‘You take away all they’ve got … and all they’re ever going to have’

For as long as I can remember I have been an avid news junkie, a voracious newspaper reader and in recent years I spend many hours weekly reading online news sources.

Local, state, federal or world news – it doesn’t matter – I’ve always religiously followed what’s happening, many times following stories from other regions that have no actual bearing on me or my life.

Several years ago I recall my dad telling me that he quit watching the evening news on television because it made him mad, frustrated and many times nervous. Perhaps it’s an age-thing – or maybe it’s just another example that I’m turning into my dad – but I understand more and more what he meant. While I don’t see me ever giving up following the news I also have those same feelings more and more these days.

Many times as a columnist I will take two two story-lines and attempt to turn them into a single thought. Such is the case today.

The first is out of Springfield, Missouri but really could be from Anytown, USA. Sadly, I guess it’s just another tragic example of life in the 21^st Century.

On Feb. 19 Hailey Owens, a 10-year-old fourth-grader, was walking home from a friend’s house after school when she was abducted in broad daylight. She was two blocks from her home. Neighbors watched in horror as she was dragged into a gold-colored Ford Ranger pickup truck. One neighbor even gave chase but lost the vehicle.

Hailey Owens

A few hours later police arrested Craig Michael Wood, 45, a middle school teacher’s aide and football coach. Wood was driving a gold-colored Ford Ranger. When authorities gained access to his home they found Hailey’s body stuffed in trash bags and inside a large plastic container. She had been raped and shot in the head. There was still wet bleach on the basement floor from an attempt to clean up the murder scene. More than a dozen guns and child pornography was also found in the subsequent search. Wood was charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and armed criminal action in Hailey’s death. He is being held without bond in Greene County Jail. In his initial court appearance he pleaded not guilty. Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson said he was considering pursuing the death penalty for Wood. Hailey was buried Feb. 26.

The second story, also out of Missouri, involves an execution earlier this week when Michael Taylor died by lethal injection 25 years after he abducted 15-year-old Ann Harrison while she was waiting for a school bus. She was raped and then stuffed in the trunk of a car where she was stabbed to death. Taylor admitted to the crime, saying that it was fueled by crack cocaine.

The story went on to note that attorneys for Taylor, through the years, had launched a string of appeals that had allowed him to remain on Death Row for a quarter of a century. The final appeal that was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court, asserted that the drugs used for lethal injection could subject Taylor to a “slow and tortuous death.”

As I read the story about Taylor’s 25 years on Death Row, I thought of 10-year-old Hailey Owens and the man accused of ending her young life – Craig Michael Wood. And as I stewed about my feelings – feelings about worthless appeals that allow child killers to languish in prison, children being raped and murdered and the pure evil that exists in the world — I thought of a line from one of my favorite movies, “Unforgiven” where Clint Eastwood talked about killing another person.

“It’s a helluva thing, killing somebody,” Eastwood’s character the murderous William Munney said. “You take away all they’ve got … and all they’re ever going to have.”

‘ … all they’ve got … and all they’re ever going to have.’

Let’s take that line and look at Hailey Owens young life that was snuffed out by a pedophile.

Hailey was forever taken away from her parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, classmates and on and on and on. The second part of that movie line – ‘all they’re ever going to have’ is the saddest aspect. Clearly, police have the right guy, so Craig Michael Wood took away from Hailey the wonder of grade school, graduation from junior high, a first boyfriend, a first kiss, proms, football and basketball games, high school graduation, college, becoming a wife, a mother, enjoying a career and every other joy and accomplishment that would have been her life.

And the possibility that Wood could be on Death Row for 20-25 years is nothing short of repulsive to me. While we have the greatest judicial system in the world it is badly broken when confessed and convicted killers are allowed to live for decades after a jury finds them guilty. Can you imagine what that must be like for an already grief-stricken family? It’s salt in an open wound.

If it wasn’t so sad and tragic it would laughable that an attorney could file an appeal that drugs used for lethal injection would result in “cruel and tortuous death.”

Cruel and tortuous death? Seriously?

That particular appeal, which is becoming more and more popular these days in keeping murderers alive, is yet another example that we live in a world where the perpetrator is now the victim.

Just to set the record straight, a cruel and tortuous death is the way that Hailey Owens and Ann Harrison died.