TORONTO — Rebecca Middleton's family members celebrated what would have been her 37th birthday this past Monday with a cake, two decades after the Belleville, Ont., woman was raped, stabbed repeatedly and left to die on the purported island paradise that is Bermuda.
"She's still part of the family; it's just that she's not with us," Dave Middleton says of his late daughter. "It wasn't her fault that she got killed."
Cindy Bennett says she still misses her daughter. She wonders what her girl might have been like now had she, like her two older brothers, been able to grow up, get married and have kids of her own.
"The 20 years that have passed — it makes every memory of Becky sweeter," Bennett, 64, says. "Still in your gut, it feels like this just happened."
In the early hours of July 3, 1996, the mutilated body of the gregarious and trusting 17-year-old was discovered. When a taxi failed to show after an evening of fun, Middleton and her best friend Jasmine Meens — now Jasmine Bumstead — accepted rides on a motorcycle and moped with two locals.
Meens, whose father lived in Bermuda, made it home. Middleton, on an extended vacation with Jasmine, did not.
Dave Middleton, now 67, was at work with the local utilities company in Belleville, Ont., when the call came from his former father-in-law. Dave and Cindy had split up a few years earlier.
"He says, 'Becky's been killed,'" Middleton says. "My brain told me that it couldn't be true. Maybe it was my heart telling my brain it couldn't be true."
The grim news was soon confirmed.
"A switch clicks in you, and you're not the same person that you were before."
Bermudan police soon arrested two men, but the family, already victimized by the savage killing of their daughter, would find themselves revictimized. Bermuda, it seemed, was more intent on preserving its image as a pristine, safe travel destination than in delivering justice.
"The whole thing is so discouraging," Dave Middleton says. "They had it all cooked before it even got to court."
The two men charged in the killing were Kirk Mundy, then 21, and Justis Smith, then 19. At the time, Mundy was on bail for the armed robbery of a bank vehicle in November 1995, a crime for which he would later be given a 16-year sentence.
Mundy pointed the finger at Smith. In exchange for his testimony, Mundy pleaded guilty to being an accessory, while Smith faced a charge of murder. DNA evidence would later show Mundy had raped the teen.
The lead prosecutor on the case left the island a week before Smith's trial, leaving it to a newcomer to take up the case. After days of evidence, the judge directed the jury to acquit Smith, saying there was not enough evidence against him.
"Half the people on the jury were crying," Dave Middleton says. "They couldn't believe it."
What followed were a series of futile attempts to retry Smith that were ultimately rejected by Britain's Privy Council on the grounds he had already stood trial once. Bermuda authorities would later concede the family had suffered a "great injustice," but nothing changed.
In 2007, internationally renowned human-rights lawyer Cherie Booth, wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, argued Smith's murder charge was wrongly dismissed and that Mundy should have faced a more serious charge.
"She was going to straighten it out and we were going to get a retrial," Middleton says. "That didn't happen."
Ultimately, he says, he just had to move on.
"After a few years, you somehow manage to put it in the rear-view mirror instead of out in front all the time. It never goes away. I still think of her as being 17."
Ten years after the murder, Bermuda compensated the Middleton family for pain and suffering. The cheque was for $2,840.63.
"It's 10 years later and they want to sweep it under the carpet," Bennett said then.
Two years ago, Bermuda officials abruptly yanked film permits from a Canadian documentary crew probing the Middleton case, citing "reputational risks" to the country. Needed interviews were filmed elsewhere.
Middleton's mother still ponders the time and energy her ex-husband and others put into seeing justice done — all seemingly for naught. While she may not see it happen in her lifetime, she says, justice will come, and that's enough for her.
"I can't just be waiting and waiting for an end. The end came when Becky died. The rest was just a bunch of trying to get the right thing done," Bennett said. "I can't keep looking for something else."
In some small ways, however, Rebecca Jane Middleton lives on.
One of her brother's daughters has Rebecca as a middle name. Her other brother's daughter has Jane as a middle name. Meens would also give her daughter the middle name Rebecca, while the man who found Middleton named his daughter Becky. Scholarships in Belleville and Bermuda bear her name.
And when the moon is full, Bennett casts back to a few days before her daughter left for Bermuda never to come home. The teen, Bennett says, was worried about getting homesick, so her mother reassured her that all she needed to do was look at the moon and know the family was thinking of her.
"I will see her someday," Bennett says. "I just won't see her in the same form."
