2 Lives, 2 Hopes, A Violent End
What she wanted was peace. That’s why Michelle Lewis gave up a good job, companionship and all her possessions to become a nun. That’s why she chose a life of poverty, chastity and obedience – because, close friends say, nothing was more important to her than a feeling of emotional security and safety.
”The trade-off is incomprehensible to me, but she chose the life of a nun, and it worked for her,” says her best friend from childhood, Beverly Dreher.
But what Lewis, 39, sought and got ended tragically three weeks ago, when she was murdered in her quarters at Holy Cross Academy in Kendall. Mykhaylo Kofel, 18, a monk-in-training at Holy Cross, has been charged with the murder.
The horrific nature of the murder has not been fully revealed, but those close to the family and the investigation say that Lewis was stabbed more than 80 times, repeatedly punched in the face, and sexually mutilated with a metal object either at the moment of death or shortly after.
Two weeks ago, Lewis’ body was shipped to Ravenna, Ohio, for the funeral. Friends say that what haunts them most is the brutal nature of her death – the knowledge that her life was a continual quest for physical and emotional security, and that she sacrificed everything for this, but died under such violent circumstances.
”She gave up everything for tranquillity, but what she dreaded most found her anyway,” says Martha Dawson, Lewis’ best friend in Miami for many years.
In the 1960s and ’70s, Michelle Lewis grew up in a middle-class Akron neighborhood. Her father was a chemical engineer with Goodyear, her mother a secretary at a local auto parts company. Her brother was a few years younger than she.
By all accounts, it was a tranquil, contented home – a three-bedroom ranch house with a family room and a fenced yard with apple trees.
Lewis’ mother embroidered flowered pillow covers for the couches and baked holiday cookies. The children in the neighborhood called her mother ”mom.” Lewis’ dad kept the shelves lined with books, and was always ready for a philosophical, religious or scientific discussion.
”Shelly’s parents were a good mix,” Dreher says. ”Her mom was very warm and accepting. Her dad was extremely intelligent and interesting.”
From kindergarten on, Lewis was a straight-A student, named ”most intelligent” in her high school yearbook and valedictorian of her high school class. Former classmates remember an attractive, tan, brown-haired girl in glasses, with a dry wit.
”We were not into boys,” Dreher says. ”But as teenagers, it was still important to us to look good.”
Lewis, she says, gave her careful instructions on how to make up her eyes so they looked good behind glasses and tips on buying jewelry and shoes.
The favorite pastime of Lewis and her neighborhood girlfriends was to walk long distances and talk. They would repeat the philosophical and religious discussions that Lewis had with her father at home: about mysticism and metaphysics; about religion and science; about birth control and abortion. And, often, about Lewis’ understanding of what it meant to be a ”good Catholic,” a definition that she said depended on ”deep faith.”
”Michelle was always a very serious Catholic,” says Lewis’ ex-husband, Gary Salmon.
First Boyfriend
When Lewis met Salmon, friends say, she became more outgoing. She was an 18-year-old waitress at the Ponderosa steakhouse in Akron. He, two years older, was the Ponderosa cook. She was a math major at the University of Akron. He was in technical school, training to be a jet mechanic.
They were both quiet, into classical music, science and books. He was her first boyfriend and she was very taken with him, friends say. When Lewis was 20, they married at a nearby Catholic church. Dreher was a bridesmaid.
Salmon got a job with Eastern Airlines in Miami, and the newlyweds moved to Kendall, then Cutler Ridge. He took her to Norway to meet his family and bought her a ring that she wore for years.
Lewis became friends with Martha Dawson, the wife of a man who worked with her husband. The two women, in their early 20s, had a lot in common besides being married to jet mechanics on the night shift.
Both were excellent students at Florida International University, Lewis in math and Dawson in English. Both liked to discuss books and movies and philosophical issues. And, as time went on, both questioned why they had married.
”I was very unhappy when Michelle and I were in Miami, and this contributed to our problems,” Salmon says. ”But it was not my marriage or my job that was the problem. It was Miami.”
Michelle Lewis Salmon got a college degree in math from FIU, then a job as an actuary, estimating risk statistics for American Bankers Insurance Group. She was a whiz at it, scoring high on tests and quickly doubling her salary.
She drove a nice car and wore expensive suits and makeup – deep blues and purples, which Lewis said matched the winter colors that went with her complexion. Friends remember platinum earrings, bracelets and necklaces and a ring with large sapphires and diamonds.
The couple bought a stake in an Islamorada time-share apartment and got into boating and snorkeling. They spent weekends there and on Captiva Island on Florida’s west coast.
Marital Complaints
But Lewis became increasingly disenchanted with the marriage. She complained to friends that it bothered her that her husband kept his tools spread out in the living room. She complained that he spent too much money on ”toys” like a VCR.
But mostly she complained about her husband’s temper and how she feared it was getting worse – from throwing things at the walls to throwing them in her direction.
”Michelle had nothing to fear with me,” Salmon says. ”But maybe she didn’t know this until later, which makes me very sad.”
On Valentine’s Day 1985, Gary Salmon got home from work and discovered most of the furniture was gone. A few hours later, he learned what had happened when he was served with divorce papers.
”I was stunned,” he says.
Lewis got a restraining order, saying she feared that Salmon would become violent. The judge made it mutual.
”Not because she was a threat. Just because the husband wanted it and the judge did the easiest thing to get it done,” says Ed Schroll, Lewis’ former attorney.
Schroll vaguely remembers the divorce from 16 years ago because there was something unusual about it: a dispute over guns in the property settlement.
A court order shows that Lewis took Salmon’s rifles and bullets when she moved out, and Salmon wanted them back. Finally, she returned his rifles, but not the bullets, when he moved back to Ohio.
”She was very afraid of him,” says Dawson, Lewis’ friend.
”I’ll say it again: Michelle had nothing to fear from me. I would not have hurt her,” Salmon says.
Out of Marriage
Lewis got a civil divorce and a Catholic annulment and moved to a town house in Kendall. Her table sat eight people comfortably, and she bought 12 place settings of crystal, china and silver at Macy’s. She used it for Sunday brunches after Mass at Holy Cross Academy, where she sang solos every Sunday in a clear, perfectly pitched soprano voice.
On Friday nights, she went to Bennigan’s for happy hour with friends, usually having a couple of frozen margaritas. On Saturday nights, she went to the movies, the symphony and the opera with friends. Sometimes she would have friends over afterward for liqueur and homemade butter cookies.
Visitors to her town house remember that she always kept the windows closed and locked regardless of the weather and a steel pipe wedged in the sliding glass door. She said she was ”very afraid” that someone might break in and harm her.
By 1990, Lewis was making $60,000 a year at her job and dating a man from Toronto. She had multiple piercings in her ears and wore a row of glistening studs. She had a new car, took nice vacations and did whatever she wanted. Friends saw her as more free and spontaneous than ever. But those closest to her say something was missing.
”She said she did not feel safe or fulfilled,” Dawson says. ”She said she had failed at marriage and a successful career was not enough.”
In 1990, Lewis started reading about convents, talking about becoming a nun. She spent vacations at convents and monasteries, exploring what it would mean to become a nun.
Then she approached the Rev. Gregory Wendt at Holy Cross Academy and told him she wanted a religious life as a nun at Holy Cross.
”She thought she would meditate, pray and sing all day,” Dawson says. ”She thought she would escape the rat race, the fears and trauma of life out in the world, and have a life of complete tranquillity.”
For this ideal, Lewis gave up everything she owned. Jewelry, crystal, silver, furniture and clothes went to family members. Her savings went to the church to help ailing and retired nuns. She even gave up her car. She cried when she gave away her cats, Bat Woman and Robin.
The exchange for her sacrifice: She would be a nun-in-training at Holy Cross for almost a year before she was guaranteed a permanent home as a novitiate. During this time of probation, she would have duties at the school, sing at Mass and live a life of complete poverty, chastity and obedience to God and the priests.
There were things in the bargain she had not anticipated. She told friends the abbot said she could not cover up the mustache she had regularly bleached since childhood because to do so would be worldly and vain. She said having a dark mustache was ”very embarrassing” and would take ”great faith” to accept.
She readily accepted the heavy, old-fashioned habit, sweating profusely in summer, always keeping the wimple close to her face to cover the many holes in her ears.
As time went on, the habit became a metaphor for the changes in her personality. She became increasingly closed and brooding – increasingly withdrawn and dedicated to her vows.
The few friends who stayed in touch with her say she realized she had been naive about what life at Holy Cross would be. She worked 10-hour days and kept a pager clipped to her waist. She was always on call. Not only did she keep the books and oversee the finances, but she taught calculus, too. She did not sing and pray all day as she had planned.
”But she said she got what she wanted most,” says Dreher, her childhood friend. ”She got peace.”
At her funeral in Ohio, the priest sought to comfort family and friends by saying that Michelle Lewis had remained true to her vow of chastity in the face of death, and this meant more to her than life itself.
So, despite the brutality, he said, she had died in the arms of God.
”Considering what she went through her entire life to find peace and avoid violence, this is some consolation, but not enough,” Dreher says.