'The Juice' is loose, but how do the rest of us heal?

A St. Paul neighborhood tries to come back together after trial

ST. PAUL, Minn. (RWN) - Robert "The Juiceman" Loggins, the Minnesota playboy and produce magnate, was acquitted of murdering his wife last week, but the scars that he left on his neighbors may never heal.

But that hasn't stopped Rose al-Dhour from bringing cookies to her Catholic neighbors. It's her way of trying to make the world better since the Loggins' acquittal.

It was at a graceful mansion in this gracious neighborhood that Loggins lived with his wife, Mawiyah. Theirs was a mixed marriage - Loggins a Catholic and his wife a Muslim, but they were moderns, living as a couple in love. But neighbors heard the fights, heard the car tires squealing as one or the other drove away.

And neighbors heard the police sirens when Loggins walked into his house one day and found Mawiyah's body slashed into pieces and scattered around the newly furnished living room, a cruel representation of his wife's face painted in blood on the screen of their new 124-inch CrystalVision TV.

At least that was the story. Whether Loggins was telling the truth is what divided this neighborhood. That and Loggins' hiring of the best lawyers in the country to represent him, a legal "dream team" which drafted a controversial strategy: Don't make it about our client's guilt or innocence. Make it about the prosecution's incompetence.

That strategy divided a fascinated nation along mostly spiritual lines. And it was worst in the neighborhood where it all happened.

"People used to come and walk every night during the warmer weather," al-Dhour remembered. "We had come together a few years ago as a neighborhood and bought benches for in front of every home, so people could sit out front and talk to their neighbors. The trial started and that was what people wanted to talk about. But then you heard these yelling arguments from some benches."

People who had been friends and neighbors for years stopped talking to each other.
"The benches," Al-Dhour's neighbor, Johnny Romano said, "got empty."

Then, last week, the acquittal. Riots in the Frogtown section of St. Paul, where Loggins plucked Mawiyah out of working in a pawn shop. And in the upscale neighborhood they lived, the benches were empty and people avoided each other's gazes on the street.

Until al-Dhour made some cookies. She went to every Catholic home on the street with her cookies.

"I would just ring the bell, and who would keep the door closed to a sweet old Muslim lady with fresh-baked cookies? And everyone knows me. I've lived in my home for 30 years. They'd invite me in out of courtesy, and we'd talk. There'd be some awkward moments at first, but I made it a point never to discuss the trial. I'd be pleasant and friendly and when I'd leave I'd say 'It would be so nice to see you out on the benches again.'"

Romano was the first neighbor she visited.

"What she said made sense," he said. "So that night, my wife and I went out, and we brought some lemonade out. A couple houses down, the Woerblers brought out some hot cocoa. Down the other way, the Rahims brought out some cookies. And people began to visit and to talk."

Don't be fooled: there are still spiritual divisions in this neighborhood, and they are deep.

"We know people have divergent feelings on what happened with Robert and Mawiyah," al-Dhour said. "But I'm a believer that as neighbors, we can not talk about it for a while and fall back on the things that unite us, not divide us.'


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