I’ve watched my fair share of courtroom dramas on TV, and they are just that; drama. The jury hangs on each attorney’s every word, the benches overflow with emotional spectators, each witness reveals something thrilling about the case.

But I got a taste of the real thing at my summer internship at The Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus, where I was a last-minute choice to cover a murder trial. All I knew on my way to the courtroom on the day of opening arguments was that it was a death by stabbing.

Maybe, I thought, the case was a love triangle gone horribly wrong. Maybe it was a mob hit. Somewhere sex, drugs or money had to come in to play. Murder is a crime of passion, right?

I expected to see the family of the man who was killed, clutching tissues to their faces and praying for justice. I thought the accused man’s family would also take a space on the bench to solemnly support him.

I braced myself for the inevitable elbowing past TV reporters and their cameras, blocking the door and crowding the benches.

But as I crept into the courtroom 25 minutes late, the gallery was empty.

I sat there scribbling alone, frantically trying to catch up with what I missed, trying not to pay attention to how ice cold the room was. If only more people were here, I thought, this place would be warmer.

As the case unfolded over the next three days, I found nothing relating to sex, drugs or money. The accused was a man in his early 50s, who looked 70, an alcoholic, paranoid schizophrenic and manic depressive. He had been receiving social security because of episodes related to his condition for more than a decade. Sores on his feet prevented him from doing much walking, and a years-old shoulder injury kept him from lifting one arm more than 45 degrees.

He lived in a duplex where he rented out one side and lived on the other. He drank a third of a jug of vodka every day for a week before the murder. At the autopsy, it was found that the murdered man had a near-fatal blood alcohol content.

The murder took place in that duplex. Two other men, who have been homeless on and off, were living there, one helping the accused to take care of himself. The fourth came over to visit, and started arguing about Vietnam with the accused, and got stabbed in the neck for it.

A murder trial is rarely anything other than dark, but this was chilling. Four men in their 40s and 50s, most with families, were so alone in the world that they only had one another and a social security check to keep them off the streets. One got annoyed and killed the other, and no one came to the trial. It’s sad that someone died, someone got sent to jail and two more may or may not have homes. It’s even sadder that no one cared.

I’m not Miss Cleo. I don’t know that if someone gave a damn about these people this wouldn’t have happened. But I know that a man who needs homeless people to care for him and can drink for a week straight has few family members involved in his life.

I once developed a personal theory that all evil came from self-centeredness. That is, people get hurt, things get stolen, lives get ruined because someone cared too much about himself to worry about anyone else.

But here I struggled. Why did this happen? Was it because this man had so little to look forward to anyway that going to jail didn’t matter? He was very nonchalant in his police interview, admitting at least four times that he stabbed the other man. What did that have to do with self-centeredness?

Perhaps I’m going out on a limb because I don’t know the families of these men, but I would guess a lot of the self-centeredness lies there. This is murder. It’s a big deal. I think a person could take time out of his busy schedule to watch the murder trial of their son or brother or nephew. I can’t even begin to understand why the murdered man’s family wouldn’t be there.

I’m even a little upset that no other media were there, considering they were all over an earlier murder trial, where a young black man was accused of killing a white state trooper. I guess old, drunk white-on-white crime is less important. Maybe The Rock Island Argus and I are the only ones who think murder is murder. Maybe we’re the only ones who think these lives have meaning.

Obviously, their families didn’t agree.