Ruin Around a Rebel

In the New York City suburb of Mount Vernon, pretty, brunette Christine Nystrom had the glow of a model 16-year-old. "Of our four children, Chrissy was the one who could make a friend," said her father, tall, greying Fred Nystrom, co-founder and vice president of a construction machinery firm. "Whatever she does, she does well," added the pastor of Mount Vernon's First Presbyterian Church, who supervised Christine's work as president of the interchurch Youth Council. "A lovely, attractive girl, and always dependable," said the dean of girls at A. B. Davis High School, where Christine was honor student, cheerleader and senior class marshal. "You could call her well-stacked and a fun girl, but I'd rank her as one of the three most intelligent girls in our class," said Jeffrey Morris, who played Sir Joseph to Christine's Cousin Hebe in the school's H.M.S. Pinafore.

Yet interwoven with the model girl who never drank, smoked or rock-'n'-rolled, who was equally adept on the violin or in a choose-up neighborhood football game, was another girl who emerged last summer. Three times police spotted Christine aimlessly wandering Westchester County highways at night in jeans and sneakers; three times they packed her back home. "She was unhappy, but she never said just why," observed a girl friend. "Maybe she was lacking in love and affection at home," suggested Patrolman Daniel Rosato, who picked her up in November, handcuffed her when she scratched him and attempted to break away, finally cajoled her into talking about herself. "We never spanked her," said her mother, attractive Ruth Nystrom, "but I was strict with her. That's the way I was brought up. She didn't seem to resent it. Mothers used to say to me 'Oh, if only my daughter listened to me like that. I guess she was rebelling against authority."

Wild Weave. Last week Christine rebelled for the fourth furious time. Walking along Mount Vernon's Lincoln Avenue one afternoon, she noted a red Chevrolet parked with ignition off but unlocked. Explained Christine afterward: "I just felt I had to break the law." She broke it by sliding behind the wheel, driving the car onto the Hutchinson River Parkway and heading south toward New York City. At a toll station, the same cop who had stopped her the first time as a runaway recognized Christine but not the car.

The policeman took after her in his patrol car, chased her about a mile, finally slowed down as his speedometer indicated 100 m.p.h. Just then he saw the Chevrolet start to weave back and forth across the three southbound lanes of the parkway. On one wild weave to the right it smashed into the rear of a Thunderbird convertible hugging the curbside, shattered it. The Thunderbird's driver, 47-year-old Richard Sperling, a Connecticut laundry manager and father of two, died instantly. The Chevrolet swerved onto a shoulder, rolled over four times. Christine was only dazed when she was dragged out. She stayed overnight in a Bronx hospital, refused to see her parents, declined all food beyond a glass of orange juice. Eventually she asked: "Was that man married?" When the policewoman guarding her nodded, Christine wept at last.

Sad Note. Freed on $7,500 bail, Christine at week's end was home again, intending to go back to classes, faced with a possible trial for vehicular homicide and grand larceny. She wandered aimlessly through the Nystroms' three-story Georgian house, once sat down to pen a short, sad note to Sperling's wife and son: "I wish it could have been me, instead of he, who died." Her pastor called to pray with her; a psychiatrist chatted with her for an hour and concluded: "I guess it amounts to the fact that there are two Christine Nystroms." Heartbroken and haggard, Fred Nystrom could only ponder the lives that Mount Vernon's model girl had mangled.

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