by Elle Johnson
But carry on they did. Ramirez drove the getaway car back to Alemar’s apartment, where they divided the money. Ramirez claims it wasn’t until later Saturday morning, when he saw a newspaper, that he realized “I had killed a young lady, injured another.” On Sunday he boarded a plane to California.
The commissioners had a hard time believing Ramirez didn’t know he had killed Karen. The usually cordial Q&A felt more like an interrogation than an interview. “I mean, but you are literally on top of them, right?” They were incredulous, hostile. “Part of this girl’s head was blown off, you didn’t even look down to see what happened, as a result of the discharge of the weapon?” Ramirez insisted he didn’t see where he had fired, he wasn’t looking where the blast went, and he was already headed for the exit and on the other side of the restaurant.
“So you want us to believe that you didn’t see the blood and flesh that came off of the victim? Is that what you want us to believe?”
“That’s exactly what happened, sir. I didn’t see any.”
“There is no one screaming as to the gore of what happened, and the girl who was wounded was not screaming in pain?”
“I did not hear anyone scream. I did not hear a noise, sir.”
One commissioner pressed Ramirez about the blood. “One can only imagine the gore of the crime scene, which no doubt, had to have gotten all over you and your clothes.”
“No, nothing was on my clothes.”
“So a girl was at your feet, with her head blown off, and you got no blood on your clothes?”
“No, sir.”
“Okay.”
Only one commissioner had found an explanation for why Ramirez reloaded that seemed plausible to me. It was in a risk assessment letter written by an executive director of forensic evaluation and counseling services. He wrote, “Just as a child who has accidentally broken his toy may try in vain to put the shattered pieces back together, Mr. Ramirez was a drug-crazed immature teenager, who, in his stupor recklessly caused a catastrophe. In the instant Mr. Ramirez witnessed the destruction he had accidentally caused, in horror and shock he regressed to the level of a small child. He reloaded the weapon in an unconscious, pathetic attempt to fix what he had done, put the bullet back in the gun, to turn back the clock.”
I believed that once Ramirez realized he couldn’t turn back the clock, he blocked out the terrible carnage of the shotgun blast—the blood, the gore, the groaning screams of fear. He was in denial, protecting himself from the trauma of what he had done. That was why he didn’t realize until the next day that someone had been killed. As with his plan for the robbery, instead of processing and reflecting, he kept moving toward an exit and flew to California the next day.
Thirty-three years later, Ramirez wanted to prove he had moved past who he was at that defining moment of his life. He quoted Norman Vincent Peale: “What he said was if you can change your thoughts you can change the world. And I’ve changed my thoughts. I no longer think like I’m an adolescent.” He offered examples to prove that he understood what he had done and had changed. At one hearing he tried to equate his mother’s diabetes and long-standing health issues to what his victims at the Burger King were feeling. “Because what she is suffering now, I can only imagine what the victims of my crime suffered that night and suffer lifelong because of my actions.” The commissioner doesn’t see the connection and admonishes him, saying, “Frankly, it’s a stretch, Mr. Ramirez.”
At a later parole hearing he told a more analogous story. While working as a shift manager at a White Castle, his mother was robbed at gunpoint. “I heard the panic, the frightened tremor in her voice,” he said. “And I was scared. And I was afraid for her.” Though he acknowledges that her suffering is nothing like a family losing their child, he felt that now “I know and I understand what the victims of my crime endured and had suffered.”
At hearing after hearing, the parole board found Ramirez lacking and denied his parole. “You continue to offer dubious explanation of events to mitigate your actions.” “Despite your lengthy incarceration, you have failed to conform your behavior as a civil and potentially law-abiding person otherwise would.” And finally, “Your release would be incompatible with the welfare of society, and would so deprecate the serious nature of the crime as to undermine respect for the law.”
But at the 2012 hearing, one commissioner disagreed and dissented from the decision to deny parole. Ramirez used his training as a legal clerk, in which he helped other prisoners with their appeals processes, to appeal the board’s decision to deny his parole. Rather than gamble with a whole new set of commissioners, he wanted a do-over with at least one commissioner he knew to be sympathetic to his release. So began an appeals process that resulted in five years of postponements. He is accused of “commissioner shopping” and told, “You seem to be rescheduling this an awful lot.” He’s warned by the parole board that “we are not going to keep postponing this. This is nonsense to keep postponing this, when you know exactly what’s going on.” If remorse and regret weren’t enough to get him out, he was going to get out on a legal loophole.
I was impressed but also wary of his ingenuity. Those legal aid jobs had paid off. I begrudged him his freedom. The more I learned about Ramirez, the more I realized I didn’t want him to get out. I didn’t think he deserved to be free. But there were plenty of people who did. He had numerous recommendations from people inside the facilities, as well as outside, who were able to overlook his crime and focus on the person he seemed to have become. There were black marks all over the page, concealing the names of the people vouching for Ramirez, most of them in law enforcement. One commissioner read what he described as “a very, very good letter on your behalf” from a prison chaplain who called Ramirez by his nickname, “Sandy,” and who was proud to say their “close friendship” had escalated to a father-son relationship. There were recommendations from a number of corrections officers. Even a former chairman of the parole board had written a letter on his behalf that said he felt Ramirez would be able to “live a very productive life.”
I thought about what my father had said, that the boys who killed Karen were young enough to still make something of their lives if they were released from prison. My father could’ve been one of those black marks, one of the many law enforcement personnel who had recommended that Ramirez be released. He could have written a letter on Ramirez’s behalf—though I remembered him specifically saying he had gone to a parole board hearing for one of the boys. I could easily see my father showing up unannounced, barging in, determined to say his piece and have it included in the official record. Even though I never found proof of an in-person visit or a letter from my father, I believed he’d done something. My father had forgiven. I should have been able to.
I couldn’t move past this. I knew the old saying about taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. I knew that withholding forgiveness would hurt only me. But I couldn’t just force myself to move on because it was supposed to be better for me. It wasn’t real forgiveness if the only reason I forgave was to benefit myself, because I wanted to feel better. Then I was no better than Ramirez, who seemed selfish and self-absorbed to the point of narcissism.
After years of counseling people deep in the process of forgiving, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and archbishop Desmond Tutu had observed that forgiveness involved four steps: acknowledging the harm, telling the story, granting forgiveness, and releasing the relationship. Maybe I couldn’t forgive because I wasn’t ready to release. I was holding on, stuck in what I thought was the righteous anger of the wronged. Maybe forgiveness was about transcending anger and pain, having compassion for someone else as you would want for yourself. Or maybe it was even simpler than that.
Forgiveness meant letting go of the past. Moving on from an unattainable desire that the outcome could be different. Karen wasn’t coming back. But even if the outcome couldn’t change, the person responsible should. I didn’t believe Santiago Ramirez had changed.
>
Maybe I was being too hard on Ramirez. Maybe I had read the transcripts with a black heart and a jaundiced eye. He said he wanted to atone, and maybe he had done everything he could to follow the rules. He was no longer a drug addict, no longer getting into trouble in prison. He said, “For me, remorse is something that has a lot of action. It’s not just words, it’s actions. And my actions are to tell me that I need to give back to the community in any way that I can so that I am actually empowering other people to enjoy their lives instead of taking them and causing destruction. So I think about my victims every day.” I know he did, because when asked, he recited all the victims’ names. It leaves black marks all over the transcripts. They could have blacked out the entire paragraph just of names, but someone went to the trouble of blacking out each name, first and last. He remembered the first and last name of every person in the Burger King that night. It was remarkable. Or it was a parlor trick meant to impress the commissioners.
At every hearing he talked about the robbery as “a decision that I truly regret” and said “I am remorseful for my actions.” He made a point of always saying that he took “full responsibility for killing Karen.” And clarified that it was not because he was caught, but “because it’s not my place to take anybody else’s life; and Karen Marsh had a promising life, and could have had a serious and significant effect on society as a whole.” He was saying all the right things. But that was the problem.
During one hearing, Ramirez talked about what his high school English teacher had written in his senior yearbook: “It takes longer to get there when you take shortcuts.” At the time he said he hadn’t understood what the teacher was trying to tell him. Now he knew it meant that when you run from your problems, you’re not dealing with them.
But I didn’t believe Ramirez ever felt the true weight of taking Karen’s life. It all felt parroted back from someone else telling him what he should feel, what he should say. The heat of the truth never radiated off him. He was not digging deep, exposing the bones buried underneath. He never submitted to the pain or succumbed to the deeper feelings that live beneath remorse and regret: shame and vulnerability. It was like after the shotgun went off, he wouldn’t look closely at all. Everything he did in prison was about proving he could make it on the outside. To do that, he had to take control of the narrative of his life.
He lied to the parole board when he said he had never committed a crime before, something his codefendants eventually admitted in their own parole board hearings. He said his family didn’t know why he went to California, when court documents show that he’d told his sister he had killed Karen and she’d helped him hide the shotgun in their apartment. Ramirez wanted to control the story about himself the way he had tried to control the robbery. He said he chose to carry the shotgun instead of the pistol because “I think the shotgun has the image effect of having more control.” He admitted that “at that time I wasn’t really thinking about letting somebody else take control.”
Ramirez had a peculiar way of taking ownership of the victims of the crime by referring to them as “my victims.” That phrasing made it clear that he was responsible, but it was also as if he still exercised some measure of control over them. I remembered something I’d read in the transcript from the sentencing hearing: he said he would not be a victim. He would be in control. He hadn’t changed. He was still the angry young man feeling disrespected who asked, “What about my parents, what about me?”
When asked what was the most significant thing he had learned since being incarcerated, he answered, “That I learned how to forgive myself for taking Karen Marsh’s life.” He was even trying to take control of whether or not he was forgiven. This made my blood boil. The arrogance and nerve. The selfishness. I read his transcripts over and over. I even retyped the passages into topic areas to understand what really happened. Again and again Ramirez said he had regret, he had remorse, he took responsibility. But in ten parole hearings over the course of fourteen years he never once said the words “I’m sorry.” He forgave himself, but he had never asked to be forgiven.
I didn’t forgive him. I couldn’t.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I spent the morning gathering all the paperwork I’d accumulated on Santiago Ramirez, including twelve years’ worth of parole board hearing transcripts and a small stack of thin white business envelopes holding letters from Victim Assistance. The letters announced when his parole had been denied or his next hearing date was scheduled. As I put the letters in order, I realized that the three most recent ones were unopened. One of the envelopes had a green certified mail sticker across the front and back. It had been delivered even though the mail carrier hadn’t bothered to get my signature. I sliced it open and expected another notice of postponement or denial, but the letter simply stated that Santiago Ramirez had been released. Parole had been granted. Stunned, my breath caught. He was out.
My body tensed under the weight of what felt like a brick on my heart. I realized I was still holding my breath and inhaled as deeply as I could manage. But the air was shallow in my lungs and just made me feel tighter, more out of breath, like a fish on land. Bubbles of oxygen stuck in the back of my throat, blocking the passageway. Hard to swallow, I thought, drowning in the news of Ramirez’s release. I dropped my head into my hands and opened my mouth wide. Devastation washed over me. I wanted to curl into a ball, close my eyes, and make it all go away, or at least take time back to the moment right before, when I didn’t know that he was free and all was lost.
How could a letter so small contain such big information? I was mad that they hadn’t sent a larger packet, a manila envelope at least, something of a size proportional to the news contained therein. A visual warning that the contents would be heavy enough to break my spirit. The green certified mail sticker should have alerted me. I flared up with anger at my mail carrier for not getting my signature on the envelope. But really I was mad at myself for being so naive. I never thought Ramirez would actually get out. I thought he would die in prison. At least that’s what I had hoped. And even though he had spent the last thirty-six years behind bars, it wasn’t punishment enough. My father had been right: Ramirez was young enough to still have a full life. Karen never would. I was stung by the injustice of it, frustrated by how helpless I felt. There wasn’t anything I could do to keep Karen’s killer inside now.
My cousin Warren hadn’t sent an email to let me know Ramirez was out. I hadn’t told him that I’d added my name to the list of victims to be informed of Ramirez’s status. I didn’t want to seem like I was inserting myself into the situation or intruding on a painful, private matter. After Warren’s initial request to send a letter to the parole board and a brief exchange of emails, we had not spoken about Karen again. We reverted to our private, solitary grief. The background buzz of lifelong mourning. Except for Christmas cards, we hadn’t been in touch at all. I couldn’t imagine what he and his family were going through.
But I easily imagined Ramirez’s family celebrating the news. Screams of delight, hands clasped in front of quivering lips, eyes filling with tears of joy. The idea of their happiness angered, even offended me—though I guessed their happiness and joy were likely tinged with anger that their loved one had suffered, that he had stayed in as long as he had. They would say he was punished and had paid for his crime. For them, it was over. But for my family, the grief would never end.
I felt betrayed by the parole board, even though I understood that the commissioners weren’t concerned with forgiveness. They wanted to know that the inmate had changed, that he could be a productive member of society. They wanted to mitigate the damage of letting criminals back on the street, to be assured that further crimes would not be committed. Forgiveness was not in their purview.
I was unsettled by the idea that Ramirez would no longer have to answer for killing Karen, no longer have to profess his regret and remorse, let alone prove it. Parole was the last stop before he would move on and disappear into the world with
no one to answer to and no one keeping track of him.
I was sick to my stomach. I’d never sent the letter I’d written to the parole board, but I was mad at myself for not sending a letter against his release. I should have written to the parole board, letting them know that I had read all the transcripts and pieced together the truth: that Ramirez had not changed, that he was a liar. I needed to quell the negative emotions firing off inside me like faulty synapses. There was only one thing I could think of to do: I wanted to meet him. To see him with my own eyes. And for him to see me, to know that there were still people who would never forget what he had done. He may have forgiven himself, but he was unforgiven.
When I called Victim Assistance, I couldn’t bring myself to ask about Ramirez. I was too angry, still smarting from the news of his release. I remembered that Francisco Alemar had told the parole board he wanted to say he was sorry to the family. I asked about getting in touch with him instead. The woman from Victim Assistance said inmates were not allowed to send letters of apology to their victims. It was too traumatic, like being revictimized. She said for the families, even receiving letters from Victim Assistance felt like an attack. She was right. That was exactly how I had felt opening the letters about Ramirez’s parole: assaulted. She said that instead they offered a service called the Apology Program that allowed inmates to write letters to their victims that were then placed in their files. It was up to the victims to ask for the letters. I remembered reading that before he was sentenced, Torres had written a letter apologizing to Karen’s parents, but the hearing judge was reluctant to pass it on. The woman from Victim Assistance put me on hold as she checked both Alemar’s and Torres’s files. But no letters had been left. She gave me the names and phone numbers for their parole officers. I pictured men like my father and “the guys from the job.” Before I hung up, I asked for the contact info for Ramirez’s parole officer as well.