Memorial service recalls Fassett

BY ROBERT L. BAKER

It’s been 10 long, lonely years.

Around 25 persons turned out for a memorial service for Tammy Fassett in the Lacey Street Cemetery, west of Laceyville on Sunday, the tenth anniversary of the day she and boyfriend Michael Kerkowski were reported missing.

The family pinpointed her date of death as May 3, 2002, even though her body, along with that of Kerkowski, a former Tunkhannock pharmacist, were not unearthed from Hugo Selenski’s yard inKingstonTownshipuntil June 5, 2003.

Selenski and Paul Weakley have been charged with the murders.

To avoid the death penalty, Weakley entered a guilty plea four years ago in which he agreed to testify against Selenski.

Selenski is scheduled for a jury trial in the murders in September.

Fassett’s sister Sandy Owen said “there has been no justice for it to go on this long.”

Another sister, Lisa Sands, recalled growing up with Fassett as best friends “like two peas in a pod.”

She said Fassett was a loving and caring person who would help anybody “and didn’t have a mean bone in her body like me.”

The women’s dad, Wayne Sands, who in the past has had some piercing words for both Weakley and Selenski as well as aLuzerneCountycriminal justice system that seems to have lost its way, simply said of Fassett, “God bless her.”

The women’s Aunt Judy Ary fromNew Jerseyrecalled Fassett as “a wonderful baker.”

She later kissed her niece’s picture and said she wished she could bring her back.

Lorraine Redlich, a friend who used to be a next-door neighbor to Fassett in Meshoppen, and whose daughter was the same age as Fassett’s youngest of two boys, drove up fromDallas.

She acknowledged how difficult it has been to find healing in the tragedy of Fassett’s death, and not having been in the region for the last five years was quite surprised at how much the area had changed.

But Redlich said a constant has been her memory of Fassett, who she remembered many ways, once as a clerk at Marty’s Market “where she greeted you with a smile, was helpful and always cheerful to be around.”

Redlich also recalled her as a close next-door neighbor. “She had great advice on how to be a mom, and every once in a while I’ll think I see her in somebody else, before I realize it’s not her, and I wonder where has the time gone and why did she have to go?”

Sands, fighting back tears, tried to look back to 10 years ago and said her little sister was “just in the wrong place at the wrong time” when she met her untimely death.

“God, I miss talking to her,” she said. “This has gone on way too long for all of us. I hope when it’s all over, she can  rest in peace and go with God.”