The Truth

T. Lake: MOON LAKE – Here are a few things you should not know about Joseph Coonradt, unless you knew them already.
He was a strong boy, 16 years old, handy with mulching and pulling weeds, eager to swim in the Weeki Wachee River. He made meat loaf with bread crumbs and eggs and Italian seasoning, following his late grandmother's recipe. He liked riding his bike through the unpaved streets of his neighborhood, where the dust rises up and paints the palmettos white.
If you did not know Joseph, then you know these things now only because of the object he found Wednesday afternoon, in his aunt's bedroom, in an unlocked wooden box. This object is the reason a man is now in jail.
It is also the reason Joseph is dead.
And it is, of course, the reason you are reading this story. Sometimes people make the news not because they lived a good life, or a bad one, but simply because of their manner of death.

He was a strong boy, 16 years old, handy with mulching and pulling weeds, eager to swim in the Weeki Wachee River. He made meat loaf with bread crumbs and eggs and Italian seasoning, following his late grandmother's recipe. He liked riding his bike through the unpaved streets of his neighborhood, where the dust rises up and paints the palmettos white.

If you did not know Joseph, then you know these things now only because of the object he found Wednesday afternoon, in his aunt's bedroom, in an unlocked wooden box. This object is the reason a man is now in jail.

It is also the reason Joseph is dead.

And it is, of course, the reason you are reading this story. Sometimes people make the news not because they lived a good life, or a bad one, but simply because of their manner of death.