Surviving my daughter's killing

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1:29Hi, I'm Namulanta Kombo and welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm the presenter of the Dear Daughter podcast where people write extraordinary letters to the daughters and sons in their lives. Find us weekly wherever you get your BBC podcasts. In this episode, you'll hear the amazing story about how a mother forgave the man who killed her daughter. You can listen to Kate tell us what happened right here. Hi, I'm Namulanta Kombo and this is Dear Daughter from the BBC World Service. You're about to hear an incredible story and letter from a remarkable mother called Kate. Before we begin, I should say that this won't be an easy listen.

2:17What you're about to encounter is an intensely emotional account of violence and loss. But at the heart of the story is a brave and unusual decision Kate made. One that you will be thinking about long after her story finishes. I was owed Anne's life. Anne was owed her own life. But I was never going to be able to collect that debt.

2:49Episode 3. surviving my daughter's killing

3:00Kate's three daughters grew up in Florida in the USA and like most of us do when we have children she and her husband Andy had hopes and dreams for their futures I wanted them to be strong I wanted them to be confident I wanted them to know that they could do anything that they wanted to do all three of them just really knew what they wanted out of life and I was glad that they got that. It was in 2010 when Kate's youngest daughter Anne was a college student that something unthinkable happened. She had made the dean's list for that semester and wanted to celebrate with her boyfriend Connor. They met in high school.

3:44They were both involved in the theater. Anne loved the theater. And they were going to have a picnic. Connor just wasn't as excited about it as Anne had hoped he would be. So they started arguing. They were both 19. You know, it was one of those things where they just couldn't stop arguing. And they literally argued all night until they fell asleep. They were at his parents' house. And in the morning, that got up and just continued to argue. It was March 28th, and my husband Andy and I were out in the garden. He does the ornamentals, the flowers, and I do the vegetables. And we had both come in pretty dirty and were cleaning up when the doorbell rang.

4:36And when we opened the door, it was the deputy sheriff from Leon County and a woman who identified herself as the victim's advocate. They asked if we were Anne's parents, and we said we were, and they asked if they could come inside, and of course, we let them in. And then it was the victim's advocate who told us that Anne had been shot, and I just couldn't process that. It made no sense to me. She worked in a baby boutique, And, you know, my first thought was who would rob a baby boutique. But then I realized that it was Sunday and the boutique was closed on Sunday. So then I said, was Connor with her?

5:21Because I knew he was supposed to be with her. And the deputy sheriff was the one who said, Connor shot Anne. Again, I couldn't really process that either. I thought, you know, where would he have gotten a gun? And Connor had gotten his father's shotgun to kill himself. And they didn't know how to end the argument. They didn't know how to walk away. And Ann said to him, if you don't live, I don't want to live either. And he pointed the gun at her and said, is this what you want? And she actually said, no, I don't. but Connor said that he was just so exhausted from arguing and he just wanted to be over.

6:10So he pulled the trigger and shot her in the face at close range with a shotgun. He thought she had died right there. So he actually drove to the police department and turned himself in. And when they got to the house, Ann was still alive. They brought her to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. And she lived for five days. And she was loved that whole week. And I'm just so grateful for those five days. And I'm just so grateful that I was there with her when she passed away.

6:55This is devastating.

7:00Have you written this letter today to Anne? Would you like to share it with us and then you can tell me a bit more about what happened next? Sure. Dear Anne, another birthday has come and gone. I can never add another year. For me, you will always be 19 years old. and at 19, so much more sure of yourself and what you wanted to be than I was at that age. You knew that you wanted to rescue animals, especially your beloved hawks. You had the same fierce dark eyes as those birds of prey and the same determination. I hardly recognized the woman lying on the hospital gurney, covered in bandages. It wasn't until I saw a freckle on your finger that I knew it was my precious baby lying there, mortally wounded.

8:02How was I to process it all? The question I asked myself was, what would Anne want for us? And the answer came back, peace. How could I find peace in such a violent situation? How could I move forward and not be consumed by the grief of losing my youngest child? From my experiences in the past, I knew that peace could only come through forgiveness.

8:36Yes, forgiving Connor, who had pointed the shotgun at you and pulled the trigger. Deep inside me, I recognized that I did not want to leave you in that place of violence. That I could not and would not remember you simply as a murder victim. You were so much more than that. But if I allowed myself to see Connor only as a murderer, then that would be the label you would carry. Murder victim. You were so much more than the way you died, and I needed to release you from that. So many people call what we did radical forgiveness, but it was what we needed to do to save ourselves. Forgiveness allowed us to move forward and heal.

9:34Do we continue to feel grief? Of course we do. But we aren't imprisoned by our grief. Nothing could have restored your life and brought you back to us. But we were able to tell Connor how his actions affected us and participate in crafting a meaningful sentence for him. Spending the rest of his life behind bars would not make up for your life. I told Connor that he needed to do the good works of two people now. Your legacy should have been that of a young woman with her own wildlife refuge. A place where broken animals could be fixed and nurtured and set free. But your legacy has changed. We talk about you.

10:29We talk about how forgiveness healed us. How restorative justice gave us a voice in the legal system that we would not have had. Now, your legacy is bringing healing and peace to broken people and setting them free. Love and peace, Mom.

10:59Thank you, Kate. you and andy are living or have lived through every parent's worst nightmare and listening to you i i really just can't imagine how you did it and i just i'd love you to tell me how how you were able to arrive at this being the best decision for peace and moving forward and forgiveness and for your whole family we feel that But everything that happened in our life led us to the place where we were able to forgive in that moment. I had actually seen a television show where a psychologist was talking to a mother whose daughter had been murdered. And the mother couldn't get past the event and cried every day.

11:58and the psychologist asked her, you know, is this how your daughter would want you to remember her? And for some reason, that moment got stored in my brain. And so that was part of what I was thinking when Ann was in the hospital. I knew from the start that she would die from her injuries. And to just remember her only as a murder victim, I couldn't do it. Honestly, for about a year, I wouldn't even say it. And to this day, I wouldn't say my daughter was murdered. I always say she was shot and died of her injuries. And that way, I don't have to remain in that place. I don't have to make that the major description of who she is.

12:52It's how she died, but it's not how she lived. You know, when I thought Anne wanted peace for me, for us, I immediately knew that it was going to be through forgiveness. And I knew I would have to forgive Connor for however that meant. The first night that Anne was in the hospital, I was with her and Andy was out in the waiting room with all the people who had come up to be with us. And he came into the room with someone. And I knew I recognized him. And I was trying to place him. I thought, oh, is it someone from work or someone from church? And then I realized that it was Connor's father. And I thought to myself, can I go to him?

13:44And I stood up and walked around the end of Ann's bed. And I said, can I embrace him? And I did. I hugged him. And I tell people it was, you know, it was God that led me to do that. It was the first step, I think, in my forgiveness journey. I remember when Connor's mother came up to the hospital the next night. I told her then, I said, I cannot define Connor by that one moment. because, again, I knew that if I did, I was defining Ann by that one moment as well.

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16:00connor had put my name on his list of four people that could visit him at the leon county jail So I decided to go see him, and I talked to Andy on Thursday. We knew we were going to take Anne off life support on Friday. And I asked him, I said, is there a message you want me to take to Connor? And he told me, tell Connor I love him and I forgive him. So when I went to the Leon County Jail, they were like, are you the victim's mother? and I said yes I am and they said okay well you are on his list and you do have the correct identification so we're going to let you go up she said but I don't want you to pound on the glass and I said I'm not here to pound on the glass so I went up and sat down and when Connor came up he was already crying and the first thing he said was I'm so so so sorry and I said Connor Mr.

17:09Gromair wants me to tell you that he loves you and he forgives you and Connor you know I love you and I forgive you and when I said those words I just felt a peace come over me from that Tell me about the restorative justice process and what it was like for you and your family. As we said, we loved Connor. And so afterwards, we thought, what are we going to do with this? You know, how are we going to move forward? And we knew he was going to go to prison. And we thought, how can we help that? We wanted to sit down with Connor and face him and explain to him what the loss of Ann meant to us. And then he would have the opportunity to accept responsibility and be accountable for his actions.

18:11And about 14 months after Ann was shot, we had the Restorative Justice Circle at the Leon County Jail. And then how long did the process take? The circle lasted about five hours. We were led to this small 10 by 10 concrete block room. We were there first before they brought Connor in. He was not shackled. I wanted him to be there as a human being, just like we were there. He walked in and hugged his mom and his dad, and then he came over and hugged us. We all sat down in the circle. The state attorney read the charges. And then Andy and I started talking about Ann and her life and what losing her meant to us.

19:05We had a blanket on the floor that a friend of hers had knitted for her. And on top of it were some of the memorabilia from her life. She was thespian of the year at her county high school. she saved seashells and rocks and leaves and tickets from movies and and things like that so those were all spread out on the blanket and that part actually took almost two hours we talked about losing her and the depth of that loss she was the daughter that i just knew would have grandchildren. And, you know, I'm not going to be a grandmother. So after we were able to just really pour our hearts out and explain to Connor, you know, just what it meant, how hard it was to lose her, he then said, I'm here to answer any questions you have.

20:11And so Andy asked what happened, and Connor was very, he gave us details of the argument. After Connor told us what happened, we took a break, and the state attorney came up to us and said, you know, I can end this right here and right now. He said that because it was the first time restorative justice had been used before the trial. And he had no experience with that. Neither did the defense attorney. But to me, we had already gone through the hardest part. We were really getting to the part that I wanted to participate in, and that was crafting a sentence for Connor. So we said, no, we want to go back in.

21:04And when we went back in, that's when we talked about sentencing. And I said, five to 10 years with 10 years of probation, because I thought if they want to incarcerate him for, it was 25 years to life was the mandatory sentence for gun crime. Andy said 10 to 15 years with 10 years of probation. The state attorney then just closed his folder up and said, I don't want to make a decision when everybody's so emotional. That was five hours. And we walked out so emotionally drained and really not knowing whether we were successful or not because we hadn't agreed on a sentence. So, you know, I was wondering if what we had done had really meant anything.

21:57But the state attorney, two weeks later, came back with two offers. One was 25 years straight, day for day. And the other was 20 years, day for day, with 10 years of probation, with the conditions that we had recommended during the circle, which were to take anger management classes, to speak about teen dating violence, and to volunteer in those areas that Anne would have had she survived. Now, he's already taken anger management classes, and he made a public service announcement on teen dating violence. And while he has yet to volunteer in those areas that Anne would have, he does volunteer in the prison.

22:47We made the choice to stay in Connor's life. We visited him when he was in Wakulla Prison. We have not visited him since he went to Madison. COVID kind of came in the middle of that and changed the visitation protocol. But we still correspond with him via email, and we still talk to him. And at first, that was weekly. And lately, it's been a few months since I've talked to him. but we realize as Connor gets older, he recently turned 35, that he shouldn't need us in his life. And, you know, perhaps we don't need him. I know I'll be there and we'll always be there for him, but we're not sure we necessarily need to be there for him.

23:45I guess when I think about how I view forgiveness, I feel like I needed to make sense. These really horrible and traumatic things that happened to you. What advice would you give even just to me about finding peace, whether it's forgiveness or moving on or moving forward? I was owed Anne's life. Anne was owed her own life. but I was never going to be able to collect that debt. So I could wait the rest of my life for that debt to be paid. I could wait wanting that person to be accountable for what they did and make up for it. Or I could just release the debt. It is a hard thing. And I would suggest practicing with the small things and practice every day and maybe look back in your past at those relationships, whether it's with a coworker or a friend or, you know, sometimes it's our family who hurt us the most.

25:01Forgiveness is not a pardon. It doesn't mean what they did was okay. It just means that you're not going to wait for them to make it right. With forgiveness, you let it go and you walk away and feel that peace that comes with it. Thank you so much for talking to me. Is this the first time you've spoken to Anne in this way, in letter form? It actually is. What was it like? It was a challenge. Like I said, this is not the legacy we would have wanted for her, but this is the legacy that she's been given. And we're just so glad that we get the opportunity to talk about her and her life and share our story and bring healing and peace.

25:58That's what we can do with her memory. So I thank you. Thank you for inviting me and allowing me to share about her life. If you've been affected by issues in this episode, you could speak to an organization that offers support in your country.

26:26Dear Daughter from the BBC World Service is presented by me, Namulanta Kombo, and produced by me and the series producer Jill Kersley with support from Maggie Karanja. The researcher is Jay Beruzzi. The editor is Claire Fordham. The technical producer is Richard Hannaford. Theme music composed by Justin Nichols. Sarah Green is the BBC World Service podcast producer and John Monnell is the podcast commissioning editor.

27:08Thanks for listening. Remember, normally Dear Daughter won't be here in the documentary. So if you'd like to hear more episodes, just search Dear Daughter wherever you get your podcasts.

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