Kristi Koslow

At 7:30 a.m. on March 12, the phone was ringing off the hook at the neighbor's house. The caller turned out to be the woman's friend, worried she was the one stabbed to death at the Clark Avenue and Washington Terrace address, an attack quickly gaining in media coverage. That day, she wished she didn't live across the street from the Koslow's pink mansion at 4100 Clarke.

Forty-five minutes and 42 phone calls later, she joined her group of friends, also escaping phone calls from media and concerned friends, to go for a morning walk.  "Our support system is clicking in," one of the friends told reporters.

A former president of the Fort Worth School Board, the woman recalled seeing the Koslows that previous Saturday night at a gala for the Fort Worth Symphony. Her husband had seen Jack the night before while dining at LaPiazza. She and Caren had been in the same book club the year before. They were friends and neighbors, and they looked out for each other.

Another of the walkers was planning a luncheon fundraiser for victims of violence, an ironic coincidence. She became friends with the Koslows during summers spent in Aspen, where the couple had a second home.

"She liked English flower arranging and she did table settings at P.S. The Letter on Camp Bowie," the woman told reporters. "And you always saw her with her dog. She loved that dog."

Caren's constant companion was a small fluffy dog whose name they couldn't remember. The animal's presence was familiar around the neighborhood where Caren had walked it regularly.

Caren's death had become a shocking interruption throughout the normally peaceful neighborhood. "We need to talk," the women said. "It's such a natural process of assimilating shock." she said, stopping mid-step to rest. "The first process is to say to your friends, 'Yes, it happened. Yes, we are grieving.' "

Though grieving, the most prevalent question still was resting uneasily in the minds of everyone: Who would do such a thing? As River Crest residents would soon find out, the truth would be harder to grasp than anything they could dream up.