Grieving Mother Transforms Place of Evil to Haven of Prayer

In the house where Rachel Muha’s son met his killers, priests now live and pray. Where evil once raged, now there is a place devoted to forgiveness.

Brian Muha, 18, and his college roommate, Aaron Land, 20, were killed last year after they were kidnapped from their off-campus home near the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Since then, Rachel Muha has bought the house so priests can live there free while attending the college, a Roman Catholic school with 2,100 students. It’s her way of reclaiming the place for God.

“Such evil happened here,” she said. “Now nothing but good things can happen.”

About 5 a.m. on May 31, 1999, two men forced Muha and Land from their rental duplex near the college in suburban Steubenville, authorities say. The students were driven in Muha’s Chevy Blazer about 15 miles to the woods of western Pennsylvania. They were beaten, robbed, forced to perform oral sex on each other and shot to death with a .44-caliber revolver, according to court documents.

Charged with the crime were Terrell Rahim Yarbrough, 19, of Pittsburgh and Nathan Herring, 18, of Steubenville.

The slayings raised troubling questions with no satisfying answers. Prosecutors theorized the men were killed to cover up the theft of the Blazer. White supremacists claimed race helped explain things: The victims were white, the suspects black. Others, including Rachel Muha, saw a monumental collision of good and evil, in which violent individuals sought to stain innocent victims with their own depravity.

More details soon will unfold-- Herring’s trial is set for Aug. 16, Yarbrough’s for Sept. 13--but Rachel Muha doesn’t want to learn more, at least not yet.

“I can’t imagine being there at the trial while that horrible story is being told,” said Muha, who lives in Westerville, a suburb of Columbus 120 miles west of Steubenville.

She has her own plan for finding peace.

Rachel Muha said she bought the house, a $47,000 duplex, so priests can pray, celebrate Mass and consecrate the ground there. Two priests have moved into the 70-year-old house, and when they return to their home diocese after graduation, other priests or nuns can live there, Rachel Muha said.

“My wish is to have Mass celebrated every day there,” she said.

As for the accused killers, Rachel Muha said she has forgiven them.

“What these boys did is a horrible, evil thing,” she said. “But God’s love is so powerful, it can get you through anything.”

Rachel Muha speaks to middle school students about her son’s death. She said they are moved by his story and the fact that he was so innocent.

“I am sure Brian never thought they would actually kill him,” she said. “He wouldn’t have thought there could be such evil.”

She tells the children how important it is to forgive.

“I tell them there is nothing that you can’t forgive. Free yourself from anger and bitterness. God is so good. He doesn’t take away pain, but you get a kind of peace.”

Rachel Muha wants to tell her son’s accused killers not only that she forgives them but that she hopes they change from being evil to being good.

“Justice is not putting someone away,” she said. “Justice is replacing the good that they took out of the world by their evil actions. Brian and Aaron would have done a lot of good.”

Rachel Muha said police have told her not to talk to Yarbrough and Herring until after their trials. She doesn’t know what she will say the first time they meet, but she thinks it will take them a while to believe she really forgives them.

“This won’t be a one-time thing,” she said. “We will have to prove to them that this is not a stunt.”

Franciscan University students have memorialized Muha and Land in a variety of ways. Rachel Muha’s older son, Chris, a senior at the college, and dozens of fellow students prayed at the scene of the shootings and left a gold-painted cross, roses, a religious statue and rosaries.

Chris said his brother was well liked even though he attended the school for only a short while.

After his brother’s death, he said, “students would get together, and each week a different person would tell a story about Brian.”

When classes resume at the end of August, the university will name its football field Memorial Field in memory of Muha and Land.

Lisa Ferguson, college spokeswoman, said Rachel Muha has inspired many at the school.

“Some may wonder if her ability to forgive is genuine, but she is someone who, every day, goes back to the Lord to find the strength to forgive. She is an incredible witness,” Ferguson said.

Rachel Muha said her son would have it no other way.

“I pray for the suspects because Brian and Aaron were the first ones to want that,” she said. “The best hope for their killers of going to heaven one day turns out to be us.”