BAEC Bulletin | September/October 2022 | 33
of each bullet had created a shock wave through the body known as a cavitation effect, in which arteries, veins, and soft tissues were pushed away from the bullet’s pathway and then rebounded violently back into place, destroying them further. Muscles were torn. Organs were liquefied. Craniums were shattered. Bone fragments had turned to dust. “My first reaction when I saw them, truthfully — I fell apart,” Core said now. “It took me away. I had a meltdown. For the first time in my life, my staff had to tell me to go home.” He stopped and looked at Barbara. “I’m okay,” she said again. Elmore reached into his desk and took out a legal pad to write notes as Core went on. “With a regular gun, you might have a small entry wound, but the body is left intact,” Core said. “With this, I’m figuring out what we’ve been left to work with and what we can put back into place.” He told them that he’d left the funeral home that night, gone to church for a few hours to steady his mind, and then returned to begin the work of what he called “restoration art.” Massey had weighed 115 pounds, and she’d been hit twice at close range. “I put on my jazz music, and I talked to Kat as I worked,” Core told them. He explained how he’d combined remaining bone and skull fragments with meshing and papier-mâché to rebuild a cranial structure. He rebuilt part of an ear out of wax. He continued to work on Kat and the other victims over the next several days, injecting fluids to help their bodies firm up, taking skin grafts from other parts of the body, suturing pieces back together, and finally consulting with a beautician to re-create hair style, facial expression and skin tone. Now he pulled out his phone and showed Barbara a picture of her sister lying in her casket. More than 500 people had come to say goodbye to her that day as Core stood nearby, making sure nobody touched her or tried to move her head. She was posed with her chin lifted high, her mouth formed into a smile and a kufi hat covering the top of her head. “You did such a beautiful job,” Barbara told him. “I waited outside Tops for eight hours that day because I needed to see her and hold her hand. You’re the one who finally gave me that.” “It was a privilege to set my hands on her,” he said. He put the phone back in his pocket, took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “The thing that haunts me is that I was put in a position to act like the creator,” he said. “I’m taking things that should always be intact and either remaking or reshaping to create that final portrait of a human being. From what I saw, that man had no heart for people. His goal was to obliterate. He wanted to erase.” “Oh, Kat,” Barbara said. She started to cry, and Core reached for her hand.
to explore it.”
He’d watched the live-streamed video of the Tops shooting, studied the 180-page document authorities said was written by shooter, consulted experts on white supremacist terrorism, and reviewed advertisements for semiautomatic weapons going back more than a decade. The artifacts of a mass shooting were stacked in folders on his desk, which made him wonder about all the questions he’d never asked in Olean. His family had rarely spoken about it. What he knew came mostly from Wikipedia, so one morning he drove out of Buffalo to visit his brother and several of his high school friends, hoping to learn more. He traveled 70 miles over the Allegheny Mountains and into the small downtown, where the mayor had thrown a parade in 1975 to welcome Elmore’s father home from the hospital after brain surgery. Three thousand people had lined the streets to greet the ambulance while the high school band and cheerleaders performed in subzero temperatures. “Herbie’s home, and now we can put this nightmare behind us,” one local politician had said that day, and then the ambulance dropped Herb off at home in a wheelchair he was too proud to use, so Elmore began following his father around the house holding onto his belt to keep him from falling. “Did Dad ever say anything to you about it?” Elmore asked, as he sat down for breakfast across from his younger brother, Robert. “You know how he was,” Robert said, shaking his head. “ ‘Never look back. Don’t show any weakness. If you cry, I’ll give you something to cry about.’ ”
“So he never told you how much he saw or what he remembered?”
“Not directly, but I heard some things,” Robert said, and he explained that a few years after the shooting, he’d listened to their father talking with a couple of firefighters who’d been with him that day inside the firetruck. They said Herb had gone into shock after the bullet hit his head, and he’d clamped his hand against the top of his skull to hold it in place. The other firefighters had tried to pry his hand away to assess the wound, but Herb was stronger than any of them. He’d kept his hand locked in place, which probably prevented him from bleeding to death. “He sat there like that for two hours,” Robert said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Two hours?” Elmore said. “Come on.”
“I went back and looked,” Robert said. “It was at least that long before they could get him out with the tank.” Herb had come home a few months later, relearned how to walk with a cane, started a swimming club for people with disabilities, and gone in person every two weeks to pick up his disability check at the firehouse so he had an excuse to see his old colleagues. Meanwhile, Elmore had left for college the next fall and followed his father into a job as a first responder. He’d become a police officer in Syracuse, N.Y, until one afternoon when a teenager in mental distress started screaming racial slurs at him and swinging at his head with a large metal rake. Elmore had pulled out his .357 Magnum, and he’d realized in that moment that under no circumstances could he pull the trigger. He’d holstered the gun and escaped into his police cruiser. A month later he was in law school, and he’d never
“I’m sorry. I went too far,” he said, but Barbara shook her head.
Elmore set down his legal pad, stood from his chair and started to pace behind to his desk. “I hate to ask you this, but I think it might end up being helpful,” he said. “Did you take any pictures of your work?”
“I believe so,” Core said. “I’ll ask my staff.”
“Thank you,” Elmore said. “This is all a dark tunnel, but we have
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