Naomi Blanche Rivera was the cherished baby in a family of five children.
"When my mom announced that she was having another baby, it was a real joy for all of us," said her sister, Beverly, who was 12 years older.
Naomi always laughed. "She didn't take life too seriously," Beverly said. She roller-skated and ice-skated, played tennis and talked of becoming a vet. Her cat, Boy, ran off on the day she was killed. She was 16.
The Rivera family, devastated by Naomi's death in 1982, went through more turmoil as the investigation and the case against her assailant dragged on. It ended with a plea bargain. They did not believe that justice was done, but had gone on with their lives, knowing that this time would come. The killer is eligible for parole.
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Nerie Rivera sits in the family dining room in National Park, N.J., sorting through papers. Here is her daughter's death certificate. Here is the guest book from the funeral home. The newspaper clippings. The letters to the governor. Ten years ago, she put all that away, although the knowledge that she would take it out again haunted her.
The time has passed quickly, she said, pain returning to her dark eyes. She knew she would have to make another journey through another arm of the justice system, but she did not anticipate the pain it has brought her.
She leafs through her tattered 1982 address book, finding the names and numbers of the police officers, the attorneys, the witnesses, even the psychic the family hired back then - a woman who, in the end, "could do nothing."
Now she is ready to talk about how Naomi died.
John Treadway, then 21, was Naomi's first serious boyfriend, her mother said.
"I don't know where she met him. . . . He was not in her circle of friends, I know that. Lots of her friends came to my house, but not him."
When Treadway eventually did come around, about a year into his relationship with Naomi, the Riveras did not like what they saw: an unimpressive figure with a bandanna tied around his curly, dark brown hair. Her father, Norbert, said, "He was a punk."
In tiny National Park, it was possible for Nerie Rivera to ask one of the town's two police officers about Treadway and learn of two convictions, one for theft and one for weapons possession.
"When we started to investigate, it was too late," Nerie Rivera said: By that time, Treadway already had a hold on Naomi.
