Catie Disabato - The Ghost Network

When I asked her if she felt remorse for killing a security guard, she snapped, “Yes, obviously. I’m not a murderer.”

“But, you admit to killing someone?”

“If you don’t mean to kill someone, you aren’t a murderer, not in your heart. My violence accidentally caused a person’s death. That’s unfortunate, I have nightmares, I’ve cried, but I’m not a murderer.”

She also told me the article about her in Vanity Fair , written by Nancy Jo Sales, and the movie based on that article, directed by Sofia Coppola, are both “complete bullshit.” However, she did like that she was played by Jennifer Lawrence in the movie, even though Lawrence looks nothing like Kraus.

During our conversations, Kraus barely spoke about the New Situationists. Although I now know more about the New Situationists than anyone outside the membership ever has, except Molly Metropolis, the organization remains a mystery to me. Berliner says he still doesn’t know the names of the New Situationists’ leaders. He wouldn’t give me the names of any of the members, or even describe them using pseudonyms. He insisted that he could only speak about people who were already “out in the open,” and he told me that I was lucky the person he was the most “emotionally involved” with was already identified, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to talk about the New Situationists at all. If someone other than Kraus had been arrested, this book couldn’t exist.

Everything Berliner did admit, the details of his induction party for example, he ran by his “higher-up” before he told me. “So, the New Situationists still exist?” I asked him.

“Yes and no,” Berliner said vaguely, as was typical in the conversations we had about the group: “There were a few projects in motion when the group disbanded, I didn’t even know about them during the real days, or until the whole thing with Cait, but a skeleton crew, myself included, has to keep them going now. They’re not the kinds of things we’d want to stop in the middle.”

“Can you tell me about any of these projects?”

“Not really.”

“You can’t tell me anything at all? Do they take place in Chicago?”

“I really can’t say.”

“Is someone keeping you from talking? Threatening you in some way?”

“No. When I said ‘can’t’ before, I meant ‘won’t.’ ”

“Are they paying you anything to keep quiet?” I asked.

“They are paying me to work, and I keep quiet because I want to.”

“How much are they paying you?”

“I won’t say.”

Berliner delivered all these refusals to speak with a schoolboy smirk, smoking cigarettes and looking very pleased with himself.

“So, no new projects, no new members?” I asked.

“No new projects,” he said, “But as for members, I might say Taer was a member. Before she died. And, after everything happened, we asked Nix if she wanted to join so we could look after her. We offered her a job.”

“When you say we,” I asked, “do you mean to imply that you have become a decision-making member of the New Situationists?”

“I really won’t say,” he said.

When I asked Nix about her membership in the group, she said, “I didn’t need their help, but I did need a job and the money’s good.”

“Are you still working for them?” I asked.

“I am and I’m not,” she said.

“Talking to me right now, is that working for them?”

“They’re not paying me for this, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’m wondering if the New Situationists condone you and Nick speaking to me,” I said.

“They aren’t in charge of who we talk to. I mean, they aren’t in charge of who I talk to, they aren’t in charge of who Nick talks to anymore. They aren’t like that anymore. We’re just kind of … keeping some projects going. We’re kind of a skeleton crew.”

“Did they tell you to say that? Nick used the same phrase, ‘skeleton crew.’ ”

“That doesn’t come from them, Nick and I talk all the time. He said it to me once, I think.”

“And you don’t know who any of them are?” I asked.

“No, and I don’t care. Like I said, the money’s good. And legal. I had my lawyer make sure. Basically the New Situationists don’t exist anymore. Berliner says everyone really fell apart after Kraus was arrested. Don’t believe him when he implies that they’re still some big thing. He just wants them to be. He can’t give anything up.”

Taking into account my interviews with Berliner and Kraus, and the hostile tone of the letter I received from David Wilson when he rejected my request for an interview, I believe the New Situationists are masters of smoke and mirrors, and not much else. A group of young people got together, wanted to change the world, and latched onto the pseudo-academic ramblings of another man who’d wanted to change the world and failed. People consider them important and powerful only because of the firm devotion of all members to keep quiet, despite the personal consequences Kraus suffered. They have the appeal of a secret society. Berliner, an isolated teenager, was particularly susceptible to the charms of hidden knowledge. They taught him to make screen prints and how to draw maps, and then put him to work creating new secret cartographies. But if someone from the New Situationists decided to talk, I think the New Situationists would turn out to be less powerful than most people think they are. The silence and secrecy makes them special, but there is nothing behind the curtain but a few angry children and a poorly planned terrorist event.

Berliner obviously still harbors a deep sentimental attachment to both Kraus and the New Situationists. He agreed to speak with me only if I promised to include the following quote he prepared:

“The death in the L bombing was accidental and not considered a ‘casualty necessary to the betterment of their cause,’ as Marie-Hélène Kraus’s prosecuting lawyer argued. The plan was to make a revolution without bloodshed. Marie-Hélène Kraus is a killer but she isn’t a murderer. She isn’t morally corrupt.”

Berliner visits Kraus weekly at the Dwight Correctional Center, a maximum security prison for female violent offenders about an hour and a half outside of Chicago. He drives to the jail every Saturday, bringing with him a carton of cigarettes, nail polish, the cashmere cardigans from Nordstrom that Kraus likes best, and any magazines or books she requested the previous week. He doesn’t use his car for any other purpose; he bought it just to see her. Even though he’s taken other lovers, Berliner still considers himself Kraus’s boyfriend. They plan to get married as soon as she makes parole. I believe one of the main reasons Berliner agreed to speak with me at all was to lobby on Kraus’s behalf.

In Davis’s parents’ lakeside home, Davis finished recounting Berliner’s early years. Taer asked if they could open a third bottle of wine. Davis told her to go ahead, and flicked a lighter over and over again, to light another cigarette. With the new bottle of wine open and poured, Taer pushed Davis to move ahead to the parts of the story with Molly Metropolis.

Davis snapped back at her, “There’s some important stuff that comes before that, but I can skip it if you’re going to be a such a bitch about it.”

“Sorry,” Taer responded. “I’m just anxious.”

“Whatever,” Davis said.

“Sorry,” Nix echoed. “Do you want some water or something?”

“I’m fine,” Davis said, “The next thing you need to know about Nick, is he has this apartment. He thought it up sometime after Kraus went to jail, but before he met Molly. It’s this weird, incredible place. He had it built after he went to juvie and got out, then Kraus went to jail. He said he was really solitary and sad all the time. I started calling it his ‘Blue Period,’ just as a joke. He didn’t like that at all.”