A Rip in Heaven

A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath (2004) is a true-crime story and memoir by Jeanine Cummins. The book recounts the violent rape and murder of two young women, Julie and Robin Kerry, the author’s cousins, and focuses on the aftermath for their families. Tom Cummins, their cousin who is present during the crimes, is thrown off a bridge into the Mississippi River with the two women but survives. Innocent, he becomes the police’s main suspect after he fails a polygraph test. Tom and his extended family suffer many injustices from both the police and the media before the real killers are finally caught and brought to justice.

The book opens with the Cummins family visiting the Kerry family in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1991. Tom Cummins sneaks out with his cousins, Julie and Robin Kerry, that night to see a poem that Julie spray-painted on the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. Julie is an aspiring poet, and both she and Robin are passionate activists for peace and equality. At the bridge, they meet four young men, who at first talk with them and hang out amicably.