Troubled Neighbors Find Some Comfort In `Promised Land'

BY GREG BURTON
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

The stuffed animals that appeared as gifts on Anna Palmer's windowpane in the days following her murder have been stacked into a corner of her wood-slat porch.
They lie at the legs of an outdoor barbecue grill, near the spot where Anna's mother found her youngest child covered in blood, dying from stab wounds to the neck.
Vacant for a time, the Salt Lake City home has refilled with family members coping with the unexplained. Votive candles -- some carrying the image of Jesus -- now cover the windowpane ledge.
It has been a dizzying month of loss and redemption for this neighborhood -- a confluence of narrow streets and modest brick and clapboard homes at about 1600 South that meet at 300 East.
Anna's unsolved murder looms heavy, but there are signs of healing, some generated by the nearby distraction of a production company filming -- quite by coincidence -- episodes of a Christian-theme television show.
Angered and fearful, but gregarious just the same, children have returned to the bushes and fence lines.
A few houses away from the Palmers' red-brick bungalow, a griddle sizzles inside a mobile cafeteria parked along the curb. It is 11:30 a.m.
Two blocks from where 10-year-old Anna was slain, actors, extras, grips and directors from Merlot Film Productions are wrapping up a morning run-through for an episode of ``Promised Land'' -- the CBS hit filmed in Salt Lake City.
They will take their lunch break on a grassy front lawn across an overgrown sidewalk from the makeshift cafeteria.
Neighbors are invited to eat for free. Crew members carry warm lunches to elderly shut-ins such as 66-year-old Audrey Campbell. Campbell agonizes over Anna's death, but she is pleasantly distracted by the commotion of filming.
``Promised Land'' has lifted spirits here, she says, peering up from a couch in a dark, claustrophobic, living room. ``I believe it's true, I believe it's true. They brought me food, what a nice thing to do. They don't have to do a thing, you know. Not a thing.''
Producers expect to film at least three episodes of the television series at this location, chosen for two gingerbread-laced Victorian homes that rise side-by-side around the block from the Palmers.
``We spent more than a month looking for the right kind of house,'' says Andy Langton, a location manager for Merlot who admits some misgivings about locating here with a killer on the loose.
``At first we were uncomfortable, but neighbors said it would be a good thing,'' he says. ``A few people came up to me thinking I might be an unwanted stranger, really trying to look out for one another. Since then, the response overall has been really great.''
Some residents have grown tired of the film sessions, the periodic closure of a street or the clutter of cast and crew. But most agree the crew's arrival was as much a miracle as a lark.
``We are still afraid of what has happened -- still really watching what is going on -- but this helps,'' says Betty Eatchel, a friend of the Palmers who lives nearby on Browning Avenue, one of a series of tree-lined streets -- Harvard and Emerson among them -- with lofty aspirations.
So while the Greenes -- the fictional ``Promised Land'' family -- follow their own dramatic path from loss to redemption -- so will the families in this neighborhood.
Langton, who is arranging a donation to the Palmer family, wouldn't have it any other way.
``We are in the business of creating the fantasy world,'' he says. ``So it's always kind of sobering, but nice, for us when we run into real life.''