(ABC 6 News) – It’s been a long three and a half years for the family and friends of Liz Quackenbush, the former Rochester teacher murdered by her boyfriend.

Preston Higgs was arrested following an 18-week manhunt after the 39-year-old woman was found dead in her New Orleans home in 2021.

Just this summer, Higgs was convicted of second degree murder, and this week received a lifetime sentence without the possibility of parole.

Now, with the trial over and Higgs’ fate sealed, Liz’s loved ones remember her life and legacy.

Many attended this week’s sentencing, either in person or virtually, to witness the end of the trial and deliver victim impact statements.

In Rochester, Liz Quackenbush is best remembered for her work at the Alternative Learning Center and the legacy she leaves behind in the many students she taught, but her impact extends far beyond the borders of the city.

In Washington, D.C., Jess Mullan remembers her friends unwavering support.

“She helped me feel confident and never judged anything about me,” she said. “I always felt this underlying sense of unconditional love.”

Mullan went on with this impact statement sent to ABC 6 News:

If someone is very lucky, they get to have a person in their life who can show them unconditional love, understand who they really are at their core, who can challenge them and support them at the same time, who can lift them up and make them feel as if life is an amazing adventure full of possibility. Liz was that person for me.
Liz is who I called when I was overwhelmed in life, sad, or depressed, when I had exciting news, or when I had something hilarious to share. She was an honest sounding board who could always make me laugh, even if it was just because her own laugh was so infectious and beautiful. I felt recharged, lighter, and brighter after each of our calls, like I had someone in my corner who really knew me and my capabilities and truly believed in me.
I have come to learn that I was not the only lucky soul to experience this. Yes, she was this person for the other friends and family I had known about throughout our lifelong friendship, but she was also this person for so many more people. Students, teachers, artists, co-workers, and almost everyone she met got to feel that way because of Liz.
You have taken that from me. You have taken that from her mother. You have taken that from her brother. You have taken that from all of us who got to have her in our lives. You and your violent, selfish, and immature act have also taken that from all the people she had yet to meet. All the students who won’t have her as the teacher who believed in them and helped them learn in a way that worked for them. All the teachers who won’t have Liz as a ray of sunshine in their sometimes difficult, and always demanding daily work. You have taken that lifelong feeling away from her nieces and her cousin’s young kids. They won’t have their amazing aunt Liz in their corner to help them through the ups and downs of life and take them on adventures and be that source of unconditional love. You and your actions have taken all of that.
I am forever grateful for the time I did get with Liz, but I wanted more. I expected more. We all should have had more time with Liz. She deserved more. The whole world deserved more time with Liz in it. But, because of you, we don’t. We can’t. We will never get more time with her. We won’t get to hug her again. We won’t hear her sing again. We won’t experience her hilarious dry wit again. And we won’t hear her infectious laugh and see her smile that could light up a room again. I grieve her loss every single day. Every day. Life’s hard moments will be harder without her, life’s best moments will shine slightly less without her there. She lives on in all of us, but she should be living instead. 

Jessie McNally, in North Carolina, recalls the first time they met and spent a night walking along an art installation in downtown St. Paul.

“I said to her, ‘Should we go get a drink?’ And she turned around and she had a backpack full of beer for us to walk around and I just thought that was the coolest thing,” McNally said, laughing.

Scott Mahle, who retired to northern Wisconsin, has memories of Liz that go beyond his time working with her at the ALC.

“I remember Liz actually as a student,” he said. “I was an elementary counselor when Liz went through Hawthorne Elementary… and she was a pretty free spirit even back as an elementary student.”

And just up the road in Red Wing, Katie Sloan thinks fondly on the values Liz held when they worked together at the ALC to start the Green Thumb Initiative, a program that lets students learn how to grow vegetables to give back to the community.

“Liz really believed that the difference between surviving and thriving lied in our interests and our hobbies,” she said.

An impact statement from Sloan goes deeper into how she remembers Quackenbush:

With her tattoos, distinctive jewelry and dress, and her ever changing hair color, Liz stood apart from the traditional midwest teaching crowd.  Oftentimes, she was underestimated until she started speaking. She knew it and used it to her advantage. Liz was a dynamic speaker–she knew her stuff and she knew how to deliver it in a compelling way.

Liz fills the hearts of and minds of the lucky few who got to knew her in a life cut short.

A life filled with laughter, love, and adventure.

“It was really comical a lot of the same bits and pieces of Liz in all of our stories,” said Caly Christofferson, regarding the reading of several victim impact statements that took place during Higgs’ sentencing on Thursday. “You could really see that what I think we’ve all kind of dubbed that ‘Liz Effect’ on people.”

Christofferson, along with other long-time friends of Liz Lori Nelson and Brooke Galbreath, started the Liz Quackenbush Foundation following Liz’s death to carry on her passion for education and teaching students in different ways that are more suited to the student.

“She loved what she did, she loved the people she served, and she was someone who was making a difference in the world,” said Paula Kuisle, Liz’s aunt and a fellow educator.

There is still pain felt by those close to Liz.

“I think she is in every corner of my life,” said Christofferson. “To not have that now, it’s a bit of a deafening silence.”

But there is also healing.

“We get to sit and look forward,” said McNally, referring to moments during the trial when Higgs would look back at Liz’s friends and family that had come to support her. “We are not going to avert our eyes. We look forward to a future, a future without him.”

And the end of this chapter brings some closure.

“I feel like I walked Liz to the end of her story,” said Sloan. “As a friend, as someone who is a loved one, what more can we do for the people that we love.”

Now, all that’s left is to carry on what Liz Quackenbush built.

“She was everyone’s champion,” said Kuisle. “She was creative. She was just a ray of sunshine. And she cared about people… she just cared about people. I miss her so much.”

McNally also offered this story of how she met Quackenbush and their friendship:

I met Liz in May of 2010. We had both just moved into artist lofts in St Paul, Minnesota. I was in awe of her beauty; she was a badass babe. It only took us one night of hanging out to realize what kindred spirits we were. Over the next few years, she became one of my closest friends. When she would come into my work to get tattooed my coworkers would say “your sister, that’s not your sister, but looks like she could be your sister, is here.”
More often than not we would unintentionally be wearing matching outfits. We would look each other up and down and laugh. If by chance we met at one of our houses, one of us would change. Although there was one time, we didn’t care that we matched, we were hitting the road with Denver in our sights, both wearing camo pants, grey hoodies and trucker caps, like Thelma and Louise driving west into the sunset.
I can’t even count the times that we adventured together. Whether it was a quick trip to the woods for a camping weekend or cross-country road trip, she was my favorite passenger. I really never let her drive because she was fast, and I preferred to cruise at sight seeing speed. Camping with Liz was especially fun. She was so damn capable. I never had to ask her to do anything. I’d cook, she’d clean. I’d get the fire started and she would gather all the wood. On road trips we would venture into obscure dive bars, find the best bbq places on the outskirts of town, wander antique malls that could double as horror movie back drops, but with Liz I was never scared. She was solid and fearless. And I felt that way in her presence too. But more than anything my favorite thing about being with Liz was all those hours spent together sitting around a fire or cruising across states, we would just talk. Endless conversations about all the things.
Our work, our relationships, our families, our friends, our troubles, our hopes, our pain, our happiness, we shared it, openly and without judgment.
We shared our love of art too. We showed work together in galleries, we had art nights in my home and studio. She was hands down my biggest cheerleader. Over the years, I would send her photos of what I was working on, a new painting, a new sculpture, a new line of jewelry.
More often than not, she would call dibs on something. I looked to her for validation. If she liked it I knew I was doing something right.
Liz was my kindred. She was my chosen sister. Liz was someone I could count on to show up for me, she was protective of me, she respected my boundaries, she challenged me and she was the one who I knew was always down for some crazy adventure.
In May of 2020, we were looking for a place to camp that was in between New Orleans and my home in Western North Carolina. After not having much luck due to Covid restrictions she said “why don’t I just come to you, afterall, you do live in our ideal camp spot”. So she drove 12 hours to camp with me on the river in my front yard. I have a beautiful video from that trip, our tents set up along the river, bonfire crackling, lights strung in the trees and a train coming around the bend on the other side of the river lighting up the water as it passes us by. That was our last camping trip together.
In the morning hours of March 4th 2021, I received a message from a friend of ours asking me to call her. She said “Liz is gone Jessie, she’s been murdered.” Shock and disbelief, I was out of my body. And then I asked “where is he?” and she replied “we don’t know.”
I wept for her heart. Her massive heart. All she did was love.
I shattered repeatedly over the next week learning about the brutality of it all. I pictured her face, her beautiful face. Her huge smile, her sparkling eyes, her perfect teeth replaced with the unimaginable. For months I would wake in the night and I would picture her alone on the floor of her bedroom. I would beg and pray to my mom in heaven to hold her. I prayed for her to wrap her arms around her and hold her. The loneliness of that night, that night, she laid there all by herself, still haunts me.
The violence in how she died changed me on a molecular level. I am not the same person as I was before. In my grief I have found myself examining my face in photos from before Liz died and since Liz died. My eyes aren’t so bright, my smile isn’t as wide, any real joy has yet to return.
Preston took away the rest of Liz’s years, but he also took away years of my life. Those first two years I felt crippled by grief. Unable to function as I once did before. The most mundane tasks seemed unbearable. Daily bouts of weeping, grasping the wall or counter to steady myself, sitting down in the road on a walk because my grief took over my whole body. Some days it hurt to breathe. I am not the person I was before. Everything is harder for me now.
And I know I’m not alone. The ripple effect of this tragedy, of this traumatic experience, has impacted not just us who loved her fiercely, but those who love us as well. My family and my friends grieve for my grief. Strangers grieve for our grief. The impact of her brutal murder is enormous and tragic.
Over the years I have dissected every photo I have of her, keeping her alive in those memories. When her loved ones would share photos of her I hadn’t seen before, my heart would skip a beat and it’s like she was back for just a fleeting moment. On the anniversary of her death this year, I uploaded photos of Liz into an AI (artificial intelligence) app.
The images that came back took my breath away. My favorites, and the ones that were most painful are the images of her with wrinkles around her eyes and her hair greying. Theses images are glimpses of what we
continue to lose with out her in our future. I say that her death walks with me every day. It’s woven in. But I know that my grief will change over time. It already has. This is the closure that will help me move on.
During the trial, as Preston would stare back at us, I thought to myself, keep looking back at us. We will not avert our eyes. Looking back is all you have. You have no future. We get to keep looking forward. We look forward to a future without you.