The Beating Heart

A tragic crime. A medical breakthrough. A last chance at life.

I co-edited the art and images for this article by two-time Pulitzer-winning writer Gene Weingarten.

Sometimes the work of editing photos is a little more than straight forward. For images for this article, I visited the home of Ursula Ermert Jones in order to borrow precious hard-copy photos of her daughter, Karen Ermert, who had been tragically murdered by her boyfriend Mark. Ursula and I bonded over background commonalities, and I learned about her life in Europe before and after the Nazis had invaded her hometown, and also of her daughter’s, taken too soon. Both the article and the photos became far more meaningful to me after this exchange, and knowing that she trusted me with these last images of her daughter was both a heavy responsibility and an honor.