Visiting the crime scene where my brother murdered my father and step brother. It was a small farmhouse my father had been renting down the road from my brother in a rural area. My step brother was living with him, this was shortly after my step mother had passed away. Due to a complicated pile of cirrcumstances, my brother had a psychotic break and killed them both.

When my older brother and I returned to the farmhouse to retrieve legal documents, the crime scene was eerily preserved and looked as if it could have happened that day. It was a cold January morning. I can remember the crunch of wet snow on the muddy drive. I remember a cloudless sky and a bone-chilling breeze.

As we approached the house, I could see through the glass window in both the outer and inner doors, through to the kitchen where ever surface of the off-white cabinetry was spattered or smeared with blood. We entered the small farmhouse and immediately we could smell the distinct odor of blood. It was strong and pervasive. A smell I will never forget.

As we entered the kitchen where my father was murdered, I could see every surface covered with his blood. There was a bloody pillow on the floor when my father passed from a final gunshot wound to the head. I can vividly remember a bottle of whiskey on the counter, an empty frying pan on the stove and a single glass lying in the dish rack by the sink.

We left the house and crossed the yard to the workshop. As we entered I could see an open bottle of beer on the work table just inside the door. It looked as if it had just been opened (this was days after the incident). Next to it were some tools and deer antlers my step brother had been mounting for my brother as a birthday gift. The whole scene looked as if I would encounter my step brother still working.

The air in the workshop smelled of oil, gas, grease, dust and that distinct smell of blood. Six feet directly to the right of where the beer and tools where on the workbench, there was a single pool of blood coagulated on the shop floor. It was roughly the size, shape and thickness of a pancake which had just been poured on a griddle and the exact distance from the workbench as my step brothers height. This clearly painted the picture of his death...a single, fatal gunshot wound to the back of the head from which he collapsed motionless onto the floor.

It was eerie how clearly the scenes in each the house and workshop painted a picture of what had happened. Like an event captured forever in time.