Finding Grace on Death Row

A month after my mother died of AIDS-four years after my father died of AIDS-I arrived at the Gatesville prison in Texas, hoping that a brutal murderer would be able to help me sort it all out. It was 1994, and I was there to meet Karla Faye Tucker.

She had murdered two people with a pick ax, but for some reason my mother and she had become good friends. My mom was involved with a Prison Fellowship group that regularly spent time "ministering to" the female inmates in Texas. This was years before Karla's positive attributes became the focus of a national campaign to convince then-governor George W. Bush to stay her execution. I was suspicious, to say the least, as my mother waxed poetic about this murderer named Karla, who, she said, "was a wonderful, spirit-filled person who had dramatically changed her life."

I had to find out what my mother had discovered in that prison. As that last maximum-security door slammed behind me, I saw Karla running toward me, her arms open wide. It was my first exposure to prisoners, much less death row prisoners, and I was frightened. I was sure she could hear my heart pounding. As she held me, I was certain she could sense the chill in my bones and feel my knees shaking.

"After all your mom's told me, I feel like I know you," Karla told me. Sitting beside Karla, as she held my hand, I saw peace beaming from the face of this woman who had so much to be forgiven for. I couldn't stop staring. She had been stripped bare of pretenses and had nowhere to hide. Her peace. Where does her peace come from?

***

I resented Karla Faye Tucker Brown for unusually personal reasons having nothing to do with her crime. It bothered me that my mom seemed to blithely forgive Karla's horrible crime--while harboring extreme hatred and a lack of forgiveness for my father.

Her rage towards him was understandable.

My father, after living a secret, double life for over 20 years, had given my mother AIDS.

He had already died and she was struggling to come to grips with his betrayal. She would sputter his name with venomous hatred, but since he was dead and could no longer shoulder her wrath, it all fell on me.

Continued on page 2: »