A few years ago, while still in the early phase of unemployment that left me happy for my new abundance of free time, I spent a lot of time in the park across the street from my apartment building. I would go running in the park at odd times when there were very few people around. It was great. I had large expanses of space all to myself.

The park is very heavily wooded in parts, containing the last precious pocket of natural Manhattan forest. One day, while running on a path through the woods that runs from the open fields of Inwood Hill Park to the area known as the Dyckman Fields, I realized that I was all alone in the woods and had the freedom to do anything I wanted. I could have brought a six-pack of beer and drank it all right there without being ticketed by the police; I could loiter, urinate in public, or do anything else verboten under our city's myriad laws.

This wooded park, Inwood Hill Park, has been like a private treasure to those of us lucky enough to live here. Often, when I would tell people that I live in Inwood, no one would know where I was talking about.

"Inwood, is that on Long Island?" people would ask (there is a town on Long Island named Inwood).

"No, I live in uptown Manhattan," I'll say.

"In Harlem?"

"No, north of Harlem."

Sometimes jokingly referred to as "Upstate Manhattan," Inwood is a great neighborhood that has successfully sheltered first- and second-generation Irish and Dominican immigrants, poor blacks, and working class whites for decades. It is an area where working people can still rent an apartment in Manhattan for prices not quite as insane as the rest of the city. The great green gem of Inwood is Inwood Hill Park.

It was in Inwood Hill Park that I witnessed a large hawk catch and eat a mouse not more than 20 feet away from me and later fly off with a large black squirrel as its prey. It was in Inwood Hill Park where I saw other great birds: velvety red cardinals hopped about in the forest floor and great American bald eagles perched high in the trees.

Of course no one is ever so naïve to think that their neighborhood is immune from society's ills. The flotsam and jetsam of the city's darker side are a regular feature of the park: empty beer and liquor bottles, charred tree stumps, litter, empty drug envelopes, smashed lamps, graffiti. I once even came across the body of a headless chicken, the likely victim of a Santeria ritual. But nothing ever seemed all that sinister or evil. Some teenagers or poor slobs were drinking or doing drugs, some homeless bums were lighting a fire to keep warm.

A few weeks ago, I got a punch in the gut as I walked home: posted on every pole and available surface were missing person posters. A bright-eyed young woman peered from the flyer. Her name was Sarah Fox and she went missing right in our neighborhood. She was last seen leaving her apartment on Isham Street and Broadway. She was on her way to either go running or go to the gym. While my mind tried to play the amateur sleuth and figure our what might have happened, I hoped that she would be found alive and well. I hoped that at worst, this was a case of someone who wanted attention by dropping out of sight or going into hiding, as sometimes happens.

Things looked less hopeful as days went by and volunteers saturated Manhattan with posters in both English and Spanish looking for information. New posters offering a $10,000 reward for information appeared in place of the first batch of posters.

The missing woman was Sarah Fox, a 20-year-old Juilliard student. People from her hometown in New Jersey flocked to the city and helped search for her. The search for her focused on Inwood Hill Park. Police helicopters and bloodhounds searched without luck.

Almost a week after her disappearance, volunteers from her hometown found Sarah Fox's body in the woods only a short distance from the path that runs from the open fields of Inwood Hill Park to the area known as the Dyckman Fields. She was jogging through the woods in an area that, while remote, was fairly well traveled during the time of day she was there, and that runs between two popular areas.

Isham Street became the regular parking place of local news trucks. The tabloids tattooed their front pages with lurid details of the murder. A police mobile command center sits by the entrance of the park. A police scooter now blocks the wooded path across the street from my building.

Sarah Fox was pretty -- the newspapers describe her as "petite" and "pixie-ish" -- and only 20 years old -- not even old enough to drink. My remote pocket of woods is now the scene of a heinous crime. A place that was once a pleasant escape from the prying eyes of the real world is the scene of the ugliest the world has to offer.

Our neighborhood and park are now synonymous with psychopathic sickness, death, and shattered dreams. Inwood Hill Park is no longer our beautiful secret; it is our city's shame, the shelter of cowardly perverts, a green canopy of murder, tragedy, and filth. The murder mocks the wooded beauty of the park. I'd be a fool to tell people about the park's free Shakespeare plays, the last surviving New York City salt marsh, or the ideal bird watching. Inwood Hill Park is now famous for a horrible murder, and deserves to be until the sick bastard who killed Sarah Fox is captured and punished.

One can't help but feel a vengeful bloodlust. Everyone harbors a fantasy about bringing no-frills New York street justice to such a psychopath. We'd slice him up, torture him, and let him choke on his own blood before delivering a gruesome coup de grâce. We all long to be the unlikely hero, arriving in time to surprise whatever menaces our beautiful women. We would like nothing more than to foil these sick things and not read about them in the newspapers, so our parks can be innocent, safe places again. The truth is we will rarely get to be that hero. We will go about our business until ugly reality thrusts a dirty finger in our face.

While it shames us to have this happen in our neighborhood, Inwood is not taking this lying down. People from all walks of life who never knew Sarah Fox have held candlelight vigils, left flowers, and are setting about making the park safer. As a city, New York has made it its business to show its very best in the face of terrible things. Inwood will have its revenge.