“I’m afraid this is going to happen,” I said, pausing. “And I really don’t want to watch,” I admitted to Barry.
“Nobody’s making you,” he told me adamantly.
“I know. I didn’t have to come back. Michael told me not to come back, but here I am and I’m not changing my mind now. If he can be stubborn, so can I.”
Barry laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But what if the joke’s on him?”
“On who? Michael?”
“Yeah. What if this is it? What if all this religious stuff is a sham and there’s no God or no heaven? What if there’s nothing after this? Then the joke’s on Michael because he’s doing this for nothing ’cause there’s no one out there—no God, no Jesus, no heaven. I’ve thought a lot about this,” Barry continued. “Maybe nobody’s going to forgive Michael. Maybe he’s just killing himself for nothing.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m glad you didn’t suggest that to him,” I finally answered.
“Yeah, it might freak him out, but maybe he’d change his mind.”
“That’s impossible. He doesn’t know how to change his mind,” I said. “Although I think there already is some uncertainty there.”
“You’re right, but he puts on a good show. I still think he may be doing this for nothing.”
I couldn’t argue with that; it was the truth. Dying would stop the legal process, but none of the people who mattered would ever forgive him and none of us—even Father John—had any concrete proof that God would forgive him.
For the next few hours, state helicopters began landing and taking off on the pad next to the parking lot. Snipers were posted on the roof. The conference call with Judge Chatigny, T. R. Paulding, the public defenders, and various state officials went on for hours. Barry called the office to try to find out what was happening, but because they were on the call and using the speakerphone, all he could find out was that the judge was upset and was saying that T. R. hadn’t fulfilled his responsibility as Michael’s lawyer.
Although at the time we didn’t know the details, Chatigny had accused T. R. of “enabling him,” saying, “You are not investigating this matter and fulfilling your obligation to the court, and if you don’t do something, I’m going to have your law license.” He had also said something that no other judge had ever publicly said about Michael Bruce Ross—that if you look at this case “in the best possible light” Ross “never should have been convicted. Or if convicted, he never should have been sentenced to death because of his sexual sadism, which was found by every single person who looked at him [to be] clearly a mitigating factor.”
When T. R. finally left the warden’s office, his face was flushed and he was visibly shaken. It appeared that he might have been crying. We assumed he was upset because the judge had chastised him. However, there were myriad possibilities. He was fond of Michael. He acknowledged us with a gesture but did not stop because he needed to speak to Michael.
T. R. had taken the case pro bono as a favor to Michael, and now he found himself with an unanswerable choice—lose your law license or defy your client’s wishes. Wearily, he explained his conundrum to Michael, who felt like he had been sucker punched but knew he could not go to his death thinking that he had caused T. R. to lose his livelihood. He had no choice. He told T. R. to “do whatever you have to do.”
After T. R. left, I went back to see how Michael was holding up. His emotions ranged from desperate sobs to angry frustration. “They couldn’t break me, so they went after T. R.,” he fumed—although I wasn’t sure who “they” were. In his mind, it was all the fault of the public defenders whom he blamed for starting the whole mess. As I sat by the death cell, trying to ignore the turmoil around us, I started to ask Michael some of the questions that had to be asked before it was too late—and I was thinking about my conversation with Barry.
“Did you believe in God before you got here—on death row?”
Michael stared at me. “I think so,” he said in a tone that indicated anything but certainty. “I believed there must be a God or a supreme being out there. I certainly didn’t believe in any form of religion. I hadn’t been brought up that way.”
“I remember you writing in your journal that you wish you had known Father John earlier but that you might not have wanted to listen to him back then.”
“I was too angry. I blamed God for what I had done. But God didn’t kill those girls. I did.”
“But now you believe, and you are sure God has forgiven you.”
“Yes,” he said quietly, looking down at the floor.
“So does God talk to you? Do you actually have conversations with him—or her?” I was joking, but when he didn’t answer, I knew what he was thinking. He was wondering if I was trying to trick him. He was wondering if I was going to use it to prove he was crazy. He didn’t want to answer. “I’m really curious. I read your journals. Over and over, you pray to God. You tell him what you think. I just want to know if he talks back.”
“If you want to know if I hear voices, the answer is no.”
“I’m not trying to prove you are crazy. Honestly. I want to understand your relationship with God. You told me you weren’t afraid. You said you would be forgiven—or that you had been forgiven by God. What I want to know is how you know that.”
He was getting nervous. I sensed that I had touched a nerve. “We talked about this before once. You have to have faith. That’s what the word means. You have to believe even if you don’t have concrete proof like evidence in court,” he said, almost challenging me.
“Okay. You can have faith that God exists. You can have faith that the Scriptures contain some truths in them and that God will forgive you because you have confessed your sins and you have atoned for them. But even you ask the question all through your journals—how do you know what is God’s will?”
He sighed. He thought I was trying to use religion and logic to put him off guard. “I don’t know. I just have to have faith,” he told me. “If it’s the right thing to do, then it should be God’s will.”
“If—the big if,” I said. “So God hasn’t actually told you that you are forgiven,” I began.
“He forgives everyone. Henri Nouwen says that—”
“I don’t want to hear what other people say. I want to hear what Michael says.”
“God is forgiving. Like you said, I’ve confessed my sins. I’ve repented. God has forgiven me.”
I looked him in the eye. “So you’ve forgiven Satti, and Malchik, and everyone else?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“You know the Lord’s Prayer is pretty scary on that subject. It asks God to forgive us as we forgive others. So that means if you want to be forgiven, you have to forgive everyone else. What about your mother? The public defenders for starting a suit saying you’re incompetent? Because if you haven’t, you are asking God to forgive you the way you forgave them.”
He took a deep breath. I could see that I was annoying him at the very least and maybe even shaking him up. “I am at peace with all that. Okay? I’m not angry anymore. I carried a lot inside for a long time, but I’ve worked through it.”
“Okay. But how do you know there’s a heaven? How do you know you’re going there?”
“I know it in my heart,” Michael answered softly, staring at the floor again.
“I don’t know if I’m sure there’s a heaven; I’m becoming more and more convinced that hell is right here on earth. We have to suffer through all of this. Who knows? Maybe you’re right; death may be ‘sweet.’”
“I’m not going to argue with you on any of that,” he said, smiling as if he had won.
By 7:00 P.M., preparations for the execution were well under way. We had been escorted into the visiting room and the lobby was buzzing with DOC officials. All sorts of prison personnel kept bringing in food t
rays for them—cold cuts, cookies, coffee—standard fare for a funeral reception. The staff was busily hanging curtains over every window so no one could see who was coming in and going out. “They must be bringing in the victims’ families,” I said.
“No, it’s way too early for that. They don’t want you to see the executioner,” Barry whispered.
I imagined a burly man wearing a black hood and carrying a big ax trying to sneak through the lobby. I started to laugh and then realized Barry wasn’t laughing. “You’re serious? Why don’t they just have someone from the DOC do it?”
“No one is supposed to know who actually did the killing. People apply for the honor from other states.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I’m serious. And the pay is pretty good, too.”
In another room, T. R. was trying to figure out what his legal and ethical obligations were, but State’s Attorney Kevin Kane and Chief State’s Attorney Christopher Morano had no doubts about what had to be done. They cornered T. R. and took him into a private room to talk. “You’re in no shape to give any legal advice,” they told him. “We’re calling this off. It’s not going to happen tonight.” No one told us it was off until much later.
• • •
When I went back for my final visit with Michael, he was calmer and convinced that the execution would not happen that night. I hoped he was right, but I couldn’t help but wonder whether the next time I would see him, he would be stretched out on a gurney with a bunch of tubes coming out of his arms.
Just before eleven, I was told I had to leave. I put my hand up on the Plexiglas, and he lifted his up next to mine on the opposite side. “It’s been a roller coaster,” I said.
“Yeah, remember? I’m a real pain in the butt.”
I laughed. “And even though I hate roller coasters, I wouldn’t have missed this one for the world. I’m going to miss you.”
“Me too. But it ain’t going to happen tonight.”
As we were about to be escorted out of the prison, T. R. came out beaming. He couldn’t stop to talk because he was on his way to see Michael. “I’ll call you,” he promised.
Because of Michael’s mood shift, we were sure that the execution had been called off, but Coates, the head of the guards, nixed that assumption as we walked out. “It’s off, right?” Barry asked.
“No, it’s going forward. You have to go over to Cybulski. Nothing has changed.”
My anxiety levels spiked. We were told to go to our cars and drive over to Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institution, another prison down the road but within sight of the entrance. The temperature had dropped below zero. I ran to my rental car. I was freezing, but even turning the heater up full blast had little immediate effect. Waiting for the car to warm up, I picked up my cell phone to see if I had any calls. It was so bitterly cold, my phone was a brick of ice. Frozen. Dead.
Our “staging area” was the visiting room, where they had snacks and coffee for us. Barry got on the pay phone to talk to his office. They knew less than we did but were constantly monitoring the television to see what was happening. I paced around the ten-by-ten entryway desperately trying to keep the image of the execution chamber out of my mind. As the time drew nearer, I doubted I could really go through with it. Waves of guilt passed over me when I considered how Michael would feel if I didn’t witness the execution. I heard sirens and watched out the window as police car after police car flashed by. It was hard to see what they were doing or where they were going, but presumably they were coming together to block the entrance from the few protestors who had braved the cold, marching from Robinson Correctional Institution in Somers to the entrance of Osborn and Northern. I counted about twenty-six cars whizzing by, but it was impossible to make an accurate count, because we couldn’t see all of them or the entrance—just blue flashing lights dancing on the deep white snow. If the execution had been called off, would they bring out all this force? From the look on Barry’s face, I could tell he was asking himself the same questions.
Just before 1:00 A.M., a white van pulled up out front, presumably to take us back to the prison for the execution, and Father Anthony Bruno, the head chaplain for the DOC, got out and rushed toward the lobby. He opened the door, sending in a gust of subzero air. Barry and I shivered, both from the cold and the fact that it looked as though it was really going to happen.
“The execution has been called off. It’s officially still on for Monday, but it’s not going to happen. They are going to make an announcement in a little while,” he told us. “I’ve got to get back to the prison, but you all might as well go home.”
“You okay?” Barry asked.
“I’m fine. I’m just happy it’s over.”
“It’s never over until it’s over,” Barry cautioned. He gave me a hug and left. Michael had taken his sleeping pill and gone to bed after we left at eleven, when T. R. told him it was off. He had no idea that we had been in limbo for two more hours.
• • •
The next morning my cell phone had thawed out, and Michael’s counselor called, offering to let me visit before I went back to California. When I got to the prison, Michael had a hangdog look.
“Michael, I don’t have that long with you, so let’s not dwell on last night. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was God telling you that you should rethink what you were doing.”
“God had nothing to do with it.”
“How convenient,” I said sarcastically. “Whenever things go your way, it’s God making things happen, but when it’s not your will, it is also not God’s will.”
“That’s not true,” he said, defensively, but I left hoping I had planted a seed of doubt.
• • •
It took me a few days to settle down. I kept thinking about the Shelleys. I knew they would have been there waiting, so I called them that Sunday afternoon. Ed answered the phone. “I just wanted to call. I’ve been thinking about you. I can’t imagine how painful it must have been for you to go there thinking that there would be an execution and then having it called off.”
“It wasn’t too bad for me,” Ed said. “Lera is really taking it tough. I’m trying to stay away from everything else. Larry King wanted me on, but I wouldn’t go. Then NBC parked in front of my house. We couldn’t go out for days. Lera was really eaten up by it.” He said that he had been “chain chewing” antacids the night of the execution, and his nerves were shot because he had quit smoking seven weeks earlier.
I told him that I didn’t think there was a chance that the execution would take place anytime soon, because the court was going to appoint a special counsel to look into Michael’s competency, and the state had less than one day remaining until the execution window closed.
Ed was livid. He thought all psychiatric experts were hired guns who would say anything if they were paid enough. “That’s what gets me. One gives one diagnosis, and then the other gives the opposite. It’s crazy and it’s a waste of time and money.”
I later heard that Michael had written to Susan and mailed the letter the day of the scheduled execution. She confided in me that he said he had been “putting on a brave front for everyone else” but that he was secretly troubled—deeply troubled by “needles, chemicals, seeing the victims’ families. I’m terrified inside.” I knew he didn’t really want to die, but now I also knew he was afraid. As much as I disagreed with his relationship with Susan, I was hoping that she’d be able to persuade him to change his mind.
24
SOMERS, CONNECTICUT
WINTER–SPRING 2005
Because the United States Supreme Court sent the case back to state court, Judge Clifford was to preside over a competency hearing; he set a new execution date of May 11.
“Are you willing to talk to the psychiatrists?” Michael asked.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“I just want some people who are willin
g to say that I do care about the families. I don’t want people twisting the facts and saying half-truths. That’s how I got here on death row,” he argued.
“No, you got on death row because you killed eight people,” I corrected.
I spent most days and evenings for the next four months dealing with the psychiatrists and the lawyers who were trying to prove he was incompetent. Michael wanted me to tell them—and the court—that he was competent and that he was dropping his appeals because he didn’t want the families to go through another penalty hearing; he wanted to give them closure. Still, there was the suicide issue. There was the fact that he was depressed and that he had told me that he suffered from death row syndrome. I knew he would rather die than go back to Northern. That alone said something about death row in Connecticut. I also knew that he saw his decision to drop any appeals as a noble act of sacrificing himself. And finally, I knew that he was stubborn and could not bring himself to change his mind once he had announced his decision publicly. It would be too humiliating. Did that prove that he was incompetent to make the decision because he was incapable of changing his mind? I wanted to cooperate, but I knew that telling the whole truth would risk Michael feeling hurt and betrayed.
Eventually I had to give a deposition because I wouldn’t be able to attend the hearing. All of the lawyers from both sides were allowed to ask questions about my relationship with Michael. At Michael’s lawyer T. R.’s turn, he had just one: “Doesn’t Michael regard you as his friend?” I had never had to actually publicly admit to a “friendship” with Michael. However I may have defined my relationship with him, there was no doubt that he thought of me as a friend. “Yes, he does,” I admitted. I was mad at T. R., because that admission took away from my credibility with the judge.
The Man in the Monster Page 27
