Remembering Linda Franklin

The New York Times
By SARAH KERSHAW
Published: October 16, 2002

It was a tumultuous year for Linda Franklin. But hers were not just the stresses of working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the time of terror, or the reflexive motherly worries about her children and the health of a first grandchild about to be born.

A year ago, at 46, Ms. Franklin, an analyst for the F.B.I., had faced the prospect of her own death: a diagnosis of breast cancer and tests showing the disease so advanced that she had to have a double mastectomy, relatives said. Then, late in August, they said, her 18-year-old niece was killed in a car accident, and there was a funeral, a wrenching family gathering that turned out to be the last time she saw her parents.

Despite all that, there were to be cheerful things ahead as Ms. Franklin made her way on Monday night with her husband to Home Depot.

There was the first grandchild, of course, and Ms. Franklin had recently received a clean bill of health from her doctors and was making good progress in her physical therapy. She was adored at her job at the F.B.I.'s National Infrastructure Protection Center, where she had worked for four years as an intelligence operations specialist in the cyberdivision and was considered a keen analyst, colleagues said.

She and her husband, Ted Franklin, a network engineer for a Washington technology company, had recently bought a penthouse apartment in Arlington. It was bigger than their red-brick, two-bedroom, one-bathroom condominium on South Wakefield Street, which had accommodated so many relatives in need of a place to stay and stray animals that Ms. Franklin had taken in.

Their condo, along a tidy row of town houses on a gentle street in this Washington suburb, was virtually all packed up; moving vans had already carted away boxes and furniture.

It was the new penthouse apartment -- and all the planned repairs and tinkering they planned to do after moving in on Friday -- that drew the Franklins to Home Depot, for what was their last errand together, friends and relatives said. As the couple loaded up their red convertible, Ms. Franklin became the suburban sniper's ninth kill.

''She was the most giving person I know, ''said Paul Hulseberg, who worked with her
and remained a close friend after he left the bureau. ''There were times when there were six adults living in this two-bedroom town house. Because if anybody in the family needed anything they came here.''

Ms. Franklin, 47, had begun her career as a teacher. Her father, Charles Moore, who lives with his wife, Mary Ann, in Gainesville, Fla., said she was bent on teaching and interested in community service from a young age. She spent part of her childhood in Indiana, but the family moved to Florida while she was in middle school, Mr. Moore said. She studied education at the University of Florida and then spent years working overseas -- in Guatemala, Honduras, Germany, Okinawa and Belgium -- as a high school English teacher employed by the Department of Defense. She raised two children, a son and daughter, as a single mother, before marrying Mr. Franklin eight years ago. She also raised a second niece, Mr. Hulseberg said.

''She was tough, she went through a lot,'' Mr. Moore said.

He said that after years of teaching she got ''burned out,'' and when she heard the F.B.I. had jobs available she applied and ''the F.B.I. snapped her right up.''

Mr. Moore said he and his wife were planning to go to Arlington next week to visit their daughter, something they did three or four times a year. ''I don't think we'll ever go there again,'' he said flatly.

Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, issued a statement today, saying, "Tragically, a member of the F.B.I. family last night became the latest victim of the Washington, D.C., area sniper killer.''

Mr. Mueller continued, ''The employees who worked with Linda -- and all of us -- are deeply shocked and angry over this tragedy.''

Outside the Franklin home today, an F.B.I. colleague of hers read a statement from the family expressing devastation and appealing to the public for help in catching the killer.

Mr. Moore's voice was devoid of emotion as he listed his daughter's accomplishments and described her life in a numb monotone. ''It hasn't sunk in yet,'' he said.

At the Home Depot where Ms. Franklin was killed, a memorial was set up this afternoon in the parking space on the lower level of the parking garage where she was shot, and Arlington residents drifted over to the spot, some weeping, to stare or leave something behind. The spot was surrounded by four orange cones. Inside the cones, there was a pot of white chrysanthemums, with three American flags stuck into the soil. There was also a statue of an angel, a stuffed red heart, four candles and a bouquet of carnations tied with a red, white and blue ribbon.

A neighbor of Ms. Franklin's, Verena Mueller, who did not know the latest victim, stood on the sidewalk near her home today sobbing uncontrollably as she recounted her plans for Monday evening: a trip to the same Home Depot, a few miles away in Falls Church, at roughly the same time Ms. Franklin went, to buy Plexiglas and wood to fortify her greenhouse for the winter. By 8:30 p.m. on Monday, Ms. Mueller said,
she realized that she had not finished the measurements, so at the last minute she postponed the errand.

''We all go shopping there,'' she said, referring to Seven Corners on Arlington Boulevard, near where the shooting occurred. ''That's my mall, that's my Home Depot.''