Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

stood next to the highway. Our family came, Jack’s family came, and any observer could point out who belonged on each side. Jack had six kids, the oldest of whom was only a year or two younger than my mother. He had four sons and two daughters, all older than me, ages seventeen to about twenty-four. His daughter Sharon and son Barney lived with us at this time. There was no music, no flowers, and not much of a reception afterward. My mother wore a blue gauzy dress and Jack was in his shirtsleeves. He didn’t even put on a tie. The ceremony was incredibly short, and after Jack slipped the minister ten dollars for his trouble, everyone climbed back into their cars.
    Jack was pretty bad at this point, but not nearly as bad as he would later become. He forced us to go to this church three times a week, giving us no choice in the matter. He was one of the most hateful people I’ve ever encountered, yet he was always in church. Now I know this is nothing unusual, that it’s more the rule than the exception, but back then I couldn’t comprehend it. He stood guard every night as he made my sister and me kneel down next to the bed and pray. We had a small dog, a Chihuahua named Pepper, and I once saw him punch the dog with a closed fist because she dared to hop up on the bed while he was praying.
    After making us go to this ghoul’s wasteland of a church for several months, he announced that we would be moving into the church itself. The place we moved to almost defies description, because it was neither house nor apartment. The back rooms of the church had been converted into a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and living room, so that it could be rented out to bring in more money for the church. It wasn’t bad, really. Only the kitchen and bathroom had windows, so the rest of the place was dark and cool like a cave. At least we had more room than in the apartment, and I was in a new school closer to where I considered home to be.
    Jack only ever committed two acts of undisguised violence against me, and both were around this point in time. The first happened in the kitchen one Saturday morning. I was sitting at the table looking over my sticker collection, which I had recently become a fanatic about. I coveted stickers more than anything else on earth and had quite the little album of them. My mother was cooking, and Jack stood blocking the doorway. I got up and tried to squeeze past him, with the intention of going to watch cartoons. I could feel the rage in him as he shoved me across the kitchen and into the refrigerator door, where the handle gouged my back. I lost my balance and fell to the floor.
    When I started to cry, my mother looked up with no real sense of urgency and asked, “Why did you do that?”
    He bellowed, “He has to learn he can’t bully his way around here!”
    I had no idea what he was talking about, which only served to scare me. It’s frightening to be punished when you have no idea what you’ve done wrong.
    The second act of violence was a “spanking.” I can’t remember what it concerned, but I had been arguing and pleading with my mother, attempting to get her to change her mind about something she had forbidden me to do or have. I can no longer remember what the argument was about, but I remember Jack’s reaction as though it were yesterday. He grabbed me and slammed me down on the bed with such force that I bounced off and landed on the floor. He slung me back onto the bed and began hitting me with rage. The most frightening part was the way he went into a frenzy, cursing (this is the only time I ever heard him curse) and turning blood-red.
    My mother did nothing. As long as he continued to feed her the attention she desperately craved, she didn’t care what atrocities he performed. Before, I had merely disliked him. Now the seed of hatred bloomed.
    I said these were the only undisguised acts of violence, because he did so many other things—pinched me until I turned purple with bruises, bent my fingers backward, jerked on my arms, and twisted my ankles—but all of these activities were only “playing” with me. If he managed to make me cry, which was less and less often as time went by, his excuse was that he was trying to “toughen me up.” The only thing that grew tough was my heart. Perhaps he was reminded of my father when he looked at me, and resented me for it. I never knew what caused his behavior, and now I no longer care. Over time I became crafty and learned to avoid