What Really Happened Inside 121 Greycourt Road?

“But I’m not hurt.”

Agitated, Rob eventually made the call himself. Sophie jumped in her red Honda Accord and sped the 22 minutes home. Meanwhile, Rob instructed Anthony to go outside and play once his mom got home. When Sophie walked in the house and saw that Anthony was okay, she was confused. Rob yelled, “I’m up here.” He was in the computer room. She walked upstairs.

“Sit down!” Rob shouted.

“What?” Sophie said.

“Sit down!” he thundered again.

Anthony heard the door to the computer room close. As he walked out the front door, he heard both of his parents yelling. He shut the door, got on his bike, and rode down the street.

HERE IS WHAT THE police know about what happened after that door closed: Sophie fought, because there was at least one defensive wound on her hand. Either before or after Rob cut his own arms, he walked downstairs, through the dining room and the living room, down to the basement. At some point, he locked both the front and back doors of the house. He left at least one knife in the kitchen and one in the computer room. He died on his bed, leaning on his left side, his head propped on two pillows.

And with that, the police were finished with “the slashing job.”

“The way we look at things and the way other people look at things are completely different,” says Lieutenant Riehl. “Our job is, without emotion, to determine what happened.” And with that, they closed the case, the 24th domestic homicide of 2009.

They are the only ones with closure.

The people who actually knew Rob and Sophie DiAndrea are still living in the past. They’re replaying in their minds, over and over, the moments and conversations and remarks they convinced themselves didn’t mean anything. Obsessing over what they knew and didn’t know. What they saw, what they didn’t see.

“I need some answers,” says Karen Long.

Long still wonders, almost a year later, if she could have saved her friend. Even though she never thought Sophie needed saving. Not really. No one did. Most everyone thought Rob and Sophie were doing well. That they were happy, or at least as happy as any couple who’d been together for years, and made it through tough times and back, and were working through problems. As happy as any married couple.

But how can anyone tell the difference between a couple getting on each other’s nerves and a couple on the verge of murder and suicide? Should Long have called a women’s shelter when Sophie told her she woke up in the middle of the night to see Rob standing over her? Should Rob’s friend have called the police when Rob made the crack about the “lucky” guy whose wife was dead? Everyone knows marriage is complicated. And messy. And intensely personal. Can anyone ever know what really goes on in the most private moments in a marriage?

The answer is no.