Forgiving My Daughter's Killer

by Kate Grosmaire

  Consequently, the judge made a recommendation, but it would be up to the Department of Corrections for final approval. When the sentencing hearing was over, there were a few hugs, big sighs of relief, and media asking for interviews.

  This part of our lives could now be put behind us.

  Conor was led out of the courtroom and put back behind bars.

  CHAPTER 19

  Andy was driving to church to meet my mom and me for a Wednesday night dinner. Because he was running late, he took a shortcut hoping traffic would be better by the city park. Suddenly, a large bird came from his left and flew right into the front fender of the Jeep. After the initial loud thud, he looked in the side mirror and saw a bird tossed up into the air before it landed on the road. It looked like a pile of feathers in the median.

  Was that a Canada goose? he wondered.

  Either way, that bird was a goner. Andy kept driving because he was running late. He made the next turn and headed up the main road to the church, but a sense of guilt came rushing over him. Ann, who loved birds so much, would have hated that he’d left a bird in the road. Since she would have definitely insisted he turn around and help it, he did a U-turn. It was against his better judgment. What bird could have survived that collision? Well, at least he wouldn’t leave it in the middle of the street.

  When he walked up to the dead bird, he noticed its brown feathers above, lighter feathers below, and its talon feet. He’d know it anywhere, since Ann could identify all the birds of prey in the Florida area. Ann loved raptors, especially hawks . . . which was exactly what he’d just killed. A beautiful red-tailed hawk.

  As he was looking at the bird, its body twitched. It was alive! Alive, but injured.

  Surprised, Andy nervously took off his light jacket and wrapped it around the bird. The bird didn’t move. So far so good. He picked up the bird and watched for a break in the heavy traffic.

  People must think I’m crazy standing out here, he thought. He scuttled across the street and stepped up on the sidewalk. Right then, the hawk put its head out of the jacket and turned toward the car. At least the bird knew which direction they were going. Andy, looking at its sharp large beak, felt a sense of panic. When he finally made it to the Jeep, Andy had to put the bird down because the liftgate would not stay up.

  Why didn’t I get this liftgate fixed? he thought. This is wrong in so many ways. What a father won’t do for his daughter. Lodging the liftgate with his shoulder, he bent down to pick up the bird and put it in the back of the Jeep.

  Would it panic when put in the vehicle? Would it realize Andy was trying to help? Thankfully, St. Francis Wildlife Association had a drop-off location for injured or orphaned wildlife just a little more than a mile away.

  Since he didn’t have a box in which to keep the bird contained, he said a prayer.

  “Ann, please keep this bird calm as I drive it to the animal hospital.”

  He pulled slowly out of the park and onto the road. As he drove, Andy was afraid to look into his rearview mirror. He imagined if he did, the hawk would be there saying, Gotcha!

  At the animal hospital, Andy rushed into the emergency entrance and saw a young woman at the desk.

  “I have an injured hawk in the car,” he said. “Please help me.”

  The woman looked up from the desk and said, very calmly, “You’ll have to bring it in, sir.”

  He thought, Seriously? I have to bring in this huge raptor. Are you not trained to handle these birds? “You know, it’s a pretty big hawk,” he said, more diplomatically than his thoughts. “I’m uncomfortable carrying the bird because it’s loose in the back of my Jeep.”

  “Let me get you a box to help,” she said. Andy was relieved, thankful to have assistance. When she came back into the room, she carried a box that a few baby chicks could’ve fit in.

  “Not even close,” he told her.

  “Okay . . .” She looked at him skeptically. “Let’s go see this bird of yours.”

  As they walked out together, Andy warned her. “It’s only wrapped up in a jacket. It’s basically loose in there.”

  She was unfazed, until Andy opened the gate.

  “That’s a big bird!” she gasped. “Wait here!”

  She came back a few minutes later with a big box, picked up the jacket and bird in one motion, put them in the box, and closed the flaps. Inside one of the examining rooms, she was able to inspect the bird more carefully.

  “We’ll keep her here until the local wildlife rehabilitator comes by tomorrow to pick her up,” she said. “Do you want your jacket back?”

  He did, but he took one look at the claws entangled with the jacket, and thought better of it. However, he watch in amazement as the woman—with just a few quick movements—got the jacket and handed it back to him.

  The hawk spent two weeks in rehabilitation at the wildlife center. A month later, we got a call from the rehabilitator who said the young female hawk was doing well. No bones had been broken.

  “Would you like to be there when she’s released?” he asked.

  We wouldn’t miss this. This young female hawk had begun to remind Andy of Ann—it was beautiful, sleek, and exhibited a spirit to live and soar again. Andy imagined Ann raising up from her hospital bed and soaring into freedom into the sky just like the hawks she loved so much.

  On a sunny, cool Florida morning, we met at a popular baseball location, Winthrop Park—exactly where the hawk had flown into Andy’s Jeep. The rehabilitator asked if Andy would like to hold the bird until it flew off. He said yes, but not so confidently after seeing her sharp beak and claws again. The rehabilitator put the hawk in Andy’s gloved hands, and Andy broke into a full-blown grin. What an honor to be so close to such a magnificent bird! What an even greater honor that Andy was able to participate in saving its life. When he opened his hands, the hawk swooped almost to the ground, then flew up to the branch of a tree about fifty yards away. Andy watched the hawk for a few minutes and said silently to himself, Thank you, Ann, for being here with me. The rehabber said that she would most likely stay and make her home in the park. Spectators at the baseball field in the park have seen her flying overhead.

  After Ann died, my mom (not the most outgoing person) wanted to talk to Conor’s mom. One afternoon I invited Julie over to the house. She and my mom went out on the back porch for close to three hours. They shared a terrible bond. Because my brother had accidentally shot his friend when he was a child, both she and Julie had sons who had killed someone else with a gun. I remember standing at the window, looking out into the yard, and marveling as I watched them talk.

  An outside observer wouldn’t have been able to notice anything amazing about two women sitting on the porch, chatting. But what was really happening was more profound, more delicate, and more powerful than almost anything I have ever seen.

  One of the basic premises of restorative justice is that all our lives are connected in more ways than we imagine. That’s why it’s a travesty that we effectively throw away so many people into the gigantic cultural trash cans of prison.

  Though the United States represents less than 5 percent of the world’s population, we have more people in prison than any other nation in the world—almost 25 percent of all incarcerated people.1 Over the past four decades, our rate of incarceration has increased by 540 percent, even though crime rates have fluctuated.2 This sort of mass incarceration represents a serious crisis in the criminal justice system, especially since many inmates don’t need to be in prison to ensure public safety. While some people—including Conor—are there for good reason, others are left languishing in a system because of mandatory sentencing requirements or to make politicians look as though they’re “tough on crime.”

  When we put people in jail, we’re effectively throwing people away. We’re saying, “You are too complicated for society. We no longer want to see you or deal with you.” But the truth is that these people (and let’s face it, we are mostly talking about men) have connections to the
community. Many leave behind spouses and significant others. They leave behind children, who no longer have fathers to provide for them. There are more victims of crime than the ones whose wallets are stolen. It affects us all.

  But followers of Christ believe all people bear the imago dei, Latin for the “image of God.” C. S. Lewis wrote, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”3 In other words, the people we encounter every day—the ones who cut us off in traffic, the ones with fifty items in the “25 items or less” lane, the ones we barely notice, and the ones we’d rather not see—have souls that will live forever. As the little children sing, “They are precious in his sight.”

  When we fail to see how interdependent all members of our society are, we fail our culture. People are not disposable and they each have a role to play in the larger society.

  When we fail to receive God’s forgiveness, we fail ourselves. We don’t have to be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done in our lives.

  When we fail to forgive others as God has commanded, we fail each other. We don’t have to be victims our whole lives.

  When my mom was talking with Julie in the backyard, I witnessed a “God moment”—a beautiful picture of how we are all connected, how we all affect one another, in big ways and small.

  As they chatted, I remembered that moment years ago in Memphis when my mom was at lunch with some women who asked her where she lived. When she’d told them the road, a woman asked, “Oh, isn’t that where the little boy was shot?” My mother, overcome with shame and guilt over the incident, had claimed she knew nothing about it.

  Yet there she was, ministering openly to Conor’s mom, sharing details of the experience that I probably had never heard. I’m sure it was as helpful for my mom to talk to Julie as it was for Julie to talk to my mom. In many ways it was a miracle that they—the grandmother of a murder victim and the mother of the killer—could even be civil to each other. Yet there they were. Connecting. Laughing. Crying. Overcoming.

  There’s just something about humanity. We were made to need each other.

  At Ann’s visitation people from our neighborhood, church, and community were lined up out the door. I remember we stood for almost three hours. People asked, “How could you just stand there for so long?”

  “You know what?” I replied. “With so much support, I felt as if I was floating in love.”

  CHAPTER 20

  In 2012 Sujatha called to tell us that she had been contacted by Paul Tullis, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, about a story on restorative justice. Though we believed it would be wonderful to share our story with such a large readership, Sujatha met Paul and was a little hesitant about moving forward. She was always so protective of us. Paul was clearly a liberal writer, and Sujatha was concerned about how he might treat us. Always cautious about the media, we had only shared our story with the Catholic Compass, our diocesan magazine. We wanted to be sensitive to Conor and Ann’s story, and we wanted to be sure a reporter would handle it sensitively and without sensationalizing it. As far as we knew, however, Conor’s case was the first capital murder in America to be resolved through restorative justice pre-adjudication (before trial). Since we had to forge our own path through this complicated wilderness, we felt an obligation to share our story in a way that was accessible to others.

  “Paul Tullis,” I typed into my computer the day before he was supposed to arrive. I wanted to familiarize myself with this reporter’s work so that I wouldn’t be caught off guard with his questions. When I found his Twitter account, I read through some of his past tweets, which weren’t at all surprising: he definitely had the air of a “rock-star reporter.” We were aware that we lived in the well-established stereotype of “flyover country.” Would a writer from Los Angeles be able to understand our faith and how it animates our lives? Would he treat us like individuals, or some sort of Southern stereotype? Of course, I am from Pennsylvania and grew up in Memphis before moving to Tallahassee; Andy’s parents are from New York and Nebraska. Though neither of us has any sort of entrenched Southern nature, I believe it’s hard for people to separate us from our geography.

  Then, to my surprise, I read some tweets that seemed to apply to our case. Such as, Here’s a first: I’m composing a letter to a convicted murderer (for my article on #restorativejustice for a major US weekly magazine).1 Then, the day before he met us, he tweeted asking for advice:

  In 3 hrs, I’ll be meeting a killer’s parents and his victim’s parents at the same time. Any advice? #journalism #reporters #newspapers

  Over the course of five days, he met with all the key participants in the circle and interviewed several of Ann’s friends. On his last day he had a final interview with Andy and me at our house. When he arrived, we showed him Ann’s room and pointed out a little table we set up that includes some of the things we took to the restorative justice circle. We thought the interview was going pretty well, until we got to the part where we were discussing the restorative justice process. Andy explained that our process meant that Conor didn’t have to go to trial.

  “Which is good,” Paul said. “Because they invariably would’ve used the bitch-deserved-it defense.”

  Paul was referring to a legal strategy that blames the victims for their own abuse: the abuser’s behavior is at least understandable, considering how intolerable the victim was. Jack Campbell had also expressed that the defense would paint Ann in a negative light, but he certainly never said it like this.

  Paul wasn’t saying Ann did deserve to die. In fact, he was saying that avoiding trial probably saved us from a great deal of grief. This much was true. But when he said the word bitch, Andy stiffened in his chair. Almost as soon as he said the words, Paul excused himself for a bathroom break. Andy leaned over to me and said sternly, “He needs to leave.” Though I scarcely could imagine a less sensitive way to talk about this topic to the parents of a murdered child, what would happen if we kicked a New York Times reporter out of our home? Would that be the end of the article? I wanted our message of forgiveness and restorative justice to be told. Was it worth it to pass up that opportunity?

  I whispered a protest, but Andy was adamant. Paul had crossed a line.

  He came back into the room and was about to begin interviewing us again, when Andy said, “Can you wait a second before turning back on your recording device?”

  “Sure,” Paul said, looking up at us in surprise.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Andy said. “No one will come into my house and use the word bitch when referring to my daughter.”

  Paul’s face fell.

  “Listen,” he said. “I am so sorry for my poor choice of words. I really—really—didn’t mean to offend you. As soon as I said the words, I knew it was wrong. I think that’s why I had to get out of the room.”

  Andy looked at Paul’s stricken face. There were tears in his eyes.

  Andy studied the reporter for a good long time, assessing him. “All right, I forgive you. You can start recording again.”

  I had been watching Paul, but I turned to Andy. He had gone from hurt and offended father and back to interviewee just like that. All it took was for Paul to be sorry for what he’d done and to offer a sincere apology.

  When the interview was over, Andy walked Paul to his car. There Andy gave him one of his bear hugs before Paul drove off. We ended up building a really good relationship with Paul, and we appreciated how he had responded with sincere remorse.

  He did a great job with the article. Originally, it was scheduled to be the cover article of the New York Times Magazine, but the political situation at the moment was too complicated. The recent tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut had embroiled the nation in a terrible argument over guns, safety, and politics. The editors didn’t want to publish a cover story about a murderer under the headline “Forgiven,” considering the country’s raw feelings. Though it wasn’t a cover story, it caused a lot of national
conversation and was the second-most e-mailed story from that edition.

  In her Seattle home a woman opened the New York Times Magazine article and read it with intense interest. She scoured the story, wondering if the lessons we’d learned and the road we’d paved could possibly help in her legal case.

  In May of the previous year, she and her husband were going out of town together for the first time since she’d given birth to their two children, who were five and seven years old. They’d arranged for her husband’s parents to come in from California to babysit the children, but they needed to run a few errands first. Her husband, a high-level software engineer, loaded the kids into their van and went to pick up a few things, accompanied by his mom and dad.

  When he stopped at a red light around 4:30 p.m., his father noticed gunfire erupting on the street. Then, after he heard the shots, he realized the van was rolling through the intersection. He looked over at his son, who was in the driver’s seat, and saw that he’d been shot in the head. A gang member’s bullet had made its way through the air, into their van, and into his son. His dad unbuckled his seat belt, stopped the car, and held his son. His mother ran to get help, leaving the children strapped into the car with their dying father. Their grandfather cradled their father as he died.

  When the woman read our story, she was inspired by how we’d sat down with Conor and forgiven him face-to-face. She asked the defense attorney about meeting with the twenty-one-year-old whose stray bullet had killed her husband. Of course, they had never done anything like that before, and they were nervous about putting the widow and the shooter in the same room. After trying unsuccessfully to use a restorative justice facilitator from Oakland, they had to create their process from scratch. One year after the shooting, however, in a courtroom full of lawyers, police officers, and jail guards, she had the chance to talk to the shooter directly. He was a high school dropout, with gang tattoos on his arm and neck.