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That was the only time detectives interviewed McFall. He is surprised that he was never asked to provide a DNA sample to rule him out as a suspect.
After police detectives completed their investigation at the Eaton address, Juliette's friends and family went to pack her belongings and move Juliette and Molly out of the house. Katie says, "There was blood everywhere — on the doorknob, on the carpet, on her bed."
"One thing I remember about that was, there was graphite black dust around on the doorjambs and a couple doorways inside, where the police dusted for prints," McFall says. "In Molly's room, I noticed her window was unlocked and open, and the storm window was off the house. But there was no dust back there."
Juliette describes one of the two primary detectives as "a very Law & Order, NYPD Blue kind of guy. He had that swagger." Though when she told him the story of the attack, she says, he cried.
The detectives would drop by Juliette's bed with photos of black men they had questioned and photographed in Juliette's neighborhood. None of them looked familiar.
In the hospital, Juliette couldn't rest. Previews for the horror movie The Blair Witch Project were constantly on television. She would smell cologne and swear it belonged to the rapist. Like a bar bouncer, Jill intercepted hospital staff members at the door, permitting only essential visitors. She did this in part to calm her sister's nerves but also because she knew, as a nurse, that Juliette's many open wounds rendered her susceptible to infection.
After two weeks, Juliette went home with Jill. "They wanted to put me in a medical journal and write an article about my healing because it was so quick," Juliette says.
Quick is still relative. Juliette had to be treated for a year for the hepatitis C she contracted through the countless quarts of blood poured into her in the emergency room. Doctors operated on her chest, her neck and her head. Above where the artery in her neck had been clipped, her left eyelid drooped and she lost feeling on some of her face. Most devastating was the nerve damage in her left arm, which cut off all use of her deltoid and other shoulder muscles. A physical therapist made house calls to introduce Juliette to little aids, such as shoelaces that end in coils and don't require tying. "It was like, 'This is the way you're going to be, so learn to live with it,'" Juliette says. She told the therapist that her services would no longer be necessary.
Visits from detectives became less and less frequent, until it seemed to Juliette that the police department had given up.
There was some good news: The nonprofit where Juliette worked had a solid insurance plan. Anything that wasn't covered by her insurance was paid for through services of the Crime Victims Compensation Board of the Kansas Attorney General's Office.
The therapist Juliette saw every week for the first two years "was really empowering," Juliette says. "She was like, 'Do whatever makes you feel better. If you need to put your dresser in front of your bedroom door, go ahead and do it. Whatever helps you sleep. If your daughter needs to sleep in your room in order for you to feel safe, do it.'"
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