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MVFR members know how isolating an experience it is to
have someone you love taken from you by the conscious violence of another
human being. We know the pain of a funeral parlor and the emptiness of the
graveyard. We know about crime scenes and autopsies, investigations and
indictments, trials and sentencing. We know the grief, the bewilderment, the
anger, and the real sense of separation from others in society who have not
experienced such a loss.
We also know what it’s like to have a date of death set
for our loved ones, many times on our birthdays, and some of us know what
it’s like to have our loved one placed in the electric chair and fried from
the inside out. We know what it’s like to lose a son in prison, and we
experience the same pain, hurt, and anger, that the mother feels who loses
their child on the streets. We are all victims of our society.
The Long Journey Home is a book about MVFR members and the Journey
of Hope as they travel through cities and towns in the US each year. The loss
of a loved one brings grief and pain. For
the homicide survivor, the normal anger of grief is compounded by the rage and
desire to violently destroy the murderer of the loved one.
The
members of Murder Victims’ Families For Reconciliation speak out
against more violence with the death penalty. They say, not in their names.
Marietta Yeager, whose seven-year-old daughter was killed says, “There is no
amount of retaliatory deaths that will compensate us for loss of our loved
one. And in fact to say that the retaliatory death of one person by execution
is going to be just retribution really insults the immeasurable value of our
loved one’s life.
Sam
Reese Sheppard spent all his life trying to prove his father’s innocence,
after he was convicted of killing his mother. Dr. Sam Sheppard was the case
that The Fugitive movie was based on. Sue
Norton’s parents were killed, George White’s wife was murdered, he was
found guilty of the crime and sent to prison, only to be released later after
evidence was found to prove his innocence and Bill Pelke’s grandmother was
stabbed thirty three times by fifteen year old Paula Cooper, and he fought for
her life and to get her off death row.
.
Bud Welch’s daughter was killed at the Oklahoma bombing, Aba Gayle’s
daughter was shot to death, SueZann Bosler was stabbed many times in the head,
and she watched as the intruder stabbed her father to death, and Trevor
Dicks’s brother was killed by medical neglect. And yet all of these people
forgive the person who murdered their loved ones and all believe that love and
compassion and forgiveness is the answer to stopping the violence in America
today.
Sonny
Jacobs spent seventeen years on death row and found to be innocent after her
childhood friend, Micki Dickoff researched the trial transcripts and found the
evidence that would prove her innocence.
Read
the many stories and the Journey of Hope that takes place each year in a
different state and decide for yourself if more violence and killing is the
answer. Do we have the right to kill our own citizens in the electric chair?
The power of God’s love is evident in each of these stories.
