Out of respect

Ann Marie Shirran’s remains have been found. May she finally rest in peace. But peace will be hard to come by for family and friends of the 32-year-old woman. They have had a loved one wrenched from their lives in a most abrupt and unholy manner.

Shirran disappeared from her Kilbride home on July 18. Police scoured the area for weeks, and at one point focused on a spot near Blackhead, off the Cape Spear highway.

On Friday, a body was discovered by campers in an overgrown pit near Cappahayden. Police confirmed Sunday that the body was that of Shirran, and within less than a day had arrested a 39-year-old man. David Folker of St. John’s was charged Tuesday morning with second degree murder and with performing an indignity to a human body.

Folker was Shirran’s boyfriend.

This is the kind of story that attracts a huge amount of attention.

Almost as soon as the news hit that the body was Shirran’s, people began to pour out their sympathy via Facebook. More than 6,000 people have joined an online group, “Missing Mommy (Ann Shirran).”

A story on The Telegram’s website Monday morning garnered close to 10,000 hits within 12 hours of being posted. The vast majority of messages posted to online sites offered condolences to the family. and expressed hope that justice will be served.

There will be an pleasant ring to media coverage of this crime. Many of those following this story do so only out of morbid curiosity. And there will be those, incredibly, who insist they have a God-given right to know every sordid detail — as if prying into others’ tragedies is as sacred a tenet as one’s own life and liberty.

This is a generation, after all, that has grown up not only on a steady diet of TV crime drama and true crime documentaries. We watch Newfoundland actor Bob Joy poking at cadavers on “CSI: New York” as if he was just taking out the garbage. There’s a broad desensitivity to such things, and sometimes that can mask the true impact of such aberrant acts.

But there are important and legitimate reasons to keep chasing this story, even if that pursuit should be conducted with due dignity and respect.

People do, after all, have a right to know that justice has been done. They want to know that someone will be held accountable for Shirran’s death. And they have good reason to want to know, in some small way, how such a thing could happen, and if anything can be learned from it.

The media, too, has a duty to keep ahead of the rumours, to sort fact from fiction and to make sure gossip and speculation does not cloud the truth.

If family members wish to go public with their grief, or wish to pursue a broader cause as a result of their experience, that is their prerogative. If they don’t, they deserve no less than peace and quiet as they try to move on with their lives.

And everyone, media included, should respect that.