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Arrest Doesn’t Ease the Pain for the Families of Victims

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From Times Wire Services

For the families touched most by the randomness of the bombing of the World Trade Center, there seemed to be little relief Thursday in the arrest of a suspect.

“What good is it?” asked Sophie Macko, 80, mother of William Macko, a 58-year-old engineering supervisor killed in the blast.

“I lost a son,” Macko said tearfully from her home in Bayonne, N.J. “There’s no relief. My son is gone. I’m very sad. He left a good wife and beautiful children. I always said I should have gone before him. What relief?”

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And there was no solace for the family of John DiGiovanni, 45, a dental equipment salesman who perished in the blast. “If this (man) was part of it, I hope he gets what he deserves,” said DiGiovanni’s brother, Ernest.

“He ruined my life,” an angry Evelyn Kirkpatrick said Thursday, one day after burying her 61-year-old husband, Robert, a maintenance supervisor at the World Trade Center. “I still expect my husband to come through the door any minute. This man has ruined my life.”

A woman who answered the phone at the Staten Island, N.Y., home of Stephen Knapp, a 47-year-old operations superintendent for the Port Authority, declined to comment on the arrest.

The other victim was 34-year-old Monica Smith, a Port Authority secretary who was seven months’ pregnant.

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