Alex Mar, "Seventy Times Seven - A True Story of Murder and Mercy" : CSPAN3 : October 31, 2024 4:17pm-5:21pm EDT : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive (2024)

the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we've been your

primary source for capitol hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government taking you to where the policy is debated and decided to support america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting, powered by cable. am happy to introduce our speakers. our interviewer this evening is todd allen. todd is a vice president of affairs at site university. part of a nonprofit dedicated to teaching the history of the civil rights movement for the past 21 years in partnership with the pnc foundation. he is a frequent lecturer on commemorative practices, public memory related to the civil rights movement. alex is the author of which is of america, which was a new york times mobile book of 2015. wired the new york times book review, the guardian, among many other outlets as best

magazine writing. she was a finalist in 2018, also director of the future life documentary american mystic, she lives in the hudson valley and new york city. the book is titled 70w7, a true story of murder and mercy. author sierra kane roots, quote, it's a devastating and essential book in the construction of social fears, calculations on the death penalty in america. brilliant and empathetic narrator, she is unafraid of rendering our narratives about justice less comforting. it's an honor to host alex and todd this evening. please welcome to the stage alex and todd. bookstore this . there's so much here that i was tempted to sneak away into the stacks before the reading ran out of time.

it's also my very first time in thank you so much for being here. i just was talking about what a gorgeous bookstore this is. there is so much here that i was tempted to sneak away into the stacks before the reading, ran out of time. also my first time in harrisburg. that has really been something special. before we start our conversation, i would like to read a passage from the book. two short passages. one question that comes up when you sent her a story around a violent crime, i think, is this question of when do you introduce the crime itself? the moment at which you introduce that act of violence, it really has an impact on how much empathy the reader is willing to have for any of the characters involved. instead, i chose to open the book after the prologue.

with a moment a few years back in time so the crime at the center of the book took place in 1985. the 15-year-old murdered an elderly woman in her home in a sort of robbery gone wrong. she was then sentenced to death for the crime. incredible events took place in the aftermath of that sentence. instead of 1985, i opened the book in 1979 when paula was actually just 9 years old. this is a scene, a moment from her childhood that i think what the reader know something important about what her childhood was like. one house of the many that make up a city, a pale yellow house an hour after sign up in gary, indiana. a woman lives here on constant street with two daughters. rhonda is 12. her sister, paula, is 9. it's

1979. her mother, her name is gloria, hassles them outside into the morning light and the dark of the garage, to the backseat of a red chevy. the girls are very young and they are powerfully tired. they understand what their mother intends to do. she has kept them up all night, softly talking, then shouting, then whimpering to them about where they will be traveling together, about what must happen next. and they are no longer resistant. with her daughters inside, gloria tugs at the garage door until it slides down to meet the concrete. she slips to the driver side, roast on the windows, turned the key in the ignition. the engine gives off a deep thrumming sound. then she waits for them to close their eyes and fall into that steady rhythm. she can see their faces in the rearview mirror are small and round and perfect.

all three are still. their limbs growing heavy as if underwater. the engine continues running. the minutes accumulate. the air thickens. outside the garage, the neighborhood is awakening. inside the garage, the girls are passing into an unnatural sleep. what rhonda remembers next, she and paula laying side-by-side on the bottom bunk not knowing how they got there. they have not exited the world. gloria is leaning over them, her daughters. they will be all right, she says. just before leaving. rhonda does not know how much time has passed before she is able to move her body. she rises slowly. a letter is taped to the door from their mother. she is finishing what she set out to

do. rhonda rushes to the kitchen and calls her aunt, who tells her to run and get their neighbor. through the window, she thinks she sees exhaust seeping out from under the garage door into the bright daylight. mr. hollis drags gloria out of the garage and lays her on the back on the lawn. drops her to his knees, push as hard on her chest, again and again. the neighbor across the street, a nurse, rushes over and takes her turn trying to pump breath into gloria's body. the ambulance arrives, and the fire department, and a medic becomes the third person in line to tend to gloria. by now, paula is standing outside watching. rhonda sees her younger sister grow hysterical at the sight of this stranger bearing down on their mother's chest, and gloria not responding, not responding. something rhonda will not

forget. no one examines the, the girls. the firemen, the medics, no one so much as takes their pulse. when gloria is swept off to the hospital, the sisters go stay with their aunt. when after a week, they check themselves out early. no one asks any questions. when she comes to retrieve her daughters, no one stops her. for years, rhonda has said that she does not know what transformed her sister, but now, she tells me as if untangling the question aloud, that this was it. this must have been the start of a change in paula. because you have to understand we were all supposed to have been dead. that is what we were expecting. that is what we were hoping. but they were still alive. and what now? another day in the yellow house.

so, the book then goes on to describe, you get a sense of the larger community in gary, indiana. you get a sense of the life of ruth pelkey, who ultimately loses her life. she is the victim in this story. i described the crime when paula and three other girls were 15, 16 years old, talk their way into the house. and paula killed her. we go through some of that sentencing hearings and ultimately, allah is sentenced to death, as i mentioned. i moment that for me, really drew me into the story, really made me decide that i wanted to

spend years looking into this case. what happened is ruth pelke's grandson, a steelworker in his late 30s. just a man who wanted his own business, had no particular habit of making political statements or anything of the sort, decided to publicly forgive paula for killing his grandmother against the wishes of his family, his friends. everyone thought he had lost it. i will give you a little passage from the night where he made that decision. he was called in for a late shift at the steel mill, a crane operator. picture the warehouse where it is dark and empty, the only guy on the shift right now. he is alone in the crane cab hovering over this dark space. and he realizes in that moment it has been months now since

the death sentence was handed down to paula. he realizes that his life is a mess. she is grieving for his grandmother. his girlfriend has left him. just declared bankruptcy. and had no direction in his life. so in this moment of feeling so lost, he starts to cry. the grown man, in this workplace, starts to cry. the pictures paula cooper for the first time in months. and sees this as a girl someone far more alone and desperate than i'll ever be, so that sets off a series of thoughts. seeing paula cooper in person that day in the courthouse, she looked young.

just turned 16. 23 years younger than him, she was a girl. immediately after her sentence was read, the man, the girls grandfather, the only grown family that had shown up. the way he called out, the way he lost it and how a guard escorted the old man down the aisle, still calling out about his grandbaby. paula was let out next. darkened with tears, head bobbing, her eyes darting from side to side as if looking for the person who might appear at any moment to help her. he starts to think here of an image in the press of his grandmother. ruth pelke with a ring of soft, silvery white girls around her had great high cheekbones.

a beatific half smile. she wears pink lipstick, cats eyeglasses and silver earrings the size of coat buttons. the image in his mind begins to transform. his grandmothers has begun to shine. tears run off her cheeks. her face remained still. frozen at than the portrait studio but the photograph is weeping. ruth pelke has become like one of the weeping statues of the virgin mary . those figures discovered leaking tears of blood or oil or scented water, receiving thousands of visitors for the demonstration of truth. jesus and bethany klein over the death of lazarus. jesus wept. the photograph is weeping.

here is a woman in pain. for the final 30 minutes of her life. but that's not it. it seems to bill in this moment that ruth's feelings are past to him, they flood his chest. he believes, he understands that she is crying for that girl, for paula cooper. for the girl . for her grandfather. the knowledge that she would be buckled into a chair and overwhelmed by an electrical current. and she would not want the girl to be killed for killing her, to be killed in her name. bill thinks of what jesus said when the romans raised him up on the cross. father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. for the first time, he believes

it is possible that the girl did not know what she was doing when she killed ruth, that she had been out of her right mind. that a blind anger must have propelled her forward, and now his grandmother is calling on him to forgive her. his grandmother is calling on him. is this a calling? almost 30 years since the first draft of such a moment, bill pelke is being called. at first, the revelation is a notion. it infuses no part of his body, changes nothing about his instincts towards the girl that remain cool and hard. bill has decided to forgive her, to have compassion, but he has none to give. he knows if he can't find the store of empathy somewhere deep inside of them, from this point on, whenever he pictures his grandmother, he will feel that he failed her. eventually, he will shut her image out. bill begins again to pray the

way a desperate person forms words, unable to prevent them slipping from his lips. he prays for god to make him love paula cooper, to flood him with it , and he waits. he waits. and inevitably, this comes to him. if that girl is worth forgiving, if even the grandmother can feel compassion, then you must be, too, also in his own way, beyond repair, he himself must be worth beyond risk -- preserving. in the quiet of the mill, high above the machines, he considers what he will do. he will write paula a letter. talking about his grandmother, jesus' forgiveness and love for

everyone who walks the earth. he parses that. he can see a way forward. you can imagine her just maybe writing back. this becomes a real correspondence, and truly, once to know what she might say to him. not for an explanation of what she has done, but as proof of humans this. on death row. he realizes he does not want to see the girl die. there it is. compassion. this is enough to forgive. she has forgiven her already. he will tell the story of this night for the next 30 years. for someone whom he shares it, the story will recall a passage in the gospel of john in which

jesus, upon learning of the death of one of his followers begins to weep. he approaches the tomb. asks for the man to come out. the dead man sits up and then stands and steps outside. his hands and feet are wrapped in linen. his face is covered. jesus says to the crowd take off the clothes and let him go. to be released from the death house. to make paula cooper another kind of lazarus. and they would both take off their grave clothes. >> you can clap for that. >> welcome to the midtown scholar and to harrisburg.

just before we get underway with my questions, i want to have a moment of full disclosure. alex and i just met. in the dedication, we say the book is for todd. but you know, after reading this story, and i am so glad you shared those two excerpts, because there are so many people whose stories are in this account and it highlights the ways in which not only are the lives of the victim and the perpetrator intertwined, but the lives of their family and friends are forever transformed and connected. you told us why this story. i'm curious to know how you came to this story. you said you were working on

this for a long time. what is a long time? >> oh, five years. you know, occasionally books do take that long when there is a lot of research involved. and yet you always think you are the one who will do it faster. i will say i was doing some research on a hunch because i also write longform stories for magazines. and i'm always wondering where the next story will come from. i was doing some research into cases of violent crimes committed by women specifically because it's far more rare than violent crimes committed by men. i wanted to understand what kind of patterns we might see, and so just going through a lot of case summaries. hundreds and hundreds. i stumbled across the story of ruth pelke's murder . and it just stopped me in my tracks.

part of it was paula's age. the fact that she was 15 and she was then sentenced to death for that crime committed at 15. and then the forgiveness piece. how a few months later, the victim's grandson chooses to publicly forgive her, and i had never heard of something like that. i really thought, you know, i think i'm basically a good person, but i don't know, you know. what is that moment all about? so i managed to dig up bill pelke's phone number somehow and i gave him a call and introduced myself and said you know, do you have a moment? i really want to ask you what was behind that decision all those years ago. by the time i got off the phone, i just knew in my gut that i would be exploring this for a long time. >> thinking of the people in the story, i originally almost said characters. but the people in this story, i

cannot ask about everybody you want to ask you about but i want to ask you about a couple, and i want to begin with ruth. she is a character or a person that we meet through testimony, to the testimony of others through this brutal act. yet, her voice, particularly her christian witness, looms large in the story. as you just shared about the transformative moment for bill. how did the life and legacy of ruth influence the narrative? >> you know, i definitely wanted to -- there is the sense that paula and bill's relationship is the dynamic heart of this book. but i wanted to make sure that we understood how heinous the crime was, and also that there was a real human being who is no longer capable of sharing her story, you know.

i talked to family members. i actually tracked down the spot where ruth grew up in rural indiana. the brother in church in which she was raised and her parents were founding members. adjuster defined as many people who had known her. i actually find a woman who was 102 years old and a senior center, who had been taught bible study by ruth when you know, they were growing up together, and she remembered him, that i mentioned in the book. a him that ruth had taught the young kids. you know, i wanted to make her a full person. what is incredible about her, you get to know her and one of the earlier chapters read she comes up again. i wanted her to have the early impact so you would remember her. but what is great about her, she was just so driven to work with kids of all kinds.

and i discovered -- even her grandkids did not know this when i mentioned it -- that is a young person, she had a brother who was a couple years younger. and since this was earlier in the 1900s, her brother died and there was no record of what he died of. maybe it was a sudden sickness, but i just imagined, you know, maybe she was really those to her younger brother, and she lost him. she spent the rest of her life around kids who were very young. she was important to me and also important as a contrast to bill because when we first meet bill, he's a hot mess. he was raised with a lot of faith that he then began to question. he loved the ladies. she wanted to have a good time in college. he just was not sure what his direction was going to be in life, but he kind of returns to his grandmother's values in a

way, after her death. >> you say early on there is no question of her guilt, paula. it's not a story of wrongful conviction. as i ask you about paula, what would you say this is a story about? >> i wanted to make it clear in the prologue really that there is no doubt as to who committed the crime. this is not the kind of story. i think we are conditioned a little bit by true crime to think there is an angle like that. i wanted to do something that i thought was kind of tough which was to confront the reader with here is a young person. she really committed this terrible act. absolutely. now what do you want to do about that? if you were there, and if it were somehow your decision, if you are the prosecutor or the victim's family member, what would you have said was justice in that scenario?

the crime is terrible, but she is also a kid. so when bill then chooses to forgive, to me, that is the challenge to the reader and there's a challenge to me. that's the origin of the title of the book which is a reference 70 times seven, a passage in the bible about forgiveness. i think that's kind of the tough question in the middle of this book. are you capable of that kind of mercy, and is there room for that kind of mercy in our system? >> i promised you before we took the stage, no spoilers, but about paula, i want to just read from your text here about one of the characters. this is what they said about her. then i have a follow-up question, too. the witness says well i came here to testify for paula's character or whatever it is. i did not come here to justify what paula did was wrong. ms. pelke and her family is

hurt real bad, okay. i understand that, but the child was hurt, too. she never had the opportunity that any normal child had. she used to ask me on occasion, she said i just want to be like the other little kids. i just want to be like the other little kids. this is what the child asked. i think maybe she needs to be punished, but didn't the system, and some kind of way, let this child down? my question is do you agree with that assessment? if so, what way, or what ways did the system let paula down? >> well, i mean, i included that moment from the sentencing hearing because i thought it was so powerful. she and her sisters, you heard in the opening passage, right, they grew up in a very volatile

household. the mother clearly had certain mental health issues. she was an alcoholic. it was not dealt with. the father was physically abusive. and they ran away from home a number of times. they asked for help from the social worker, there were put in emergency shelter, foster care. they were always sent back home. there was always a temporary solution. even later in her sentencing, where she is finally given a chance to get on her own behalf, right before the judge is going to finally pass down his sentence. one of the things she says is where were all of you? and it's clear to me based on what i learned, everything before that, that's what she's referring to. everyone is so concerned about her now that she has done this extreme act, but no one was checking in on these kids in

the way that was appropriate. in that sense, i think the system let her down. and i think ultimately, when we have a system where you can sentence kids to death or what we do now, we sentence kids to die in prison essentially. life without parole, right? what does that say about our hope for rehabilitation, for people to be transformed? those kids are going to be incarcerated for decades. you don't think there's an outside chance any of them are going to mature and have something to offer? i don't get on any kind of soapbox in this. i have really made an effort to show both sides of a lot of these arguments because these are tough questions. but the story does connect all the way up to the end of the death penalty for kids in this country, which was only in 2005.

that is pretty recent. you see how this case actually connects up to that moment, which i thought was pretty thrilling to map out. >> that was one of the things that was shocking to me. that there was such little outcry when she was sentenced to death. i won't ruin it from there, but i want to talk about bill, who once was a hot mess, and had that transformative moment that we talked about. when i think about bill, and ultimately, his relationship with paula, i see this tension between forgiving, right, and i am wondering how was this a time of healing? was it a time of healing? and also the tension for paula, being forgiven, feeling worthy of forgiveness. i wonder if you could speak to either one of those.

>> well, one thing that was incredible about the process of researching this is i was in the reading that i gave where bill has this idea -- okay, i guess i will just write this girl a letter, which is sort of -- okay. that's a bold move. the next day he sits down at work and it takes some paper from the foreman's office, and a ballpoint pen and just thinks okay, what do i say to this girl killed my grandmother? it started a correspondence between them. i got to read hundreds of letters between the two of them that mapped out this relationship that started when she was 16 and he was 40, and continued for a long time. and at first, with the announcement of bills forgiveness, paula's response was actually one of anger. she was an overwhelmed, terrified kid on death row. all she could enclose you and your family wanted me to dive,

so good for you. here i am right now. and i think she was suspicious of this man as well. as her older sister rhonda said to her, who forgives like that, who does that? there is a great scene where she learns that phil is writing to the grandfather, want to come and visit. when bill visits the family, leaves a fruit basket as a gift. she comes over and says is that from that man? don't eat that for, i'm not going to eat that fruit. you don't know it's in that. these moments of levity. really it's about these two families. one on either side of the crime. they've been made to feel the last thing they can do is trust each other. given all ultimately, the book starts to show maybe they have

a lot more in common than they are aware of in the first. eventually in coming back, rating again, offering his friendship to paula, she takes it and things you know what, this is really a comfort and i feel like i can trust this man and he becomes part of a much larger campaign to spare her life that goes all the way to europe and just as a teaser, eventually involves pope john paul ii. it is really an unexpected twist at a certain point. >> i love that moment when rhonda was talking to her grandfather. said don't touch that. i could see that. i know the book has only been out now for a few days, but you are going to be heading to indiana soon. what do you think the response

is going to be to the story? i am assuming maybe that family members have had a chance to read it. others in the state -- >> yeah, so a number of folks related to the story, read it, feel good about it. i think it is challenging to have your story, your life written about because what sums up my life? it's kind of a surreal experience, but people have responded well so far to the book. i am actually giving a reading your gary is one of my first stops. rhonda wrote me a note. you know, want to be there. and a couple of the pelke family members. even the prosecutor, who is a controversial character in the book, because the prosecutor in this case, he ended up being prosecutor for 10 years. he went for the death penalty

for two of the four girls, even though they were teenagers. he went for the death penalty 22 times during his term as prosecutor. and he loves the book. so even though i think you know, he is a complex, controversial character. but he thought that it showed different dimensions to the story and he was good with it. >> i have heard you describe the book as a moral challenge for the reader here, am wondering in what ways did the book challenge you? and does it still challenge you? >> oh, i mean, i am worn out after five years of this work are you kidding me? it is an intense story. ultimately, i did the math and i interviewed probably about 80 people for this book. a core group of them, i was seeing in person over and over again, and it's a lot of weight.

the responsibility of wanting to tell accurately someone to the story to get the details right. to have everyone feel like they were respected, you know. in terms of the moral challenge, honestly, one of the biggest things for me, the biggest revelations, was this business of with any crime, in any court room, there is a family on either side of that case, on either side of that room, and we are so trained not to think about it that way, and they often have some kind of common humanity. the way the system works is the prosecutor tells a certain story, his sentence and for the families to talk to each other across the aisle just complicates things. that's the way the system is structured. this really brought that home and it raised for me some

questions about how was that maybe apply in our regular lives, too? where not communicating with what we think is the other side is maybe prolonging an issue. so that, to me, was a challenging thing to wrestle with. >> i got time for one more question before we turn it over to the audience, and that would be what is your hope for this book? >> i hope people will read it with an open mind and really let themselves get close to all of these different characters and think in a complex way about what they might have chosen to do, because, for me, my feelings, my answer to this changed every few months working on this book.

i think that if someone like bill can have empathy for paula, if someone like rhonda and sam going to stick by my sister in spite of the situation, what it's going to cost me, i think it is a challenge to have greater empathy, or to try to have greater empathy and complicated situations. >> thank you so much. >> can we give todd and alex a round of applause? so we are going to transition to audience q&a. if you have a question, feel free to raise your hand and i will come around with the mic. >> you wrote the book about the one young girl who did the killing. i was wondering what happened to the other three young girls. because in the felony doctrine, they could also be charged with

murder. i wonder what happened to them. >> that is something i address in the book, and the early chapters. you see them go to the system, too. the youngest one was 14. she needed a booster seat to sit on to be on the stand. these were, you know, teenage kids. they were all sentenced to long terms, twentysomething years, 30, 60 something years. paula was the only one to receive the death sentence, because her involvement was more serious. she committed the crime, the murder. >> other questions? >> i've got a question. your first book was which is of america. now you have this book. one in particular draws you to the stories that you decide to write? >> good question. one thing that i've realized

whether it's magazine pieces, which is of america, the documentary i made of american mystic. i am so curious about the belief systems that drive our lives, give our lives structure in an extreme situation like the family ended up in, both families, right? how do you decide to respond? is it based on the faith you were raised with? maybe it's a faith you converted it to. maybe it a letter of the law. maybe something your mom used to tell you when you were a kid and it seemed true to you. the prosecutor in this case was catholic but probe death penalty. he was fine with that. bill's family was baptist and therefore, wanted retribution. he interpreted his faith as saying the opposite. in which is of america, that was an exploration of the pagan movement around the country.

i am fascinated with those bigger questions, and how they insert themselves into our otherwise kind of practical daily lives. >> when you reached out to bill, had he not wanted to talk, you would not have a book. was there ever anyone in the story that you contacted that was not on board with you writing a book, as you said. the people you mentioned are very complimentary toward you now that the book has been published but was there anyone that was not aboard that maybe you had to convince to be in the book, and is there anyone that you wanted to be in the book but said no, i don't want to be in there. >> there were a couple of people who are now deceased, so i lost the opportunity.

the judge in paula's case, i would have loved to have spoken to, but you know, rhonda, rhonda -- i was afraid to really approach for years. because i had been warned by people who knew her that she had been traumatized at the time. she was hounded by newspaper reporters. she got lots of nasty phone calls, you know. she really had a hard time in the wake of her sisters arrest. about three years into the process, after writing to her, talking to friends, i was told okay, you know, i think, i think it's okay. we will do an introduction. i think this might be better timing. she is feeling like she is in a good place, and we ended up talking a great deal, and you know, we are very friendly now

and i think she is an incredible person, but that was a huge gift, because i was able to understand pieces of the story that i would have never otherwise known about. one other person early on was monica foster, who was one of the epaulet attorneys on paula's case. public defender in indiana, doing these kinds of tough cases for ages. i called her on the phone early on and she was all for it and then i could never get her on the phone again. no emails, no phone calls. it was really early on. i thought has to be a bad sign. i bout a bought a ticket and said i am in town for some things, is she in? she saw me and i knew, all right, okay, we are fine.

but she is aware of the lie now. [ laughter ] had. and someone at the psychiatrist testified during . >> do enthey do a psychological profile on paula? >> they did. some of the psychiatrists testified during the sentencing hearing. you know, it is interesting. despite the profile, she does not show signs of an antisocial personality or a sociopathic personality, they made a note of her chaotic childhood but to my mind this is someone who showed clear signs of depression. many people said that. i don't think we have the information about mental health in 1985 that we have now. and that was one of the issues.

and a juvenile court judge who knew her case in lake county at the time spoke with her all of these years later and she agreed. it was just, we did not have the kind of sophisticated understanding of mental health. it was less so in the '80s. >> it was a revengeful act she did, stabbing someone that many times. >> there was a theory. her sister agreed with this. she had a conversation with paula about it. whether or not it was true she said i feel like i was stabbing one of our parents. >> that is what i thought. >> again i don't know if that was true but that was an idea that was floated. >> would you say the story is

more challenging to someone, morally challenging to someone who is christian, christian background or one that is more politically charged? i am thinking of the two driving elements of the story, the death penalty and forgiveness. i am just wondering if someone were to read this book and they are christian would they say yeah, you should forgive? or if you are politically charged you are like no, absolutely not. or would it tug at both sides? >> i can't really predict how people are going to respond. you know, what i try to do is raise these questions and describe these scenarios. i hope give the readers space to wrestle with that. for bill, as you saw in that passage that i read his faith was closely connected ultimately to his decision, his decision to forgive. there are other characters in the book that you meet later

where they are not particularly christian. and also if you are a baptist or a catholic or church of the brotherand member. so many different stripes of christian in the book they all have different feelings with the death penalty, with criminal justice and, you know, there is also that question of, can you subscribe to the kind of tough on crime approach that can be very popular in this country and still say, but i am a christian. i am merciful, i read the bible. some would say sure and others would say no, no, that is contradictory. right. i tried to just tease that out and get it to the surface with the different characters and then you know, when you finish reading it, write me a note and let me know what you think. >> on a related note. there was a situation here within the last 10 or 15 years

called the nickel minds tragedy where there was a man who killed a number of students, amish schoolchildren. and the amish community responded by forgiving. so, there was a book written "amish grace" where they talked about for the amish, it was tied very much in their belief in the lord's prayer. you talked about how, i am sorry is it ben? bill, bill, that it was tied into his faith. i have two questions, the first is, what did forgiveness mean to him? and the second question is what are some lessons that you learned about forgiveness that could possibly be or lessens we might get from the book? >> i think, i think for bill what it, what forgiveness did

is it allowed him to create meaning and something positive about, within a terrible tragedy that had had befallen his family, right? then it became a story of compassion, trying to figure out what happened with this young girl? can i help her? let's, let's, let's turn it from a moment of extreme anger into something where maybe we can have some kind of, another kind of conversation. i really do think it gave his life a different kind of meaning. something that comes up later in the book even beyond paula's time on death row, bill ends up through all of the work that he does to make people aware of policy situation, he ends up meeting, one by one, other murder victims family members who chose to speak out against the death sentence in their cases, too. who all feel isolated.

people in different parts of the country. people think i am nuts and they get together and it is that, that is another piece of the book. what i learned from getting to know a number of those folks is that sometimes the choice to forgive is a means of survival because a lot of these individuals told me, i couldn't hold on to that darkness, that anger that desire for revenge. it was ruining their lives. so, sometimes people forgive for themselves. it has nothing to do with that other person. and that was really fascinating to me. >> thank you for not giving up after five years or any point along -- right, dang. this is important. i am wondering if you could identify -- i think you said earlier there were times in the

writing where even your own mind was being changed things, i am wondering if you can identify like one of the biggest surprises to yourself personally that you changed your mind about something and what led up to that? does that make sense? >> yeah, yeah. [no audio ] like i suddenly understood good things a lot better, you know? so it was the . >> there is not a clear moment, but a moment where i felt like i understood something. the relationship between rhonda and bill that ends up playing more of a role in the book than i ever expected. that was really surprising to me what they both ending up representing and meaning to each other. but also things like i never thought about the incredible toll on the attorneys who take

on this kind of work. and i started to see people in all of the different pieces of the process as just a lot more fully human. i don't know how they managed to do this kind of work where you are representing someone up for the death sentence. it is relentless. overwhelming work. i learned so much along the way. i am a pastor and i don't know if i can do what that person did to be honest with you. i like to think i could. that is another thing. the question is, when i saw the book, i have not read the book. race. can you speak to the racial element in the story did that ever come out in the trial?

lawyer? judge? the families? can you just speak to that? >> absolutely. so, first of all i think a lot of stories about our criminal justice system -- involve segregated as the jim crow south. black workers and families coming up with the great migration, great, opportunity to get a job, finding they are in the same crappy situation up north, right? the city was built to privileged white middle class executives for the mill. everyone else that came to get a job good luck to them. you had immigrants from europe black migrants from the south, they did not live in the same areas, did not have the same quality of schooling and housing and so on. that is in the background of

this crime, right? so where mrs. pelke lived, it was historically entirely white. at one point if you were black you could not pass through the neighborhood unless you had a job to do or something. that had started to change in the years leading up to the crime. but when you have four black girls entering the home of not only an elderly white woman but a bible teacher on top of it the press just lost their minds, right. but it was not clear cut in that the tough on crime mentality that was really kicking into gear in the middle '80s everyone was feeling that. so, the black community in gary was not protesting, you know, this death sentence and you know the focus was on the haneis

heinous of the crime. i was the first one to find this out. the prosecutor looked around and said lake county only has one black criminal court judge. the only one in history. he should really be the one to try the case. if we are going to death for these young black girls that will just go over better and he had his deputy prosecutor rig the system so this would end up in the judge's courtroom. the judge did not believe in the death penalty felt coronerred giving the death sentence because of the representation. he never recovered from it. but, you know, so that is in the background. woven into the story. and it is also part of the relationship between bill and paula, bill and rhonda and some

of the challenges of building trust. when rhonda said, don't eat the fruit that man gives you, she told me, you know, that is because this is san older white man who has been living like 20 minutes away this whole time. he is part of, you know, the people that live here keep to themselves. they don't trust us, we don't trust them. what is this forgiveness all about. so it is woven into the book. >> i am just really curious from your, all of the time that you spent looking at this from criminal justice reform aspect to this under lying, obviously. your thoughts as a culture. one hand we are like crazy safety obsessed, you know. can not do enough, right? from a safety standpoint and at the other side, you know, it is

almost barbaric. we have minors charged in, you know, given life sentences. you have people that are 15, 16, 18, 19 on sex offender registries for the rest of their life and we have the whole drug thing that has been extreme incarceration. you try to balance those two, there has to be a softening of this, then we have these, this whole safety obsession. sometimes it is the same people looking for both. i am curious what your thoughts are and how do we take a step forward in that and how does that, how is that received? you know. >> i will not get up on a soapbox but i will say, oh, yes, you are asking me to. take a request. okay. tough on crime approach is, i

think, it sells so well still plays in 2023. if we elect this one individual, they will come in, swoop in like a knight and shining armor and they will be tougher than anybody has been and they will clean it up. it has been proven that kind of approach does not actually have real results. it just, you know, plays off of our emotions and our fantasies. i think, you know, i think it has been proven already that a huge step towards real safety in our communities is on the other end of things. you know, programs that are going to help kids out so that they don't end up in this extreme situation where a kid was bounced around the system so much and she finally snaps, right? what kind of support do you

have in communities in terms of economic development. you know and they don't need to. people that are incarcerated and they magically and part of it tied into that is this issue of race and the tendency of young people of color more readily that white people, white young people. i am sorry. that is something that we know about. these poor girls it was easier despite how young they were. to see them as adults to try them as adults as it would have been to do the same with young

white girls. we have all of this information already. it is part of the mix. these are big issues. but, i do think, the number one thing that i will say is rehabilitation being serious about it. being suspicious of any time someone uses that sort of tough on crime approach in their campaign. >> we are out of time. can we give todd and alex a round of applause. >> thank you, everyone. discover the heart of america. why is it important to vote? >> i feel it is very important to vote so that we have pick the proper candidate to lead our country. and if you are not sure you

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