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Do you really know what you have done, murderers?
An open letter to a band of Mandeville killers.Bernard Headley
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Dear Mandeville Killer Men,
We haven't met - not in person, not directly. We've never had a chance to look each other in the eye, to peer beneath the surface of our different veneers, to explore the depths of each other's soul as we try to unravel what propels us - you, me - along our divergent paths.
In the same way that I have not met you, who are men, neither did I actually meet the equally terrible Ivan, Dean or Gustav - but I saw their destructive deeds, felt their fearsome lash and suffered, because of them, through long, dark hours of distress.
So it is with you, Mandeville Killer Men. I haven't met any of you, but I have felt you. Felt you directly in a moment of indescribable horror. Felt you in throbbing, incomprehensible pain - the kind of pain that will never go away.
You may have since forgotten or moved on to other misdeeds, other "episodes". But try to remember this one incident: The man whose taxi you apparently commandeered Tuesday night, September 23 in the Greenvale-Mike Town area of Mandeville? Whom you robbed and then slaughtered with a single gunshot to the back of the head? That man meant something to me.
No, I am not coming after you. I will not pay huge sums to some other thug, or thugs, for your heads. Not at all, because you see, men, it's that kind of warped, plain old ignorant "vindication" that has helped get us as a nation into the spiralling violent mess we're in.
What I would like to do here, men, is try to give you a bit of insight into how deep is the devastation you caused in your moment of senseless, random wickedness. The man you murdered, 34-year-old Richard Clarke, was, the night he crossed fateful paths with you, doing what we as a people admire most in and expect of our citizens: he was out working to help support his family - a wife and two young children. Richard drove until well into the night a taxi he shared with another youthful neighbour. His wife of eight years has worked rotating shifts as a licensed nursing assistant in a home taking care of the elderly, among them my 97-year-old father - a nursing home my wife and I happen to own.
Richard left his wife, children and mother-in-law to go to work at about six o'clock that fateful Tuesday evening. The awful call about what you did to him came to his wife while she was on her job, just before daybreak the following Wednesday morning: that "something terrible" had happened to her Richard. The police were on their way to investigate. I left my home in Mandeville early that morning, men, to get Richard's wife. She needed to be close to whatever it was that had happened to her man.
I ushered into my car an utterly distraught woman. It is completely likely that in the faceless randomness of the pain, destruction and mayhem you wreak that you've never looked, really stared - because you never had to - into the panic-stricken face of a family member of the loved one whose life you had casually snatched. I wish it were possible for you to do that - just once.
Dread confirmation of the worst would come via another call, as I drove Richard's wife the short distance toward downtown Mandeville. Richard had died from the wound you inflicted; they'd taken his body to Lyn's Funeral Home.
The detectives awaiting us at Lyn's wanted a positive ID. Mustering as much sympathy and understanding as they could, in what has sadly become for them a gruesome routine, the officers presented Richard's wife with another moment of grim confirmation. "Mrs Clarke"?, one of them said hesitantly, getting ready to hand her something, while expecting her to confirm in her response the nature of her relationship to the dead man - whose limbs we could partially see sprawled out on a cot in a room behind a half-closed door. "Here's your wedding ring," the detective said.
"We retrieved it from the body of the victim. your husband."
Try to picture that, men. Allow the scene to penetrate and linger awhile in your disturbed mental frame. The wedding vow Richard and his wife took eight loving years ago did say "till death do us part" - but not death like this, man!
Mrs Clarke still had to go inside the room to give the police the positive ID they needed. Weeping and overwhelmed, she protested that she could NOT! But she had to. A nurse-assistant colleague who had fortunately joined us helped her into the darkened room of death. The handsome face of the man she had so lovingly embraced and kissed goodbye a few short hours ago now, in one dastardly moment, lay before her contorted, misshapen, and soaked in dried blood, which had oozed through his eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, from a thousand vessels you shattered inside his skull with that piercing bullet. Mrs Clarke wailed at the sight, and with it, the police confirmed in their notes that they had a "solid ID" on the body.
There is one final scene I want you to go through with me, men. It's when Richard's wife and I arrived at their Greenvale family home, at around eight o'clock that Wednesday morning. Agitated neighbours and the news media had all gathered in the dank ritual we've unhappily got accustomed to: filming for the evening news the moans and hollers of yet another grief-stricken family member.
But here's the scene I want to leave with you. As Richard's wife slowly made her way out of my car into the waiting throng, rushing to greet her was her precious six-year-old daughter. She had the sweetest personality, the prettiest face, the winning-est smile you ever saw. She was indeed happy to see Mommy come home. But she'd been overhearing all morning long that something terrible had happened to Daddy; that he, unlike Mommy, would not be coming home.
She did not, could not, understand why. Her smile morphed into searching bewilderment. I reflexively reached down, picked her up and hugged and pressed her fragile frame up against my face, trying hard not to let her see me crying. She was only days away from her seventh birthday; and Daddy had promised her something special.
Try wrapping your mind around that one too, men. Just how did you get to be that way? What is it that we did, or did not do, to cause you to become like that? Do any of you have a mother, a grandmother, a past teacher, a former coach? Do any of them know the kind of activity you now engage in?
The people of Mandeville are saying that for you, and the others like you, we need to get serious about hanging; or, at least, for starters, we should bring back Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams to help sort you out. I don't for one moment think that either hanging or the essence of Mr Adams will sort you out.
I ask of you this, though, men; and that is to reflect deeply on the terrible harm you've done, the pain you have brought to one decent, striving Jamaican family - poor people like yourselves. You've also brought fear into a community. Surely, that can't fulfil your lives - can it, men? I beg you to let someone reach you; perhaps that past teacher or a respected village elder.
One very last thing: Only now, one month later, are we getting around to burying Richard. In these dire economic times, you have set back his family, friends and supporters several thousands of dollars in unplanned funeral expenses.
Bernard Headley is Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology, Psychology & Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona
An open letter to a band of Mandeville killers.Bernard Headley
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Dear Mandeville Killer Men,
We haven't met - not in person, not directly. We've never had a chance to look each other in the eye, to peer beneath the surface of our different veneers, to explore the depths of each other's soul as we try to unravel what propels us - you, me - along our divergent paths.
In the same way that I have not met you, who are men, neither did I actually meet the equally terrible Ivan, Dean or Gustav - but I saw their destructive deeds, felt their fearsome lash and suffered, because of them, through long, dark hours of distress.
So it is with you, Mandeville Killer Men. I haven't met any of you, but I have felt you. Felt you directly in a moment of indescribable horror. Felt you in throbbing, incomprehensible pain - the kind of pain that will never go away.
You may have since forgotten or moved on to other misdeeds, other "episodes". But try to remember this one incident: The man whose taxi you apparently commandeered Tuesday night, September 23 in the Greenvale-Mike Town area of Mandeville? Whom you robbed and then slaughtered with a single gunshot to the back of the head? That man meant something to me.
No, I am not coming after you. I will not pay huge sums to some other thug, or thugs, for your heads. Not at all, because you see, men, it's that kind of warped, plain old ignorant "vindication" that has helped get us as a nation into the spiralling violent mess we're in.
What I would like to do here, men, is try to give you a bit of insight into how deep is the devastation you caused in your moment of senseless, random wickedness. The man you murdered, 34-year-old Richard Clarke, was, the night he crossed fateful paths with you, doing what we as a people admire most in and expect of our citizens: he was out working to help support his family - a wife and two young children. Richard drove until well into the night a taxi he shared with another youthful neighbour. His wife of eight years has worked rotating shifts as a licensed nursing assistant in a home taking care of the elderly, among them my 97-year-old father - a nursing home my wife and I happen to own.
Richard left his wife, children and mother-in-law to go to work at about six o'clock that fateful Tuesday evening. The awful call about what you did to him came to his wife while she was on her job, just before daybreak the following Wednesday morning: that "something terrible" had happened to her Richard. The police were on their way to investigate. I left my home in Mandeville early that morning, men, to get Richard's wife. She needed to be close to whatever it was that had happened to her man.
I ushered into my car an utterly distraught woman. It is completely likely that in the faceless randomness of the pain, destruction and mayhem you wreak that you've never looked, really stared - because you never had to - into the panic-stricken face of a family member of the loved one whose life you had casually snatched. I wish it were possible for you to do that - just once.
Dread confirmation of the worst would come via another call, as I drove Richard's wife the short distance toward downtown Mandeville. Richard had died from the wound you inflicted; they'd taken his body to Lyn's Funeral Home.
The detectives awaiting us at Lyn's wanted a positive ID. Mustering as much sympathy and understanding as they could, in what has sadly become for them a gruesome routine, the officers presented Richard's wife with another moment of grim confirmation. "Mrs Clarke"?, one of them said hesitantly, getting ready to hand her something, while expecting her to confirm in her response the nature of her relationship to the dead man - whose limbs we could partially see sprawled out on a cot in a room behind a half-closed door. "Here's your wedding ring," the detective said.
"We retrieved it from the body of the victim. your husband."
Try to picture that, men. Allow the scene to penetrate and linger awhile in your disturbed mental frame. The wedding vow Richard and his wife took eight loving years ago did say "till death do us part" - but not death like this, man!
Mrs Clarke still had to go inside the room to give the police the positive ID they needed. Weeping and overwhelmed, she protested that she could NOT! But she had to. A nurse-assistant colleague who had fortunately joined us helped her into the darkened room of death. The handsome face of the man she had so lovingly embraced and kissed goodbye a few short hours ago now, in one dastardly moment, lay before her contorted, misshapen, and soaked in dried blood, which had oozed through his eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, from a thousand vessels you shattered inside his skull with that piercing bullet. Mrs Clarke wailed at the sight, and with it, the police confirmed in their notes that they had a "solid ID" on the body.
There is one final scene I want you to go through with me, men. It's when Richard's wife and I arrived at their Greenvale family home, at around eight o'clock that Wednesday morning. Agitated neighbours and the news media had all gathered in the dank ritual we've unhappily got accustomed to: filming for the evening news the moans and hollers of yet another grief-stricken family member.
But here's the scene I want to leave with you. As Richard's wife slowly made her way out of my car into the waiting throng, rushing to greet her was her precious six-year-old daughter. She had the sweetest personality, the prettiest face, the winning-est smile you ever saw. She was indeed happy to see Mommy come home. But she'd been overhearing all morning long that something terrible had happened to Daddy; that he, unlike Mommy, would not be coming home.
She did not, could not, understand why. Her smile morphed into searching bewilderment. I reflexively reached down, picked her up and hugged and pressed her fragile frame up against my face, trying hard not to let her see me crying. She was only days away from her seventh birthday; and Daddy had promised her something special.
Try wrapping your mind around that one too, men. Just how did you get to be that way? What is it that we did, or did not do, to cause you to become like that? Do any of you have a mother, a grandmother, a past teacher, a former coach? Do any of them know the kind of activity you now engage in?
The people of Mandeville are saying that for you, and the others like you, we need to get serious about hanging; or, at least, for starters, we should bring back Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams to help sort you out. I don't for one moment think that either hanging or the essence of Mr Adams will sort you out.
I ask of you this, though, men; and that is to reflect deeply on the terrible harm you've done, the pain you have brought to one decent, striving Jamaican family - poor people like yourselves. You've also brought fear into a community. Surely, that can't fulfil your lives - can it, men? I beg you to let someone reach you; perhaps that past teacher or a respected village elder.
One very last thing: Only now, one month later, are we getting around to burying Richard. In these dire economic times, you have set back his family, friends and supporters several thousands of dollars in unplanned funeral expenses.
Bernard Headley is Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology, Psychology & Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona