Celebrity: “Do You Know Who I Am?”

No one, that is, except Ken’s 72-year-old mother, Fay, a warm, plump retired telephone operator with short hair dyed red. From the time he was a young child, she tells me, Ken had sought her advice about what he should tell people when they asked about his incessant, chest-deep cough. “Tell them you have allergies,” she’d say. “It’s none of their business.”

A little more than a month after her son’s death, she is still clearly grieving. She’s spent virtually every day since outside on her hands and knees, tending her flowers and planting her vegetables, occasionally breaking down, her tears staining the dirt. When I’d called to ask if I could visit, she’d asked if I liked tuna. “Do you like relish?” she’d asked when I told her yes. Now, as she spoons globs of Hellmann’s into a bowl under the watchful eye of an image of Jesus above a doorway, she wipes away tears with the back of her hand. So does Danielle. I find myself struggling to say something. “Do you like tuna?” I ask Danielle. “Oh yes,” she answers meekly. “I like tuna.”

We eat outside on the deck, next to an aboveground pool. As soon as Ken was born, the doctors took him away, Fay tells me. They diagnosed him with cystic fibrosis — a congenital disease that causes the body to create an overabundance of thick mucus, leading to recurring lung infections and premature death — and operated on him to remove a foot of his intestines. When he grew up, his daily regimen included repeated breathing-machine treatments to help him dislodge mucus, and supplements and enzymes to help his seriously compromised bowel absorb nutrients. Still, he was remarkably conscientious about managing his illness and had never been hospitalized for it, she says. Danielle — thin, with mouse-brown hair and closely set features — is quiet, nibbling at her sandwich. Ken, she tells me, “brought me out of my shell. Instead of sitting in my room reading, he lit a light inside of me.” They’d planned to move in together. “They executed him,” she says, her shoulders rounding further.

Fay was outside in her garden when the police car pulled up that day. Following the alleged encounter with the girl on the sidewalk, Ken had continued on to the post office to mail his packet to Jimmy Kimmel, and was on his way to the mall when his mother called him. “The police are here,” she told him. “They say they need to speak to you right away.” By the time he arrived home, three cruisers were parked out front. The girl had told the patrolman who responded to the 911 call and would end up handling the case that after getting out of his car, Ken had reached across the closed trunk and grabbed her jacket, that she’d struggled to break free. It’s me — Kenneth Keith. Do you know who I am? Indeed, the patrolman did; in his affidavit he wrote, “Upon speaking with the victim and obtaining the suspect description, your affiant recognized this name and description to be consistent with that of Kenneth Keith Kallenbach.” In the driveway, Ken was scared. “I didn’t do anything,” he protested. The officers placed him under arrest. Ken asked whether his mother could go with him; the officers said no. As he was leading Ken across the lawn, Ken would later tell his mother, an officer muttered, “Let’s see if Howard Stern can get you out of this one.”