April 22, 2007

April 22, 2007, ten days after Ben Rifkin’s murder, became the day Cold Spring Park was searched by hundreds of volunteers for the missing knife. The effort gave the town a way to act while the investigation remained unresolved, but its promise of a decisive answer existed alongside the grief of Ben’s father, Dan Rifkin, whom Andrew Barber saw crossing the park alone.

The volunteer search

On a raw, drizzly Sunday morning, volunteers gathered at Cold Spring Park and received instructions from Paul Duffy about how the search would proceed. They included McCormick students—some of them Ben’s friends, others from different school groups—as well as young parents and community organizers. Divided into teams, they searched assigned sections of the woods.

The turnout reflected more than a search for an object. People had been worn down by waiting and uncertainty, and the organized effort offered relief: at last, they could participate in the investigation. They believed that finding the knife might bring the case to a resolution.

The knife and the hope of an answer

The searchers expected the missing knife to provide evidence: fingerprints, blood, or some other clue capable of unlocking the mystery. In that hope, the knife stood between the town and an imagined end to its uncertainty. The volunteers’ confidence that the discovery would settle matters made the search feel purposeful, but did not itself resolve the case.

Andrew Barber and Dan Rifkin

While the others searched, Andrew Barber waited in the parking lot at the park entrance. Dan Rifkin appeared from the direction of the woods and crossed the empty soccer and baseball fields toward him. Andrew remembered him as a small figure moving across a vast open space, head bowed and hands in his coat pockets, his route repeatedly deflected by the wind.

The encounter places the communal search beside an individual father’s grief. The park held volunteers acting together in the hope of finding a clue, while Dan crossed its open fields alone. April 22 thus joins a practical attempt to advance the investigation with the continuing human cost of Ben’s murder and the uncertainty the searchers hoped to end.