Jennifer Hunt met her husband at a murder scene. She schedules her vacations around murder trials. She knows the answer to whether cremated remains can be brought on a plane as carry-on luggage. (They can). She once went to five murder scenes in 30 days — while pregnant.
Hunt has been the first to notify scores of people that a loved one had been killed. Those difficult conversations included one with David Cates, whose wife was killed and daughter maimed in a machete-knife attack on his Mount Vernon home while he was out of state on business.
"It was heartbreaking," Hunt said, of having to tell him his wife, Kim, was dead and 11-year-old Jaimie was fighting for her life.
Hunt arranged for the clean-up of the crime scene and stayed in near-constant contact with David and Jaimie Cates in the weeks following the crime. That level of communication resumed as the trials of now-convicted killers Steven Spader and Christopher Gribble approached. It was Hunt who escorted Jaimie into the courtroom to see Gribble — who stabbed her — led away in chains to serve a life sentence.
The high-profile involvement of advocates in New Hampshire, such as in the Mont Vernon home invasion case, has helped the Office of Victim/Witness Assistance win a $485,000, three-year grant from the U.S. Justice Department to help the program and develop it as a model for other states.
The office was singled out for its unique qualities: In New Hampshire, victim advocates work exclusively on homicide cases. They respond to the crime scene alongside prosecutors and investigators as an integral part of the team. They gather information to identify the relatives of the slain and then make the death notifications.
"That's where the trust and relationship begins," said Sandra Matheson, director of the office she joined at its creation in 1987. "You're giving someone the worst possible news they can ever get."
In other states, advocates typically don't meet the families of murder victims until the court process is well under way and they don't go to crime scenes.
Hunt and her colleagues — Lynda Ruel, Joelle Donnelly and Milissa Schilke — rotate being on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week statewide. New Hampshire averages 16-17 slayings a year, but the number spiked as high as 36 in 1989.
Hunt, 41, said that knock on the door of a loved begins a wrenching episode. "You're changing someone's life forever."
Hunt said she doesn't "sugarcoat" the fate of loved ones. "It's not helpful," Hunt said. "It gives people hope."
In many cases the death notification is followed almost immediately by investigators' questions about the victim's routines, acquaintances and relationships. The advocates remain for support.
Family members often need to get something out of the area that has become a sealed-off crime scene — a photograph, a pet, medication. The victim advocates go in and retrieve those when possible. Hunt remembers one death in which a mother was shot to death in her house— just after her elementary school-aged daughter had brought home cases of Girl Scout cookies to deliver.
"She had to have those cookies," said Hunt, who went in and got them. "It was the only thing she could control."
Matheson said New Hampshire is among only four states in which homicides are prosecuted by one central unit out of the Attorney General's office — as opposed to by counties or districts. The Office of Victim/Witness Assistance is located in the same Concord headquarters.
The walls of Hunt's windowless office are covered with photos of victims and their survivors: A girl in a prom dress who was 3 when her father was killed. The last school photo of 14-year-old Robbie Mills, who was stabbed to death in 1998 by two older teens who wanted his bicycle. Jack Reid — killed in a murder-for-hire plot hatched by John Brooks — pictured with his grandson. Photos of David and Jaimie Cates.
Hunt said her connection with the Cates family was instant. She said her own son and Jaimie are just days apart in age.
"Being a mother you instinctively get that protective nature over a child," Hunt said. "Here we had a child who survived."
Lead prosecutor Jeffery Strelzin said most murder cases don't include an assault victim who survives, as Jaimie Cates did.
"She experienced first-hand the absolute horror of what happened to her mother," Strelzin said of Jaimie. "That creates a different set of challenges Jen had to deal with."
Those included being at Jaimie's hospital bedside the day after the attacks while a detective interviewed her about her assailants and what she saw. She had survived by playing dead, but watched through one eye as Gribble plunged a knife into her mother's throat to end her life.
On Monday, William Marks and Quinn Glover, both of Amherst, will be sentenced on plea agreements they reached with the state after testifying against Spader. Glover is expected to get a 20-year sentence for robbery and burglary. Marks will plead guilty to being an accomplice to murder and other felonies and get a 30-year sentence. Marks and Glover helped break into Cates' home but took no part in the attacks.
Hunt also worked closely with school officials at Soughegan Middle School before Jaimie went there, because younger siblings of several of the defendants also attend that school. Even as the trials were approaching, she and school officials were grappling with how to shield those children — not just Jaimie— from live stream video of the trial. It was Hunt who strongly advised Cates to skip the testimony about Kimberly Cates autopsy, when a medical examiner detailed each of the 32 machete slashes and stab wounds she suffered and that she was alive for them all. He did.
Victim advocate services don't end with the verdict. Advocates stay with cases through appeals and parole board hearings. They answer questions from family members years after cases are over. Some want to know if the convict in their case is behaving behind bars, or just need reassurance he or she is still behind bars.
Since graduating from Plymouth State College in 1993 with a degree in psychology, Hunt has spent 17 years as a victim advocate — five with the Grafton County Attorney's office and 12 with the state. She says she can't imagine doing anything else.
"I still love my job," Hunt said. "We can't turn back the hands of time. We can only help."