In 1985, my for­mer home state of Vir­ginia came with­in eight days of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent man. Vir­ginia has the longest rela­tion­ship with the death penal­ty of any state, hav­ing exe­cut­ed more than 1,300 peo­ple, start­ing with Cap­tain George Kendall by fir­ing squad in Jamestown in 1608 for espi­onage, and the pace has con­tin­ued in mod­ern times. Since the Supreme Court affirmed the death penal­ty in 1977, Vir­ginia has exe­cut­ed 113 inmates.

For 300 years, Vir­ginia hanged cap­i­tal defen­dants. In 1909 the state aban­doned the gal­lows in favor of the elec­tric chair. “Old Sparky” is still avail­able in Vir­ginia at the option of a con­demned inmate, but most now choose to die by lethal injection.

Earl Wash­ing­ton, Jr., was 23 in Sep­tem­ber, 1985, when the Culpeper Cir­cuit Court sen­tenced him to death. He had lived all his life in Fauquier Coun­ty. The local schools pegged him as a slow learn­er and placed him in spe­cial edu­ca­tion class­es. He dropped out of high school and worked as a day labor­er, most­ly on local farms.

On the night of May 21, 1983, Earl and his broth­er were drink­ing at his aunt’s house in Beale­ton. They argued and Earl got mad. He had seen a pis­tol in the house across Route 17 when he used the tele­phone there.

At 3 a.m. that night the sound of break­ing glass awak­ened Hazel Weeks, a 78 year old wid­ow. She got out of bed and found a young black man in her hall­way. He hit her over the head with a chair and struck her twice more while she was on the floor. She offered to pay him to spare her life. “Where is your mon­ey?” he said. Blood soak­ing her gown, she stag­gered to her bed­room and gave him her purse. He took it and fled. She lat­er dis­cov­ered that he had also stolen a pis­tol from her kitchen.

When Deputy Den­ny Zeets respond­ed to Hazel’s call, he heard gun­shots across Route 17. At Earl’s aunt’s house, he found Hazel’s purse and Earl’s broth­er with a gun­shot wound to his foot. He said Earl shot him acci­dent­ly and ran away. At dawn, the police arrest­ed Earl in a field near Hazel’s house.

A series of inter­ro­ga­tions fol­lowed. Earl con­fessed to the assault on Hazel ear­ly on. The inves­ti­ga­tors then ques­tioned him about a string of vio­lent crimes near War­ren­ton. He con­fessed to ten felonies, includ­ing sev­er­al sex­u­al assaults.

A year ear­li­er, Rebec­ca Williams, a 19 year old moth­er of three, crawled out on the porch of her apart­ment in near­by Culpeper, naked and bleed­ing from 38 stab wounds. She sur­vived only long enough to tell her neigh­bors that a lone black man attacked and raped her. Her mur­der remained unsolved when Earl attacked Hazel. Under per­sis­tent ques­tion­ing, Earl con­fessed, pro­vid­ing details the inves­ti­ga­tors believed only Rebecca’s mur­der­er could have known.

In the lead-up to Earl’s tri­al, he recant­ed all the con­fes­sions except the attack on Hazel, and facts emerged that cleared him of most of the crimes. By Jan­u­ary, 1984, the pros­e­cu­tion dropped all charges except those involv­ing Hazel and Rebec­ca, and Earl’s tri­al went forward. 

The key issue was the verac­i­ty of Earl’s con­fes­sion to Rebecca’s murder/rape. The inves­ti­ga­tors did not record the inter­ro­ga­tions, but Agent Reese Wilmore had writ­ten a lengthy tran­script of a final ses­sion about Rebec­ca, and Earl had signed it. Wilmore read the tran­script to the jury.

The defense argued that Earl con­fessed to crimes he didn’t com­mit because he is men­tal­ly impaired. Experts tes­ti­fied that his IQ scores ranked in the bot­tom two per­cent of adults and esti­mat­ed his men­tal age as 10 years old.

The jury found Earl’s con­fes­sion con­vinc­ing beyond a rea­son­able doubt. They rec­om­mend­ed the death sen­tence and the judge fol­lowed their recommendation. 

Earl arrived on death row in Meck­len­burg on May 4, 1984. Unlike Cal­i­for­nia, where appeals last longer than the defendant’s life, Virginia’s appel­late process is stream­lined. Earl’s appeals to the Vir­ginia and U.S. Supreme Courts failed quick­ly, and the state sched­uled his exe­cu­tion for Sep­tem­ber 5, 1985. Fed­er­al habeas appeals were still avail­able, but Earl’s attor­ney aban­doned the case, leav­ing him unrep­re­sent­ed as his final days ticked by.

A fel­low death row inmate, Joe Gia­r­ratano, thought Earl was inno­cent. A high school dropout with no legal train­ing, Gia­r­ratano draft­ed and filed a brief argu­ing that exe­cut­ing a cap­i­tal defen­dant, who had no lawyer, was unconstitutional.

The jail­house-lawyer fil­ing caught the eye of a Man­hat­tan law firm, Paul, Weiss. The firm sent a young asso­ciate to Meck­len­burg to meet with Gia­r­ratano. The first words out of Joe’s mouth were: “Earl Wash­ing­ton has an IQ of 69, an exe­cu­tion date three weeks away, and no lawyer. What the hell are you going to do about it?”

Attor­neys at Paul, Weiss respond­ed by work­ing around the clock for the next ten days. On August 27, the firm filed a peti­tion for a stay of exe­cu­tion. It was grant­ed just eight days before Earl’s exe­cu­tion date.

The stay gave the firm breath­ing room to launch a robust appel­late defense, and for the next decade it man­aged to hold the state at bay.

Foren­sic sci­ence advanced. In 1993, a DNA analy­sis cast doubt on Earl’s guilt, but a rule in Vir­ginia barred appel­late courts from con­sid­er­ing evi­dence raised more than 21 days after a jury ver­dict. Earl’s appeals failed.

By late 1993, only a Governor’s par­don stood between Earl and Old Sparky. Gov­er­nor Dou­glas Wilder was Virginia’s first and only black gov­er­nor. His crit­ics claim he feared that par­don­ing a black man accused of mur­der might jeop­ar­dize his pres­i­den­tial aspi­ra­tions. Wilder vehe­ment­ly denied this. For what­ev­er rea­son, he delayed his deci­sion until his last day in office and then split the baby. He denied the par­don, but com­mut­ed Earl’s death sen­tence to life in prison.

By 2000, DNA analy­sis had advanced in sophis­ti­ca­tion, and a new bat­tery of tests exon­er­at­ed Earl. Gov­er­nor James Gilmore grant­ed him a par­don, and he walked out of prison in 2001.

In 2002, DNA sam­ples in Rebecca’s case matched the DNA of Ken­neth Tins­ley, a man con­vict­ed of rape in Albe­mar­le Coun­ty. He pled guilty to Rebecca’s murder/rape in 2007.

Why did Earl con­fess to a mur­der he didn’t com­mit and how did he pro­vide details about it that only the mur­der­er should have known? The easy answer would be that his inter­roga­tors coerced the con­fes­sion, but there’s anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty. In a fas­ci­nat­ing book about Earl’s case, An Expend­able Man, by Mar­garet Edds, she dis­cuss­es the the­o­ry that Earl spent his life on pins and nee­dles, not under­stand­ing what peo­ple want­ed from him, but try­ing to guess. He was anx­ious to please, sus­cep­ti­ble to sug­ges­tions, and sen­si­tive to cues, hints, and body lan­guage. A close look at the inter­ro­ga­tions indi­cates that he gave his ques­tion­ers the answers he thought they want­ed and that they unin­ten­tion­al­ly tipped him off to the details of the crimes. For exam­ple, he orig­i­nal­ly said Rebec­ca was black, but after read­ing the reac­tions of his ques­tion­ers, he quick­ly changed his answer to white.

In last month’s post, I stat­ed my view that Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalk­er, deserved to be put to death, but Earl’s case stands as a con­vinc­ing coun­ter­ar­gu­ment against the death penal­ty. Only a com­bi­na­tion of serendip­i­tous cir­cum­stances saved him: Giarratano’s improb­a­ble inter­ven­tion, Paul, Weiss’s last minute hero­ics, and Gov­er­nor Wilder’s pre­car­i­ous commutation.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Earl’s cau­tion­ary tale is not unique. The advance­ment of foren­sic sci­ence has exposed scores of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. Since 1973, 155 death row inmates have been exonerated.

The death penal­ty is unfor­giv­ing. One mis­take is too many, and we’ve almost made 155 that we know about. One way to rec­on­cile the con­flict­ing emo­tions inspired by the Night Stalker’s sav­agery and Earl’s sto­ry would be to restrict the death penal­ty to the most heinous crimes where there is absolute­ly no doubt of guilt. If we can’t do that, we should abol­ish it alto­geth­er, because the risk of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent defen­dant under cur­rent laws is too great. 

Post Script: In 2007, Vir­ginia paid Earl $1.9 mil­lion to set­tle his claim of wrong­ful con­vic­tion. At that time, he was a main­te­nance work­er, mar­ried, and liv­ing in Vir­ginia Beach.

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Vir­ginia that the exe­cu­tion of a men­tal­ly impaired defen­dant is unconstitutional.

If you lived east of Los Ange­les in 1985, as I did, you feared for the safe­ty of your fam­i­ly. From March 17 to August 30, a Satan wor­ship­per broke into homes and raped, tor­tured, and mur­dered those he found inside. He struck first in Rose­mead, killing a woman and maim­ing her room­mate. That same night he raped and killed anoth­er woman. Three nights lat­er he raped an eight year old girl. The fol­low­ing week, he mur­dered a hus­band and wife.

The press dubbed him the Night Stalk­er, and a modus operan­di emerged. He broke into hous­es late at night, shot the men, and raped and mur­dered the women, leav­ing behind Satan­ic sym­bols paint­ed in blood or carved in flesh. His attacks were vio­lent orgies, stab­bing, slash­ing, hack­ing with a machete, and blud­geon­ing with a ham­mer. His vic­tims ranged in age from 6 to 83 years old, all races, all walks of life.

The police seemed help­less to stop him. Sales of alarms and guns hit an all-time high. I installed an alarm sys­tem, dust­ed off a shot­gun left over from my hunt­ing days in Vir­ginia, and kept it in my bed­room closet.

The Night Stalk­er killed and maimed with impuni­ty all sum­mer long until August 24, when he final­ly made a mis­take. A teenag­er saw him dri­ve away from an abort­ed break-in and remem­bered part of the stolen car’s plate num­ber. The police found the car and recov­ered a par­tial print that iden­ti­fied the Night Stalk­er as Richard Ramirez, a 25 year old, small-time thief from El Paso, Texas.

The morn­ing of August 30, Ramirez stepped off a bus on Euclid Street in East LA, walked into a liquor store, and blanched when he saw his mug shot plas­tered all over the news­pa­pers. The store’s clerk cried out, “It’s him. The Night Stalker!”

Ramirez ran, and store cus­tomers gave chase, yelling, “El mata­dor. The killer. Stop him.” Bystanders joined the hot pur­suit as Ramirez weaved through streets, alleys, and back­yards for almost two miles. Exhaust­ed and des­per­ate, he tried to hijack a woman’s car on Hobart Street. Her hus­band hit him with a met­al pipe; he stag­gered up the block; and the crowd caught up to him. When the police arrived and pulled him free from the angry mob, he was blood­ied, beat­en, and beg­ging for mercy. 

With his arrest, the city’s long night­mare of mur­der and may­hem came to an end, only to be fol­lowed by a dif­fer­ent kind of night­mare, a marathon of legal proceedings.

Pre-tri­al motions and hear­ings last­ed for three years. His tri­al took anoth­er year.

Hun­dreds of Satan wor­ship­pers marched out­side the cour­t­house dai­ly, car­ry­ing plac­ards anoint­ing him as their hero. Inside the court­room Ramirez joked with his attor­neys, flashed Satan­ic sym­bols at cam­eras, and laughed at wit­ness­es who tes­ti­fied about hor­rif­ic suf­fer­ing at his hands. He told a deputy sher­iff, “I love to kill peo­ple. I love watch­ing them die …  I told one lady to give me all her mon­ey. She said no. So I cut her and pulled her eyes out.”

On Sep­tem­ber 20, 1989, he was final­ly con­vict­ed of 13 counts of mur­der and 30 relat­ed felonies and was sen­tenced to death.

Nev­er in fear of exe­cu­tion because of California’s lengthy appel­late process, Ramirez rev­eled in his noto­ri­ety while liv­ing out his life on San Quentin’s death row. He grant­ed tele­vised inter­views to Inside Edi­tion, Mike Mat­tis, and oth­er press out­lets, fash­ion­ing him­self as a philoso­pher-king among the Devil’s acolytes. 

A fever­ish com­pe­ti­tion for his affec­tions broke out among hybristophil­i­acs, women who are sex­u­al­ly aroused and attract­ed to men who have com­mit­ted vio­lent crimes. Scores of women wrote him love let­ters and vis­it­ed him on death row. Even one of the jurors at his tri­al, Cindy Haden, fell in love with him. She sent him a Valentine’s Day cup­cake with an inscrip­tion in icing, “I love you,” and brought her par­ents along on one of her vis­its to meet him.

One of his idol­iz­ers, Doreen Lioy, didn’t expect to fall in love with some­one like Richard. Her friends from Bur­bank where she grew up described her as brainy and shy. She grad­u­at­ed from col­lege with a B.A. in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, became a free-lance mag­a­zine edi­tor, and led a nor­mal life until she saw Richard’s mug shot on tele­vi­sion the night before his arrest. “I saw some­thing in his eyes that cap­ti­vat­ed me, maybe the vulnerability.”

She sent him a birth­day card after his arrest and vis­it­ed him in jail dur­ing the pre-tri­al pro­ceed­ings. She bought him clothes to wear in the court­room and attend­ed the tri­al every day.

After his con­vic­tion, she vis­it­ed him on death row four days a week and sent him 75 let­ters. Her relent­less cam­paign final­ly paid off in 1996 when Richard pro­posed mar­riage to her. He said he chose her over his oth­er para­mours because he trust­ed her. He was impressed that she was a vir­gin and a devout Catholic, who had come to accept his Satan­ic faith. 

Doreen was over­joyed. “He’s kind. He’s fun­ny. He’s charm­ing … He’s my best friend. He’s my buddy.”

Always sep­a­rat­ed by a plex­i­glass divider, they had nev­er touched. After Richard’s pro­pos­al, the war­den approved their first con­tact vis­it. Doreen said it was “one of those defin­ing moments.” She fell into his arms and he pulled her to him “soft­ly and gently.”

The wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny took place at 11:20 a.m. on Octo­ber 3 in San Quentin’s gen­er­al vis­it­ing area near the drink machine with a few friends look­ing on, most­ly lawyers. A state employ­ee offi­ci­at­ed. Richard’s broth­er served as best man; his sis­ter as matron of hon­or. Doreen’s fam­i­ly, hav­ing dis­owned her, didn’t attend.

The auburn-haired bride, 41, wore a knee-length white ruf­fled dress with iri­des­cent pearls, white hosiery, and white pumps. No veil. The groom, 36, wore a fresh­ly ironed prison-issue blue shirt, tail out, and den­im slacks.

They exchanged gold wed­ding bands, one engraved with “I love you for­ev­er, Richard,” the oth­er, “To my one and only love, Doreen.”

An observ­er said Doreen was ner­vous dur­ing the six-minute cer­e­mo­ny, but “Richard was very calm and lov­ing, very ten­der … Doreen brings out the best in him; they com­ple­ment each other.”

“I’m ecsta­t­i­cal­ly hap­py today,” Doreen said, “and very, very proud to have mar­ried Richard and to be his wife.”

San Quentin doesn’t allow con­ju­gal vis­its for death row inmates, so the mar­riage was nev­er con­sum­mat­ed, and as far as we know, Doreen remained a faith­ful vir­gin into mid­dle age.

In 2009, DNA sam­ples gath­ered in a 1984 cold case proved con­clu­sive­ly that Ramirez raped and bru­tal­ly butchered a nine year old girl, Mei Leung, in a Satan­ic rit­u­al human sac­ri­fice so graph­ic even Doreen appar­ent­ly couldn’t excuse it. Rumor has it she divorced him, but I could find no record con­firm­ing that. 

A long string of state and fed­er­al appeals still lay ahead of Richard when dis­as­ter struck. He was diag­nosed with incur­able blood can­cer, B‑cell lym­phoma. He rot­ted away from the inside, his flesh turn­ing a hideous shade of green in his final days, and he died on June 7, 2013, at the age of 53, in Marin Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. The rumors about Doreen’s estrange­ment appeared to be true, since no one claimed Richard’s corpse. 

So ends the sto­ry of the Night Stalk­er, but I wish his sto­ry had end­ed very differently. 

In the final days of Pres­i­dent Obama’s admin­is­tra­tion, anti-death penal­ty advo­cates worked hard to con­vince him to denounce cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. He expressed grave reser­va­tions, but main­tained that some crimes are so heinous “the com­mu­ni­ty is jus­ti­fied in express­ing the full mea­sure of its outrage.”

The Night Stalker’s crimes were heinous to a degree beyond words. A life­time of con­fine­ment was a gross­ly inad­e­quate pun­ish­ment for his defi­ant, unre­pen­tant sav­agery, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that he spent his time on death row enjoy­ing his celebri­ty, laugh­ing at his vic­tims, court­ing his many female admir­ers, and even mar­ry­ing one of them. Think­ing about the final moments of Mei Leung’s life and those of his oth­er vic­tims, I wish the state had exe­cut­ed him swift­ly and deci­sive­ly. The truth is he deserved far worse. 

My wife and I rent­ed three upstairs rooms in a big old house in White Hall, Vir­ginia, right after we mar­ried. The house was the orig­i­nal “White Hall,” we were told, where trav­el­ers board­ed in the old days on their way from Char­lottesville across the moun­tains. We loved that place. It sat on a ridge over­look­ing a pic­turesque field where Angus cat­tle grazed.

My wife was hang­ing our wash on the clothes­line in the side yard one after­noon when a fur­ry black cat with white mark­ings walked up to her and rubbed against her leg. She fol­lowed my wife up the out­side stair­well to our bal­cony entrance and came inside. She was so friend­ly and play­ful we fig­ured she was some­one else’s pet and turned her out that night, but she was wait­ing for us on the stairs the next day when we came home from work. We played with her and fed her, and she curled up and went to sleep at the foot of our bed.

The old house had a prob­lem with mice. I’d set traps but hadn’t caught any­thing. I awoke that night to a loud thump fol­lowed by crunch­ing sounds. I’ll spare you the descrip­tion of what I saw when I flicked on the light. Suf­fice it to say, we named the cat, Mousy; she moved in with us; and our prob­lem with mice went away.

We fell in love with her and the feel­ing seemed mutual.

Then one night we came home and she wasn’t there. We called her, but she didn’t come. I searched the neigh­bor­ing yards. No sign of her. “Field cats like to roam,” I told my wife. “She’ll come home soon.”

But she didn’t come home. Five nights into it, I was wor­ried sick and couldn’t sleep. I got up and went look­ing for her again. I searched all the same places. Still no sign of her. An old barn sat in the cow pas­ture at the bot­tom of the hill below our house. It seemed like a good place to hunt mice, and I hadn’t looked there before so I climbed the fence and head­ed down there.

The cat­tle stood togeth­er in the moon­light by a creek near the barn. As I walked down the slope, they began to bawl. Then a dozen of them broke away from the herd and charged up the hill toward me. I grew up in White Hall, and I’d walked through fields of cat­tle at night before with­out a prob­lem. A farmer lat­er told me, “Cat­tle can get skit­tish when a stranger pass­es through their field at night. Some­times they kick up a big ruckus and charge at him.”

“Wish I’d known that before I start­ed down that hill,” I said.

When the cat­tle came run­ning at me, I was too far from the fence to make it to safe­ty, so I shim­mied up the near­est tree, a locust tree, and watched the cat­tle run beneath me and on up to the top of the ridge, where they stomped around and con­tin­ued to bawl.

Anoth­er piece of infor­ma­tion that would have come in handy that night is that locust trees have big sharp thorns all along their trunks and branch­es. Scratch­es and welts striped my arms and hands, and they stung and bled.

Worse yet, the cat­tle had cut me off from the house. My only way out of the field was to out­run the cat­tle down to the barn, and from there, try to make it over a fence that bor­dered the road.

The thorns ripped me again as I climbed down, but I hit the ground run­ning. The cat­tle drummed down the hill after me. They were almost on me when I dove through the barn door and closed it behind me.

When I’d col­lect­ed my wits, such as they were, I searched the barn. No Mousy, of course.

The barn had a back door that faced the road. I snuck out the back and jumped the fence before the cat­tle real­ized I’d flown the coop.

Worn out and deject­ed, I walked up the road to Wyant’s Store and on over to our house. It was about mid­night when I got home.

“Guess who’s here!” my wife cried out when I opened the door.

Mousy lay on our bed. She’d come home while I was climb­ing the cursed locust tree. She’d lost weight and she was filthy but she wasn’t hurt. I looked like a walk­ing adver­tise­ment for iodine, but Mousy was back with us so I didn’t complain.

Cou­ple months lat­er, we came home on a cold rainy night to find Mousy on our wel­come mat, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to keep two new­born kit­tens warm. We gath­ered them up, rushed inside, and held them over the radi­a­tor. One had already frozen to death. The oth­er, Geral­dine, survived.

Short­ly after that, we bought a lit­tle house in Crozet and the four of us moved to our new home.

Sev­er­al months lat­er Mousy dis­ap­peared again. Same drill. A fran­tic search with no suc­cess. Days lat­er she came home filthy and bone-thin. Geral­dine pulled the same trick the next week. Two months after that, we were awash in kittens.

I was talk­ing to the guy next door one day about the mys­te­ri­ous dis­ap­pear­ances when he burst out laugh­ing. He’d grown up with cats. He told me what was going on. I was shocked.

“Mousy’s a slut,” I told my wife.

“What?”

“The times she dis­ap­pears,” I said. “She’s run­ning around doing it non-stop with every tom­cat she can find. Geraldine’s no better.”

We placed the kit­tens in good homes and the cycle repeat­ed. Our base­ment teemed with squirm­ing lit­tle balls of fur. Hav­ing sat­u­rat­ed Crozet with black cats with white mark­ings, we ran out of adop­tion can­di­dates. I final­ly broke down and emp­tied our bank account to spay Mousy, Geral­dine, and the oth­er three cats we couldn’t pay any­one to take.

They remained part of our fam­i­ly for the next two decades, and we adjust­ed our lives to accom­mo­date them, some­times with­out sen­si­ble regard for our future. We took them to Atlanta when I sum­mer-clerked for a cor­po­rate law firm there. The night we arrived, a senior part­ner helped us smug­gle our five cats into a no-pets motel, shuf­fling along car­ry­ing a cat under each arm, gig­gling like a lit­tle kid. I fig­ured they’d nev­er offer me a per­ma­nent job after that night, but for rea­sons I still don’t under­stand, our ardent devo­tion to our cats seemed to work in my favor.

The cats made big adjust­ments, too. They moved with us three thou­sand miles cross-coun­try back and forth three times, once by car, twice in the bel­lies of air­planes, until we final­ly set­tled down in LA, where Mousy, the Vir­ginia coun­try cat, and her brood seemed con­tent to live out their gold­en years in tin­sel town.

Mousy retained some of her down-home coun­try instincts, though. She still stalked mice in our garage, and one Christ­mas, she got a crazed look on her face, climbed to the top of our ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed tree, and brought it crash­ing down on the liv­ing room floor. Try­ing to sup­press a smile as I cleaned up the mess, I was secret­ly glad that some of the field cat we loved so much had sur­vived all the rad­i­cal changes.

Mousy and her off­spring left us one by one in the late 80’s. Lazy Bones, the last of her line, laid down beside our pool one breezy sum­mer day in 1990, stretched out, yawned, and went to sleep for good, bring­ing to a close Mousy’s long hap­py chap­ter in our lives.

The first of many cats and dogs who lived with my wife and me over our fifty years togeth­er, she was the only one who adopt­ed us, instead of the oth­er way around. She gave us the great gifts of love and loy­al­ty, except dur­ing those sex-crazed binges, for which we for­gave her. She’ll always hold a spe­cial place in our hearts.

Post Script: I wrote this piece for Mousy on Nation­al Cat’s Day. She was a great cat in all respects.