Shared pain
A TV movie explores a local man's struggle to find the teenage driver responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter, and his unusual reaction after locating the youth.
By ERIC DEGGANS
Published April 22, 2007
Bruce Murakami admits there is much about tonight's CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on his life, Crossroads: A Story of Forgiveness, that isn't quite true.
When his wife and daughter were killed in a Tampa car accident caused by a drag-racing youth, the attorney he hired to find the culprit was male, not female. And when Murakami stunned the world by asking the teen who killed his wife and daughter to talk at his son's high school about the dangers of fast driving, he did get permission from his kids beforehand, unlike his onscreen counterpart.
"The No. 1 question I get, is 'How can you forgive this kid?' " Murakami, 58, said over a crackling cell phone line from New York City, where he and star Dean Cain have been doing interviews. "But doing what we're doing today helps me go through my grief and process it. That kid is suffering as much as I am."
When Murakami's wife, Cindy, and 11-year-old daughter, Chelsea, were killed in a 1998 accident on Hillsborough Avenue, he spent thousands of dollars to discover who caused the crash. But when he learned the culprit was a clean-cut kid with no criminal record, Murakami eventually asked the judge to drop a possible 30-year prison sentence in exchange for a lighter penalty that included the pair making speeches together to teens.
"I don't know if I could have . . . forgiven like that," said Cain Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, who prepared by studying videotapes of Murakami's court appearances and news footage.
When the former TV Superman was cast, he didn't even know that Murakami and his story were real; spotting the character's name on an early script, Cain just assumed producers were acknowledging his Japanese heritage.
"At the end of (shooting) it all, my stomach was in knots," said Cain, who first met Murakami just days ago. "I literally felt sick to my stomach . . . because the emotions were so intense."
Neither Cain nor Murakami, who had limited input on the script, could explain the biggest change: casting a woman, former Frasier co-star Peri Gilpin, to play the attorney who pushed authorities to prosecute then-19-year-old Justin Cabezas. Bulldog Tampa attorney Rick Terrana was the real person.
Of course, CBS's Sunday movies draw a huge female audience, and without Gilpin's turn, there would be just one major female role. Murakami already had nixed a fictional twist in which he was having an affair before the accident.
And the kid who caused the accident is named Justin Gutierrez, in deference to Cabezas' parents. "Justin's parents had a hard time with . . . the movie," Murakami said. "It's not exactly something you want to be known for."
These days, Murakami and Cabezas are working to expand their nonprofit organization Teen Safe Driving, hoping to find donations to match a $100,000 grant from the state. Now remarried and living in St. Pete Beach, Murakami still marvels at how far his life's biggest tragedy has taken him.
And he still has nothing but kind words for the young man who caused it all.
"He was (sentenced to) 300 hours of community service, and he's probably done 3,000," said Murakami of Cabezas. "He says he'll be making it up to me until the day he dies."
Eric Deggans can be reached at (727) 893-8521 or deggans@sptimes.com See his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/media.
Preview
Crossroads: A Story of Forgiveness
The Hallmark Hall of Fame movie airs at 9 tonight on WTSP-Ch. 10. Grade: B.