IN PRAISE AND MEMORY OF DANI KELLER; SHE DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER…

I was about to pop out for a movie when our digital cable box showed the letters ERS. My wife and I turned the TV on to see an Amber Alert (for non-US residents, this is a ‘flash’ message dispatched across state highways and cable systems alerting the public of child abductions). Someone in Novato had abducted a child. No more info than that. I thought about it for a few seconds, felt sorry for the child in the situation (whatever the situation was) and went to the movie.

It was late when I came in. Before going to bed I switched my computer on and checked out a local newspaper site, ostensibly to see what the critic had said about the movie I’d just seen. Before I got there, a headline caught my eye. PORN KING’S SON HELD ON MURDER CHARGE. And I read the story with a growing sense of total, and utter, disbelief…

…when the pre-schooler was a toddler, she went to a playgroup called MyGym. A fine facility with great staff, MyGym was one of her favorite places. Dani Keller worked at MyGym, and Dani was the pre-schooler’s favorite instructor. She loved Dani and Dani loved her. They clicked. Indeed, they both had the same spritzy, fizzy, bubbly-yet-smart energy in their eyes. Thus when we finally got around to the idea of using a babysitter once in a while, Dani was our girl.

She’d make her way over from the sunset district and we’d leave the two of them alone, knowing full-well the biggest problem would come when Dani had to leave and the pre-schooler would be upset. She was a bit of a punk rocker, so I foisted Motorhead t-shirts on her and often discussed music. We each gave her rides home a few times despite her insistence that public transport would be fine, and inevitably the conversation would drift to the ‘boy’ in her life and the people she’d met in that social/personal life context. She was not a shy lass  yet she was also not a salacious person. No, Dani was really just a sweet, bubbly girl who seemed to enjoy life and some it’s copious trimmings. If anything, my wife and I would chuckle at a ‘naivety’ we both sensed from her whenever guys came up, but it was always as an observation and not a fault. She was brilliant with our pre-schooler and we trusted her 1000%. Good enough by a mile, right?

I remember clearly the night she told us she had fallen deep for James Mitchell, the son of Mitchell Brothers theater co- founder Jim Mitchell.  The Mitchell Brothers are widely recognized to have helped mainstream porn take off in the public sector, and all was going swimmingly until Jim Mitchell shot his brother Artie to death. It was, to say the least, a controversial, tumultuous family and crime. So when Dani spoke of it all, when she touched on a history I already knew, I mentioned that there was perhaps a bit too much drama stewing there for little old grumpy suburban me. She cheerfully said she was comfortable with that, she reiterated how much she liked him and that was that with regards to discussing the relationship.

I remember when she told us she was pregnant. She was delighted but a little worried in the way that a first-time-to-be Mum is. She said she might speak with my wife for some advice as the pregnancy marched on, and as I write this I’m not sure whether she did speak with her a couple of times about a couple of small questions, but as happens when you’re pregnant, work became less and baby became more.

We lost contact for a while, as you would. She wasn’t working and was pregnant, we were busy, she moved, we moved…life stuff. And then, a week ago, I got a friend request via Facebook from a Danielle Keller. Funnily enough, I’d been sorting some photos on my computer and had come across a photo of her and the pre-schooler, which had pressed the ‘I wonder how Dani’s doing’ button. So I was happy to hear from her. I saw a photo of her baby, Samantha, and was happily alarmed to find she was closing in a year old. In turn, Dani remarked on how the pre-schooler had grown. It was the sort of ‘long lost electronic catch-up’ that Facebook is good for, and I was going to mention it all to my wife before out life got louder and last week became consumed with the incidentals of pre-schoolers, teenagers and work. I think it was last Thursday she’d commented on the pre-schooler’s photo. I had planned to respond in detail today, which is typically a good day for me to catch up on correspondence and the like people-free…

…as I finished the story, pieces fell together. ’Porn King’s son’…Samantha…murder…Mum…and I hoped my mental math was wrong. I checked my Facebook page again. Samantha was the name of Dani’s daughter, and there was a comment from someone saying they were glad she’d been found safe. The victim of the murder, the mother, had not been named officially, but I knew who it was.

I never knew Dani Keller as a Mum, but I knew her as a babysitter to my pre-schooler, and using that as a yardstick, I feel very confident in saying she was surely nothing short of spectacular. I’m sure she read a lot to Samantha and I’m sure she took her out a lot. I’m sure she laughed a lot with her and I’m sure she smiled a lot with her. I’m sure her eyes sparkled with her a lot and I’m sure that sparkle has been passed on.

I never knew James Mitchell. I sadly knew more about his father than I know about most of my friend’s fathers. But I knew nothing about him. And in truth, how could anybody know him? How could anybody know a father who’s own father killed his brother, and who is now himself a father who murdered his daughter’s mother? How could anyone know the person who would do that? It is unthinkable except sadly it isn’t, because it happened, and it’s happened to the wrong person, the wrong fucking person, as these things so tragically tend to. It’s so ugly, so darkly, disturbingly ugly, that judgement of his actions in the circumstances seems trite; they don’t just speak for themselves, they scream, they bleed their lungs screaming for themselves exactly what they are. One more child deserted by their father. One more poor child who’s father didn’t know how to be a father, didn’t know how to be a man, didn’t know how to be all the things you should be to both your partners and your kids, your friends and your family, your workmates and your society.

I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good friend of Dani Keller’s. That honor would’ve belonged to the pre-schooler. But we got on and we were friends in the casual sense, the sense that had Dani Keller suggested meeting up the next time she was in San Francisco with her daughter, I’d have excitedly told my wife and Bea that we would be seeing Dani and her baby in the park at such and such a time.

I am sad on many levels. Sad for the loss Dani’s mother and daughter have suffered and sad for the loss her friends are enduring. But as much as anything, I am sad that something like this can happen to someone who really was such a sparklehorse, who carried such a jingly-jangly happy-go-lucky energy and edge.

Wherever you are Dani Keller, I hope you’re doing OK?

With love from the Chirazi’s…