*Introduction
*Prayer Wheel
*My Sister’s Murder
*Death Penalty

INTRODUCTION

Please add your own prayers to the wheel - as many and as often as you wish. It is my prayer for all who stop here that your lives will be blessed with love and abundance in all its forms. And so it is.

This prayer wheel is provided through a wonderful website called Osel Shen Phen Ling. It's well worth a visit.

This section is still very much a work in progress. At the moment I am simply posting four items which relate to my sister's murder and how it has impacted me. I know that I want to deal with this issue, I am just not sure at the moment exactly how I want to approach it. I do know that I want to share this letter which is real and was sent to the boy who killed my sister. He did not respond, but I did not really expect him to, I guess.

The other items are a prose poem which is self explanatory... and two additional letters, one written to the judge at the end the trial and the last a letter written to the parole board. New York State asks family to write something to keep on file so that in case illness and time have taken a toll on memory or death has silenced us, our thoughts and feelings will still be available when Mr. A comes up for parole in 2013.

Hopefully at some point I will tie these things together, but for now, they must stand on their own.

My sister raised three awesome children: Matthew, the oldest, Cynthia in the middle, and Diana who has written eloquently about the experience of having her mother so brutally ripped from her life when she was only 13 years old.

This is one of the few pictures I have of my sister Carole, who was born on April 16, 1937 and died on October 2, 1988.

November 11, 1988

Walter A... Poughkeepsie, New York

Dear Walter A....:

Forty-one days ago, for reasons I suspect even you do not understand, you stabbed my sister to death in a grocery store parking lot. She was my big sister, part of my universe since the day I was born. I am the person that I am at least in part because of things she taught me and shared with me and did with me. I loved her very much and I wish you had not killed her.

I wish you could have known Carole, because she was a very kind and giving person. She cared about the world and the people in it and she did what she could to make it a better place. And it is a better place for her having lived. She was the kind of person who would have hated what you've done, but she would not have hated you. She was better than hate. She was about love and life and being. She wasn't a saint and she wasn't perfect. She was just a good and kind person. She was worthy of a better death.

It's hard for me to understand what the world can have done to you that you would take a life under any circumstances, but especially for no reason at all. I mourn for my sister and I worry about and grieve for the pain her death has brought her husband and children, my parents, my brother and myself. It hurts more than I ever imagined was possible.

But I want you to know, Walter, that I grieve for you too. Not with the sharp, bleeding pain I feel about my sister. But it makes me so very sad to think that you can be alive and yet have a heart that is so apparently dead. Whatever life did to you to put you in such darkness is, on some level, the responsibility of every living soul. We have failed you and you have failed us. A piece of everyone dies in such a death.

So, I want you to know that I pray for you. I hate what you did and I doubt that I would like you very much if I were to meet you. But maybe, if my sister's death is to have some meaning, perhaps it will bring some light into your soul. Perhaps Carole's death was her final generosity; her life to redeem something in yours. That's an extraordinary gift. I hope you don't waste it.

Sincerely,

K. E. R.

He said, "Carole's dead," and I thought, "No, Dad, you mean Mom, don't you?" But I knew he didn't. I knew he meant Carole, no mistake about it except that it didn't make sense. Mom was sick and old and didn't want to live. Mom was drifting endlessly between life and death, unable or unwilling to choose. But my sister was young, alive. She had children and dreams. How could she be dead? But finally, probably, I must have asked, "How?" Or maybe he just told me what we knew then, that she had been putting the groceries in her car and someone had run up, knife in hand, stabbing her again and again, leaving her to bleed and die, alone on the rainy cement of the parking lot. Quickly, at least she died quickly. But not in my head. In my head it took time. I wanted to say over and over, to everyone I saw, "My sister's dead. She's been stabbed to death. How can you go on as if nothing has happened? Carole's dead, murdered, and my world is ripped apart, and you all act as if nothing has changed. Are you so cold that you don't feel it? Don't you feel her gone and the world a different place?" She was my support in a world that leaned on me, the one who loved me and didn't want anything in return. She was my safety valve and now she's gone, a body in a morgue. The world is suddenly a more dangerous place. And I'm alone.

In Poughkeepsie, where it happened, it was big news. Everyone said, "It could have been me." They felt her death because its' cold breath made them feel their own. Here in the Big Apple, where death is cheap, the big news was how Mike Tyson was fighting with his wife, throwing furniture out the window. Fifteen minutes on the news about some asshole squabbling with his wife and not one word about my sister. That was the first day. And now it's five year's later and still I feel myself -- not so often, but still -- wanting to say to strangers, "My sister's dead. A strange boy stabbed her to death because he wanted to kill someone and she was there. It was that simple. That complicated. But can't you see the mark of it on me?"

Talking to a friend who has gone through a similar loss but much more recently, I have decided to post a couple of additional letters which I wrote on this subject. These may repeat themselves a bit, but maybe there is something in them speak to others who are on this same journey - and those who are standing outside us, wishing that you knew how to offer comfort. Anyway, here they are. The first was written to the judge at the end of the trial on the advice of the District Attorney. The second is to the Parole Board. They requested that we register our comments now as the parole hearings are a ways off and this way the record is there even if the survivors are not.

June 20, 1989

The Hon. J. R. K.
Court House, Room 44
10 Market Street
Poughkeepsie, New York 12607

Dear Judge K.:

It hardly seems possible that it is almost two weeks since the guilty verdict came in on W.A. -- and at the same time it seems impossible that that is all the time which has elapsed. The almost nine months since my sister, Carole, was killed have been a sort of time warp anyway, full of temporal distortions and emotional quicksand. The violence and senselessness of her dying retain a kind of unreality for me still. They are so out of keeping with the life she lived and the person who she was. They are so far outside my own experience of reality.

I am grateful that I was able to be present at the court proceedings trying W.A. It was another step in the process of really coming to terms with the loss of my sister. Because of the way she died, the family, at least those of us geographically distant, lost something of the intimacy of our grief. Carole became public property, her funeral a rite of passage for a community, to many of whom she was only "the victim," someone who could have been them, who could have been their wives or daughters. It wasn't my sister who was eulogized -- it was of course -- but on some level we were robbed of who she was to us and became players in a grand tragedy. I don't mean that as a criticism -- people were wonderfully kind to us -- but I think that kind of loss is inevitable to such a situation. And even the facts of her death belonged not to the family, but to the police and to the lawyers. So the trial for me was the beginning of a kind of emotional repossession of my sister. And even there, my sister, the vital, intelligent, funny, loving person who I knew was irrelevant; she was "the lady," and "the victim," not Carole. So I was glad that her husband and children and I could be there, even if nobody knew who we were, to say that she was more than just a name.

I hope you know that I don't intend any of the above as a criticism of either Carole's funeral or her trial. Mr. O'N and Mr. C and the people in the DA's office were extraordinarily kind and helpful to me and to my sister's family. They prepared us as best they could for what was to come, combining compassion for us with dedication to proving their case. You and the people on your staff, too, were kind and helpful without ever violating the proprieties of Mr. A's rights. That too made a difficult experience easier to get through.

I was impressed also with the careful and diligent police work done by the detectives involved in the case. I listened with great care to all the testimony and to the taped confession, and I have no doubt that the right person has been convicted. It doesn't bring my sister back, but there is some measure of comfort in knowing that the person who killed her will not be free to hurt anyone else for a long time.

Over the past nine months I have waited patiently for the great upsurge of anger and hate which almost everyone tells me I should feel towards W.A. I watched him carefully during the weeks of the trial, hoping to see some visible sign of the malevolence which would cause someone to murder a total stranger with no provocation and no reason. But I didn't see malevolence. What I saw was something more tragic and more terrible. What I saw was a kind of soul-less indifference. I have the depressing feeling that there is noone inside W.A. to hate, nor, I suspect, to redeem. I have little doubt that W. A. would kill again, with no more compunction than he showed in killing my sister. I don't think he understands yet what all the fuss is about. And that is truly frightening.

I did not mean to be so long-winded. I know you are busy. I watched the seemingly endless stream of people who were brought before you, many of them so very young. I don't know how you and the people in the DA's office can endure the tragic and ugly stories which are part of your daily existence. I'm glad that you are there to deal with it, but I do not envy you your jobs.

And I have strayed from my purpose. I guess the purpose of this letter, aside from saying, "thank you," is to ask you to seriously consider imposing the maximum sentence on W.A. I don't think this is vengefulness on my part. I hope not. It is simply that from everything I have heard, seen, and been told about W.A., I don't think there is much likelihood that he will be rehabilitated. I think he doesn't understand the value of life and therefore would spend it again as cheaply as he spent my sister's. I would hate to have anyone else grieve as my parents, my brother and I and as Carole's husband and children have been doing and continue to do.

Thank you for your patience in reading these thoughts.

Sincerely,
K. E. R.

October 13, 1995

M. F. B., FPO II
NYS Division of Parole
Clinton Correctional Facility
Post Office Box 768
Dannemora, New York 12929

Dear Mr. B:

M. J. S., Chief of the Felony Bureau, District Attorney's Office of Duchess County, kindly shared a copy of her letter to you regarding W.A., along with a copy of your notification form about the 2013 parole hearing. Carole Kantor, the victim in this case, was my older sister. I miss her more than I can say.

It has been interesting as the OJ Simpson trial has gone on to hear people talk about the victims being forgotten. I can't help but think that that is the nature of the beast. Murder trials are not really about the victims. They are not about the grief of families or the shattered psyches of children who are suddenly without a mother. Murder trials are about the defendant and about bodies and facts. It was not unique to OJ's trial. It was certainly part of my experience. Who Carole Kantor was no longer mattered. Carole Kantor was dead and what mattered was "justice."

But what justice is there for the taking of a life? Nothing can bring my sister back. No matter how many years Mr.A. spends in prison, my sister will still be dead and I will not have a sister and her children will not have a mother and her grandchildren (when they come) will never know their grandmother. What has been done cannot be undone. The despair of my parents' final years of life cannot be erased. The pain and grief of the rest of us cannot be taken away. Life, of course, does go on, but it will never be the same and although I may be gluing the pieces of my shattered reality back together, there will always be something in me which remains broken.

Unlike Mr. O'N, I do not believe in the death penalty. I don't think one killing undoes another, nor do I think killing can ever deter killing. I think life in prison is a much crueler and more just punishment. And then I think I sound so cruel. And much to my dismay, I feel cruel. I am surprised by the venom in my own words. It makes me sad. I am, by and large, a kind person who believes in forgiveness, but I find it hard to forgive W. A. for what he has done. I find that I want him to suffer and that is another side-effect of the poison of what he has done.

He has hurt so many people. I remember thinking during the trial as I listened to the witnesses -- the two ladies who held my sister's hand as she died and the young man who reached her first and was briefly a suspect -- that their lives would never be the same either. They are also victims of this crime and perhaps their thoughts should be solicited as well for this parole hearing.

I think part of what makes me so angry is that I never sensed during the whole trial, even a hint of remorse from W.A. I did not miss a single minute of the proceedings. I was there for everything, from the jury selection to the sentencing and I had the distinct feeling that he wondered what the fuss was about. I listened to the confession tape and heard him say he was sorry, but it seemed to me more like he was sorry that he got caught than that he killed someone. I never had the courage to speak to him face to face, so maybe I'm being unfair, but this is what I felt and it is what I find hardest to forgive.

When the parole board hearing comes up, I would like permission to be present if that is possible, both to confront someone who did so much harm to me and the people I most love, and, to hear from his own lips, what he has to say about what he did. To be frank, I find it unlikely, but I know it is always possible that people change. If he has, I will know. If he hasn't, I will know that too.

As it now stands, however, barring a miracle of rather grand proportions, I cannot imagine any justification for releasing W.A. on parole in 2013 or at any time in the imaginable future.

Thank you for consideration of these thoughts. I have also enclosed two letters: one was written to Mr. A. shortly after he killed my sister and the other to Judge King at the end of the trial. If I can be of any further assistance, please feel free to contact me. And again, I would very much like to be present for the parole hearing when it takes place.

Sincerely,
K. E. R.

I feel very strongly that the death penalty is wrong. If it is intended to deter crime, there is clear evidence that it does not do so. If it is intended as a form of revenge, it may in fact exact a kind of revenge, but at a profound price to our collective Human Spirit. It does not bring closure to grief. Our loved ones will be just as dead as they were before. And something in us will be dead as well because we will have become the thing we hate. We will have participated in murder. Legal murder, but murder none-the-less, and a usurping of the role of God/Goddess/Spirit who is the ultimate judge. From the core of my being and the depths of my soul, I believe that killing is wrong unless it is in self-defense. Even if I did not believe this, I think that our justice system is simply too flawed and fallible to justify taking lives. With the improvement in ferensic medicine, dozens and dozens of death row inmates have, in recent years, been proven to be innocent. And no doubt there are others still waiting to be executed who have been wrongly convicted. And no doubt there are many long-dead who went to their graves the victims of judicial errors. Those people can not be brought back to life either, nor can those released recoup the years they have spent imprisoned and in fear of execution for crimes they did not commit. I read something eariler today which is what inspired me to add this section to the page about my sister. It is a powerful statement about the devastation that murder can cause in a life - and an equally powerful statement about the healing power of love. I cried all the way through it. I hope you will take the time to read it. I loved my sister and I know that she would not have wanted another death added to the pain of what happened to her - even if it was the death of the young man who killed her with such brutal indifference. She was about life and love. I am glad that her memory was not tarnished with an execution.

Here are a few other links relating to this topic: Religious Organizations to Stop the Death Penalty; Lamp of Hope, and Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation.

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