Reetika Vazirani

Case details

Reetika Vazirani (1962–2003) was an American poet and educator. On July 16, 2003, Vazirani was housesitting in the Chevy Chase, Maryland home of novelist Howard Norman and his wife, the poet Jane Shore. There, Vazirani took the life of her two-year-old son, Jehan, and then her own. Vazirani committed suicide by slashing her own wrist with a kitchen knife.

Investigators found what appeared to be a suicide note with references to her husband of three years, the poet Yusef Komunyakaa.

Background

Vazirani was born in India in 1962 and came to the US with her family in 1968. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1984 and received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel to India, Thailand, Japan, and China. She also received an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia as a Hoyns Fellow.

Vazirani lived in Trenton, New Jersey with her son Jehan, near the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who was her partner and Jehan's father. Vazirani was Writer-in-Residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, with the intent of joining the English department at Emory University at the time she committed her murder/suicide. She was 40.

Vazirani had a poetry career that included awards and editorial roles. She was a recipient of a Discovery/The Nation Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Poets & Writers Exchange Program Award, fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers conferences, and the Glenna Luschei/Prairie Schooner Award for her essay, "The Art of Breathing," included in the anthology How We Live our Yoga (Beacon 2001). She had a poem in The Best American Poetry 2000.

Vazirani was the author of two poetry collections: White Elephants, winner of the 1995 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and World Hotel (Copper Canyon Press, 2002), winner of the 2003 Anisfield-Wolf book award. She was a contributing and advisory editor for Shenandoah, a book review editor for Callaloo, and a senior poetry editor for Catamaran, a journal of South Asian literature. She translated poetry from Urdu and had some her poems translated into Italian.

She contributed a poem, Mouth-Organs and Drums, to a "Poets Against War" anthology.

Vazirani’s final collection of poetry, Radha Says, was published in the fall of 2009 by Drunken Boat Media, edited by Leslie McGrath and Ravi Shankar.

Vazirani and Yusef Komunyakaa read their poetry together as recently as May 22 for an appearance at Texas A&M University. A week after Komunyakaa’s workshop for the Poetry Center of Chicago, they were both scheduled to join the faculty at Emory University in Atlanta this fall.

The offence

On July 16, 2003, Vazirani was housesitting in the Chevy Chase, Maryland home belonging to novelist Howard Norman and poet Jane Shore. Vazirani took the life of her two-year-old son, Jehan, and then took her own life. Her death was described as being by slashing her own wrist with a kitchen knife.

The DC medical examiner’s office released the cause of death for Jehan Vazirani Komunyakaa. Although it was originally believed that a wound to his left wrist was the cause of death, Jehan’s death was much more violent. The child suffered stab wounds to his chest, neck and forearm, which penetrated his lungs and his heart.

Investigators had not ruled on Vazirani’s death at the time the information was described, but they found what appeared to be a suicide note.

Investigation and discovery

Vazirani sought a meeting with a priest the day before the bodies were found and also borrowed a Bible from a neighbor. Denise King-Miller, a friend, said Vazirani had spoken to her about personal "problems" involving "her relationship with Yusef Komunyakaa," a Princeton University professor.

King-Miller said Vazirani left her a voice mail, hours before the alleged murder/suicide, saying: "I think I'm going to hurt myself."

King-Miller got the message too late and began calling Vazirani every hour but got no answer. Vazirani left a second voice mail for a co-worker, saying: "I'm having a kind of emergency now, and I wanted to make sure you could let yourself in."

The co-worker came to the house, discovered the door unlocked, and found the two bodies lying parallel to one another on the floor within an enormous pool of blood, with two large kitchen knives nearby. At the time, Vazirani and her son appeared to have been dead for hours.

Vazirani was identified on July 18 as the woman in Chevy Chase, Maryland who died.

People

• Reetika Vazirani — American poet and educator; victim of the case outcome; committed suicide by slashing her own wrist with a kitchen knife.
• Jehan — two-year-old son of Reetika Vazirani; stabbed with injuries to his chest, neck and forearm; died at the scene.
• Howard Norman — novelist and owner of the housesitting home in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
• Jane Shore — poet and wife of Howard Norman.
• Yusef Komunyakaa — Vazirani’s husband of three years; Jehan’s father.
• Denise King-Miller — friend of Vazirani; received a voice mail and attempted to reach Vazirani.
• A co-worker — received a voice mail from Vazirani and discovered the bodies after arriving at the house.

Other details

Komunyakaa was appointed a chancellor for the Academy of American Poets in 1999 and received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Chicago based Modern Poetry Association, the publisher of Poetry Magazine. Investigators found references in the suicide note to Komunyakaa.

At the time, W&M’s deaths were described as part of a traumatic year: since the beginning of the 2002 fall semester, four students and one instructor have died.

Vazirani’s work appeared in TriQuarterly locally. She had also been scheduled with Komunyakaa to join the faculty at Emory University in Atlanta this fall.