Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[MUSIC]
NEWS ANCHOR: Two 15 year old boys are in the custody of Harris County officials tonight,
in connection with the *** of a 26 year old Harris County woman.
AMI: In 1986, when I was five years old, my mother was abducted, ***, and murdered.
LINDA: Two 15 year old boys who escaped from a Texas youth counsel facility...
In 1986, my daughter Cathy was abducted, was ***, and was murdered.
ELLEN: One of the teenagers led police early Saturday to an isolated area...
NEWS ANCHOR: Sheriff's deputies say the teens led them
to the woman's body in a field in Brazoria County.
AMI: They ended up almost in Alban, Texas.
NEWS ANCHOR: The authority said O'Daniel had been sexually assaulted and shot.
LINDA: She was shot once in the leg, and three times in the back of the head.
ELLEN: The boys were captured four days later in Cathy's stolen car.
LINDA: They had also tried to disfigure her face, apparently with a cigarette lighter,
just to make her not identifiable.
ELLEN: They didn't find her body for four days, and you only imagine what this family went through.
LINDA: They both pled guilty, so there was no trial.
I have never laid eyes on neither one of them.
The Truder man is in a psychiatric unit.
We can't see him, but I am preparing to meet with the other one a few months from now.
AMI: I'm getting ready to meet one of the boys who murdered my mother.
GARY: In 1988, I pled guilty to first degree *** and *** assault.
I'm currently serving a sentence of 54 years.
ELLEN: Imagine sitting at a table, and looking in the eyes, of the man who murdered someone you love.
NARRATOR: Six months from now, Linda and Ami White will meet that man.
Ellen Halbert is the trained mediator who has been assigned to this case.
ELLEN: The program is named victim-offender mediation dialogue, because really that's what we do.
We cause a dialogue to happen.
LINDA: I contacted victim services about two years ago.
ELLEN: This process is initiated by the victim, and then we contact the offender who's in prison,
to see if he might be interested.
The offender, in order to participate, understands that he has to admit guilt,
and it absolutely does not benefit him in anyway.
It does not affect his parole, or how he is perceived inside the prison system.
We are on our way to Tomball, Texas, which is about 40 miles northwest of Houston.
NARRATOR: Today, Halbert will meet the victims at their home.
They have been corresponding for six months, but this will be their first face to face meeting.
ELLEN: What I hope to have happen today, is I would like Linda and Ami to talk about that day.
That day that Cathy died.
I know that although Ami was only five years old, I'm sure she'll remember that time.
She'll have some memory of it, and I know that Linda will have a lot of things that she remembers.
Oh, look at the little dog. Here to greet us.
What I'd like to do now is just get started.
Whoever wants to talk about what you remember happening.
When you first knew that something just wasn't quite right.
The day that you lost your daughter, and your mother.
LINDA: She was killed probably early morning hours of the 18th,
but we didn't know of course she was gone until the 22nd.
I remember John said, "It's the worst you can possibly imagine.
AMI: Our first meeting, it was very emotional.
It was like first time sitting down, remembering everything that happened.
It brings back a lot of pain, and a lot of fear, and a lot of stuff that I hadn't dealt with in a long time.
I don't remember who told me. Was it dad?
LINDA: Yeah.
AMI: Yeah.
LINDA: I couldn't say the words.
AMI: And he told me, and I remember screaming, "But mommy's pregnant, mommy's pregnant."
I was so excited that I was going to have a baby brother or sister.
And I remember I ran into here and I went and hid in the pantry.
And I remember dad came in there and got me.
LINDA: And we know this is not going to be a simple process.
If it were that easy, we wouldn't be preparing for it all these months.
ELLEN: The preparation process can take anywhere from six months to two years,
before the actual mediation takes place.
NARRATOR: The process involves months of paperwork and soul searching.
Both sides keep journals, answer questionnaries that probe their fears and motivations,
complete grief inventories that examine how the crime has affected their lives.
ELLEN: The philosophy behind this program is to give power back to victims.
NARRATOR: Ami's parents divorced when she was just an infant.
After her mother's ***, she was adopted by her grandparents, Linda and John White.
She is the single mother of a year old boy, Chase.
AMI: Tomball's a pretty small town, so when Cathy was murdered, it was pretty big news.
The funeral service was like the biggest one they've had in Tomball,
and it took up this whole parking lot, and the parking lot next door.
People were standing outside.
LINDA: Cathy was our only daughter. We had two sons. Here's this family album here.
She was slender. She had long brown hair, blue eyes. She was very vivacious, very animated.
Here's a picture of our whole family when Steve was probably five or six.
STEVEN WHITE: She made me feel very good, and I could observe her
making other people feel the same way. Easy to talk to. Easy to be with.
LINDA: We would laugh together, and I can still remember the way she would go, "Oh, mom."
Just like that, "Oh, mom." I can remember it like it was yesterday.
Here is Cathy with Ami.
AMI: She loved to dance and sing.
Even when I was like three or four, I just remember how beautiful she was.
LINDA: This was close to the last Christmas. There's Steve.
STEVEN: Either there's a part of me that doesn't want to remember,
because then I have to accept the fact that she's gone.
So, honestly, it's easier to not remember.
[MUSIC]
ELLEN: We're on our way to the Allred Unit, in Wichita Falls, which is a huge maximum security unit.
NARRATOR: Today is Halbert's first meeting with convicted murderer Gary Brown. She's apprehensive.
ELLEN: Lots of reasons why.
What we have to do today is get Gary to talk more about what was going on in his life,
that drove him to the point that he committed this horrible crime.
He has not wanted to talk about this crime.
I'm hoping I can get him to do that today.
You think the warden could see us now that we're here?
MAN: Yes, ma'am.
NARRATOR: The prison's warden is unfamiliar with the mediation program.
ROBERT R. TREON: Now these guys, I understand they had to actually come out
and admit fully that they're responsible for...
LINDA: Oh, yes, yes.
And this is also a victim driven process. The victim has to ask for it.
And although it's not publicized, we have almost 500 victims on our waiting list.
ROBERT: And I don't understand, for me, really what the families hope to get out of this process.
LINDA: People who are victims of crime heal in different ways,
and some really want to put it behind them, and they want to go forward with their lives,
and never think about it again.
But then others have many, many questions, and the only person
who can answer to the questions that victims have is that offender.
ROBERT: If someone hurt somebody in my family,
and they were asking me if I wanted to be part of this,
my first question is are you going to shake me down at the door.
Could I ask you a personal question?
LINDA: You bet.
ROBERT: What do you get out of this deal?
LINDA: Well, I think everyone has their own personal story,
and for me, I was the victim of a violent crime.
In 1996, a man broke into my house, spent the night in the attic,
and the next morning when everyone had gone, he surprised me in my bathroom.
He was dressed in a ninja suit, with everything covered but his eyes,
and during the next two hours I was ***, stabbed four times, and left for dead in my bathroom.
As a result of the attack on me, I started working with crime victims.
I work in the District Attorney's office in Austin, Texas.
I manage the victim witness division.
What I do as a mediator is all volunteer, and it's 100 hours of training. It's very intense.
ROBERT: Well this is the offender's travel card
which gives us some pretty good information at our fingertips,
and just looking at his record, it's obvious to me he's had problems his whole life.
Well let's see, at age of 8 he admits use of ***, ***, methamphetamines, LSD.
Quaaludes at the age of 12.
Intravenous use of ***, LSD, and methamphetamine at age 13.
And an admitted alcoholic. 10 suicide attempts, mostly by overdosing on pills.
Doesn't excuse what he did, but this kid never had a chance.
NARRATOR: And this mediation might be Gary Brown's only chance.
[MUSIC]
NARRATOR: Gary Brown killed Cathy White 15 years ago.
Ellen Halbert, the mediator with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
has been corresponding with Brown for six months,
and hopes that today he will finally be able to talk about the crime.
GARY: I was high, drunk, I don't think if they could stop us from getting away of it.
LINDA: What kind of drugs were you on?
GARY: I was on coke, speed, we call it a speedball when you mix them together,
and we'd been drinking MD2020.
That's when we took advantage of her, and gave her no choice on it. Sexually.
LINDA: Both of you?
GARY: Yes.
NARRATOR: As far as Ellen knows, Gary has never spoken to anyone about his crime.
Not even his cellmates.
ELLEN: He's been able to push it out of his mind and not think about it, as many offenders do.
It was good for him to be able to talk about it.
GARY: ...the only way we thought we'd be able to keep it from being known
and get away with it was to make sure she couldn't say nothing.
ELLEN: Did you know she was dead?
GARY: More or less after the second or either third shot, it was pretty well we both believed it,
despite what he was saying she wasn't, because she wasn't moving.
There was no screaming, there was no crying.
ELLEN: Anything happen after that?
GARY: We was trying to make it at that time, make it a way no one could identify her,
that's why we tried to set her on fire.
We tried by setting her on fire, trying to actually buy time is what we was trying to do.
I mean that's how sick we were back then.
ELLEN: I was struck from the very first time I met Gary,
that there was something very sad and lonely about him.
He'd never hurt anyone before this time, just tried to hurt himself.
He's very childlike in many ways. He suffers from severe depression.
He's told me that he takes Zoloft and Lithium, and has taken them for years.
And I felt a sympathy for him that I didn't understand.
Here is this man that had murdered a young woman, and I was feeling sympathy for him.