Families of Murder Victims Fail to Gain Peace From Executions

Shona Cunningham felt very different two minutes before and two minutes after the execution of the man who murdered her son.

Before, there was the horrible reality that another life was being snuffed out. After, there was relief. At least Arthur Gary Bishop would never prey on children again.

Cunningham’s sentiments echo through the shattered lives of those who have endured a loved one’s murder to see the killer pay society’s ultimate penalty. The executions changed them all, but rarely in the way they had expected or hoped.

The emptiness and loss lived on--even grew--long after the killer was dead.

“We waited all those years, and we thought once he was executed there would be some kind of end to it all,” said Belva Kent, whose daughter, Debi, was kidnapped and murdered by serial killer Ted Bundy.

For nearly 15 years after she disappeared in 1974, the Kents left the porch light on in symbolic hope that Debi might find her way home. The morning after Bundy died in Florida’s electric chair, after he finally confessed to Debi’s murder, Belva Kent thought that the family could get on with their lives.

“But we all just kind of looked at one another. The empty spot was still in our stomachs,” she said. “It wasn’t at all how we thought we would feel. It didn’t bring our loved one back. It does not heal you like you think it’s going to.”

Now, more than two decades after Debi disappeared and with Bundy seven years gone, Kent has come to believe, like the others, “that you never heal from a crime like that.”

The porch light has stayed on--as a memorial to her daughter.

The debate over capital punishment means little to the families of the murdered. Most favor the death penalty, but their reasons are more practical and the crushing weight of their grief gives them force.

“He hasn’t killed anyone else, has he?” asked Colleen Ostergaard, whose husband, Max Jensen, was one of the two young family men murdered by Gary Gilmore in 1975. Gilmore’s execution by firing squad 18 months later, amid a worldwide furor, ended a 10-year moratorium on the death penalty in America.

“I’m not saying I’m for it or against it. I’m just making a statement,” said the 44-year-old Kaysville woman.

Kent’s support of the death penalty is in the same pragmatic vein. Bundy survived nearly 12 years on death row, costing taxpayers millions for his appeals.

“They’ve done a wrong. Why should we pay for them with our tax dollars?” Kent asked. “This is not vengeance. An eye for an eye never got anyone anywhere.”

Not surprisingly, though, some crave the simplicity of just that sort of justice, a reassurance that the death of the killer will somehow balance the bloody books.

Loralee Petersen, whose 11-year-old son, Kim, was shot, drowned and sexually mutilated by Arthur Bishop, has found comfort in the early Mormon teaching of blood atonement.

Early church leaders, particularly pioneer prophet Brigham Young, taught that some sins were so grievous that only the shedding of the sinner’s blood would allow a chance for redemption. The church has since disavowed the belief.

“The shedding of innocent blood has to be paid in some way, and apparently blood has to be shed again for it to be paid,” Petersen said from her home in Henderson, Nev.

When Bishop was executed in 1988 after confessing to killing five young boys, Petersen and her family simply withdrew from the whole process.

“I felt at one point that I didn’t care what happened to Arthur Bishop as long as he could never hurt anybody again,” she said. “I had to let that go. But since then, I realize that justice does need to be served.”

She says revenge has nothing to do with her beliefs. Hatred, say all the survivors, is for those who don’t have as much at stake.

“We had to decide not to follow that course,” said 83-year-old Lily Davis, the grandmother of 4-year-old Danny Davis, Bishop’s second victim. “It just cankers the soul.”

“If I’m filled with hatred and revenge, then Art Bishop won,” Petersen said. “He would have succeeded in totally ruining my life.”

For all the families, the one thing that the execution accomplished was the comfort of anonymity. Media scrutiny in most of the cases died almost as fast as the killers.

“If someone’s hit by a car, if there’s an accident and somebody dies, there’s a process. There’s a funeral and you start the grieving process,” Cunningham said. “But when it comes to murder, you’re not allowed to go through that process, maybe never.”

Every mention of the killer’s name, every court date, every appeal, is a reminder. Just a few weeks ago, Cunningham was watching a local television news show when Bishop’s face--and a picture of her dead son, 13-year-old Graeme--appeared on the screen.

“I went back 12 years. It was as if it was no time at all,” she said. “But if you take that person out of life, out of the news, out of the media, so he’s no longer a product you can use to sell your stories, then you give us a chance to grieve.

“It’s not revenge. It’s not an eye for an eye,” she said. “It’s a simple fact. If they’re not there, then we have a chance.”

Sometimes, the killer, though dead, never goes away. Both Gilmore and Bundy are constantly in the news. Gilmore’s crimes were the grist for two best-selling books: Norman Mailer’s “The Executioner’s Song” and, more recently, Mykal Gilmore’s moving memoir of his brother and their tortured family, “Shot Through the Heart.”

“We live with his name day after day,” Belva Kent said of Bundy. “We always live with his name. You think we would become hardened to it. But every time you hear the name, your stomach goes into a knot.”

Colleen Ostergaard just wants to get on with life. Even talking about Gilmore--which she did with great reluctance--drags her back.

His execution and the furor surrounding it did little to assuage her pain all those years ago. Her ambivalence about it has endured now for nearly two decades. It is an ambivalence protected by cynicism.

Did Gilmore’s death make a difference?

“I can’t say that,” Ostergaard said. “But it made a great ending for the book, didn’t it?”