I met my father’s killer.

My dad was a long-distance truck driver. When I was 12, he was murdered in a robbery at a truck stop in Richmond, Virginia. <br><br>Six years later, my friend and I were walking home from a late meeting with our high school trivia team. We walked past a Wawa, and noticed they were giving out free pretzels. There’s a man leaning against the row of newspaper machines outside the entrance, who looked like he was asking us for directions. He was well dressed and well-groomed, but smelled of booze. <br><br>He asked where he was and where he could get a cab. My friend and I were together, and I figured I’d rather be the one to talk to him. I told him he was in [my town], and that if he walked to the nearby Exxon across the street, they’d have cab company phone numbers. <br><br>He was walking in the same direction that we were walking in, and walked with us. He told us we were very kind, and asked my age. I told him I was 18, and he was shocked. I was a petite, young-looking girl. He asked my friend’s age, and I became suspicious of what he wanted with that information. I told him my friend was 22. <br><br>I never knew where my dad was murdered, because my mom never told me at the time and I was too young to understand. At the time, I didn’t realize Richmond was 2 hours away. It was a 2 hour drive, but when you’re 12 and live in New Jersey, the entire state of Virginia is “near”. My parents were divorced, and my mom never wanted to talk about it. <br><br>He asked where we went to school and we both said the same university. He was surprised, because he thought we were too young to be in college. He told us he went to school just down the road from us. We realized he wasn’t drunk; he had some sort of speech impediment. <br><br>He asked what we studied. My friend had a weird major no one had heard of, and I was a criminology major. He was shocked and asked why. I told him my dad had been murdered when I was younger, so I wanted to be a cop to catch the bad guys who did that to people. I never specified how he was murdered, just that he was murdered. <br><br>For the first time, he seemed shaken up. He walked faster and told us to be careful, because we didn’t know what kind of people were out at that time of night. I thought it was strange he’d change his demeanor so quickly. <br><br>My friend and I crossed the street towards Exxon. The man crossed the street in the opposite direction, saying “good night.” <br><br>My friend and I were confused. We had just told him he could get cabs at the Exxon across the street. Why would he cross in the opposite direction? <br><br>The street we crossed wasn’t very well-lit. We were alone, and as we walked, we talked about the man we had just met. My friend and I were both confused, and agreed that something was off. <br><br>I’ll never forget what my friend said next. “If he had a gun, do you think he would have killed us?”<br><br>I said no, because he didn’t have a gun. And then I froze.<br><br>No, he didn’t have a gun. He had a knife.<br><br>My dad was stabbed to death during a robbery at a truck stop in Virginia. The killer taunted his victims about stabbing them. He was never caught. <br><br>I grabbed my friend’s arm and told her we had to get out of there. Now. We ran across the street in the direction the man had gone in. We lost him. <br><br>The next morning I called the police in Richmond. I told them my story, and they tried to find surveillance footage of the man I had talked to. They never found anything. <br><br>That was in 2011. In 2016, the composite of the suspect in the Kenneka Jenkins case was all over Facebook. It was the man I had met. <br><br>The man who killed my father.<br><br>I’m glad Kenneka Jenkins had the justice I never had for my dad.<br><br>I’ll never forget Robert Steinhaeuser’s face, and I hope it haunts me for the rest of my life.