Andrea O’Donnell was strangled to death by her partner on November 5, 1994. Andres English-Howard later confessed to the murder of his girlfriend and claimed that her death was accidental. Andres pleaded that he was high on crack cocaine and she was “nagging” him. He claimed that he just wanted her to “shut up” and before he knew it, she was dead. Andres English- Howard then proceeded to tie a plastic bag around Andrea’s body and wrapped her in the futon mattress where her body would be found a few days later. Court proceedings concluded that Andres English-Howard was guilty of murder. The night before his sentencing, Andres hanged himself in the jail cell.

Shattering the image of the “victim” profile, Andrea was a self-assured woman, a self-defense expert, feminist and political activist. She fought for women’s rights and educated young girls about abusive relationships, empowering them with confidence and self worth. She excelled in self-defense classes, protecting herself against several men on a tape that would later be viewed and analyzed in court and by friends and loved ones. How can a woman like Andrea “become a victim without ever being one?” This is the question Jones asks over and over in her analysis of Andrea O’Donnell’s murder.

Just a few weeks before Andrea’s murder she wrote a paper on a photojournalistic essay by Donna Ferrato on domestic violence. Jones came across this paper while searching for clues and insights into Andrea’s life. In retrospect, Jones views Andrea’s comments as a warning of what would soon be the past.

I know there are many reasons for her staying and I believe one of them to be that she is ‘not supposed to’ [leave] or she will be a worthless woman. Media images…show us violence with sex… and that we are worthless without love…I think that many of us learn that this is what love is, however severe or mild our internalization of the combination may be. It may only be silence, the woman not speaking up when she wants to. I do that, it seems easier even though in the long term—it’s not. Or the learning could be as extreme as the choking sounds.

This was not the only sign that Andrea O’Donnell sent to her friends, professors and peers. Andrea began sleeping at the women’s resource center months before her murder. She kept a blanket, pillow and clothes there. Over lunch with a friend, Andrea tearfully expressed that her life was going poorly. She also disclosed that Andres had threatened suicide and she was watching him twenty four-seven. Andrea planned on leaving San Diego for San Francisco and even found two of her peers to take over her role at the WRC. She claimed to be leaving for San Francisco for “political support” and to leave a “bad relationship” behind. Andrea was afraid to say more than this. She never mentioned physical abuse, and never expressed fear of him harming her physically. However, Andrea was afraid that she would lose the respect of her peers and that they wouldn’t look up to her anymore if they knew about what was happening at home. This fear kept her silent, and the ability to speak out may have prevented her death. Quoting Andrea again, “It may only be silence…I do that, it seems easier even though in the long term—it’s not. Or the learning could be as extreme as the choking sounds.”

Jones discusses the complexity of power and love and how this conflict can lead to “unreasonable choices” in life. As women, we have been expected to make “choices” based on the needs of other people rather than our own personal needs. In other words, we constantly want to “help” others and Andrea did just that. She stayed because she wanted to help Andres through his addiction, his depression, his feelings of racial profiling and discrimination due to being a Black man in a biracial relationship. As her mom states, “since she was a little girl, my daughter was always taking in strays. [Andres] was one she thought she could save.” Raised by a second wave feminist, Andrea was taught to never walk away from people who need help, a lesson that many, now third wave feminists, learned from their second wave moms. Equality and justice for all, speak out for those who can not speak up for themselves, and so on. These are traits that I, a third waver, honor and am proud of. I can’t help but ask myself, do these traits leave us vulnerable to others, skewing our ability to “draw the line” between helping those in need and putting ourselves in danger?

Jones offers compelling thoughts on guilt and accountability, something Andrea’s peers would carry with them for years to come. Jones writes that, “none of them had witnessed the crime… [although] they acted as if they had witnessed the slow, steady dissolution of a life, an erosion of strength that all the theories and all the intervention strategies known to their young feminist selves hadn’t been able to prevent.” And the only question left to ask was, “was there something else I could have done?”

Editor’s Note: Living Between Danger and Love: The Limits of Choice by Kathleen B. Jones, can be ordered from Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. It can also be ordered through your local, independent booksellers

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