Image courtesy of StoryCorps Chicago.

Fifteen years ago, Jonathan Rizzo was on break after his freshman year of college, driving home from a summer job. Rizzo picked up a hitchhiker who wound up taking his life. 

Paul Kennedy had gone to high school and college with Rizzo and they were good friends. They had planned to live together their sophomore year.

Recently, Kennedy’s wife Kelly McLaughlin-Kennedy brought her husband into the StoryCorps booth at the Chicago Cultural Center. She wanted to learn more about her husband’s friend, and how Rizzo’s murder had affected him.