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Slain cop's widow wages long campaign to see justice done
By Andrea Cavanaugh, Ventura County Star Staff writer
Dec. 9 - Twenty years ago today, Maureen Faulkner got that middle-of-the-night knock at the door that every spouse of a law-enforcement officer fears the most. The three Philadelphia police officers who stood on her doorstep early on that cold December morning told her that her husband, officer Daniel Faulkner, 26, had been shot while making a traffic stop.
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Twenty years ago today, Maureen Faulkner got that middle-of-the-night knock at the door that every spouse of a law-enforcement officer fears the most.
The three Philadelphia police officers who stood on her doorstep early on that cold December morning told her that her husband, officer Daniel Faulkner, 26, had been shot while making a traffic stop.
At the hospital, Faulkner, then 25, waited for news of her husband's condition.
"It felt like an eternity," she said. "Finally a doctor came and he just said, 'I'm sorry, he's gone.' "
While waiting to learn her husband's fate, Faulkner was told that Mumia Abu-Jamal, the man arrested in the shooting, was being treated at the same hospital for a gunshot that Faulkner managed to fire into his chest after he was shot. Unlike Faulkner, Abu-Jamal would survive.
Three years after her husband's murder, Faulkner decided to make a new life for herself in Ventura County.
"I was 25 years old, I was widowed, and a lot of my friends were married," she said. "I felt like a third wheel."
She threw herself into work as a way to manage her grief, first opening a deli with her brother and then going into the medical field. She now manages the office of a Ventura County doctor.
By putting a continent between her and the city where her husband was murdered, Faulkner hoped to find some peace. But her wounds would be ripped open again and again over the next 20 years as Abu-Jamal managed to raise doubts about whether he was the man who gunned down Faulkner. Last month, a judge rejected yet another bid by Abu-Jamal for a new trial.
Abu-Jamal has become a cause celebre among Hollywood stars, civil-rights activists, college professors and university students, many of whom insist that Abu-Jamal did not receive a fair trial.
Faulkner attended every day of Abu-Jamal's trial in the summer of 1982.
"After listening to six weeks of ballistics, the evidence, the eyewitness testimony, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was Mumia Abu-Jamal murdered my husband," she said.
A jury agreed. After deliberating for less than six hours, the panel found Abu-Jamal guilty of first-degree murder. The same jury spent less than two hours sentencing him to death.
The groundswell of support for Abu-Jamal prompted Faulkner to become a public figure herself. She kept a low profile until 1994, when she learned that National Public Radio planned to broadcast a series of commentaries taped by Abu-Jamal from death row.
"That was the turning point in my life," she said. "I had to make a decision whether I was going to fight or lie down and let the chips fall as they may. I decided to fight."
Faulkner began a campaign of her own, making public appearances, protesting at college campuses, and even hiring an airplane in 1995 to buzz the publisher of a book written by Abu-Jamal. The plane towed a banner denouncing the publisher as a supporter of cop-killers.
She also worked nearly every night until midnight for months to establish a Daniel Faulkner Web site in 1998, which includes 5,000 pages of trial transcripts.
"For years, when you went into cyberspace, you would see all this rhetoric about Mumia Abu-Jamal and nothing about Danny," she said.
During Abu-Jamal's trial and many subsequent court appearances, Faulkner has been shouted at, threatened and spit on by his supporters. Death threats have left her so protective of her privacy that she will not name the Ventura County city where she lives and will say nothing about her personal life except to say that while she has moved on she will always remember her late husband.
"People say, 'Twenty years, why are you still doing it?' and I say 'It's just the right thing to do,'" she said.
She feels no rancor against those who have taken up the banner of Abu-Jamal's cause, especially the students.
"I don't feel anger toward them. I feel pity," she said. "I feel sorry for them, in a way, because they have been misled."
Her fight will not end until Abu-Jamal is executed for his crime, she said.
"I want to see him put to death. I believe in the death penalty. Danny believed in the death penalty," she said. "Mumia believed in the death penalty. He shot Danny in the back."
Faulkner is marking the anniversary of her husband's death in Philadelphia today, where a plaque will be dedicated in his honor at the intersection where he was shot. Later, a memorial Mass will be celebrated at the parish church where he was baptized, attended Mass, and where his funeral was held.
"The hardest thing will be returning to that church," she said. "His whole cycle of life was in that church."
Although two decades have passed since her husband died, her memories are crystal-clear.
The two met in 1979 while waiting in line in a New Jersey sandwich shop, she said.
"He had the most beautiful blue eyes, and my heart just skipped a beat," she said. "It was love at first sight."
He proposed a year later, and six months after that, the pair were married, settling into a home in southwest Philadelphia, in the neighborhood where Daniel Faulkner grew up.
The night before he was murdered, her husband cooked dinner for her and then took a nap before rising for his midnight-to-8 a.m. shift. Because he was running late, he put on his uniform at home, something he hardly ever did. His bulletproof vest was in his locker at work, where it would remain during his shift.
One thing her husband insisted on during their 13-month marriage was always giving her a kiss before he left for work.
"He actually woke me up and made me kiss him goodbye, not knowing that that kiss would last a lifetime," she said.
-- Andrea Cavanaugh's e-mail address is acavanaugh@insidevc.com.
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On the Net: www.danielfaulkner.com;
www.freemumia.org.
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