The tragic death of 11-year-old Marco Archer has long faded from the headlines, but those who were closest to him said yesterday the intensity of the grief surrounding his murder has not diminished. Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the boy's abduction. Marco left home on Brougham Street to go to a store for candy, and when too much time had passed, his mother went searching for him, but did not find him.

The next five days were hell for his mother and the rest of his family, as each day brought increased anxiety and fear that the horror they feared would become reality. Yesterday, Marco's parents, Tryphemia Meadows and Hartley Archer, wept with their daughters as they sat on a couch at a home on Claridge Road, retracing the horrific incident and searching for words to describe the heartache they continue to endure.

"It was a serious call, but I was thinking that he was alive. That's all I was saying, that he was alive," said Meadows, recalling the phone call on September 28, the day the boy's body was found in bushes behind an apartment complex in Cable Beach. She said even when the family went to the Central Detective Unit, she still believed her youngest child was alive. But the Bob Marley T-shirt and the school pants Marco was wearing when he left home were in possession of the police. Meadows said it was then that the reality of the situation struck her hard.

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