Near the end of my third year at UVA, some of my fra­ter­ni­ty broth­ers planned to car­a­van to Mary Bald­win Col­lege to take their girl­friends to The Rafters, a dance hall with a live band. One of them was engaged to a Mary Bald­win senior, who was leg­endary for set­ting up suc­cess­ful blind dates. She offered to match me up with one of her friends. My expe­ri­ence with blind dates had been dis­as­trous, to put it mild­ly, but her rep­u­ta­tion con­vinced me to sign on.

Mary Bald­win sits on the side of a hill in Staunton. We pulled to the curb at the foot of a flight of stairs that climbed to a yel­low build­ing front­ed with mas­sive white columns. We entered the lob­by; the sec­ond floor doors opened; and ten girls came down the steps sin­gle file. One of them caught my eye. Auburn hair, chin length, flipped up on one side, stun­ning hazel eyes. I won­dered which lucky guy would be paired with her.

When my friend’s fiancé intro­duced me to my date, the girl with the auburn hair flashed a pix­ie grin that took my breath away.

We had a lot of fun that night, and I drove back to UVA in a daze.

I asked her out again and she accepted.

On our third date, I gave her my fra­ter­ni­ty pin. “Pin­ning” was a big deal back then, sort of a pre-engage­ment com­mit­ment. I was rush­ing it big-time, but she didn’t turn me down, so I thought maybe I had a chance.

Then the school year end­ed, and I despaired. She’d planned to grad­u­ate in three years. To fin­ish the few remain­ing class­es she need­ed, she’d enrolled in sum­mer school at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty. She didn’t intend to return to Mary Bald­win. I was com­mit­ted to a job in Vir­ginia for the sum­mer and had anoth­er year at UVA still to go. I thought I’d nev­er see her again.

In a great ges­ture of friend­ship, one of my fra­ter­ni­ty broth­ers offered to dri­ve me to Boston to see her that sum­mer. I took a week off from my job and spent it with her.

She took me to one of her class­es. A guy who played gui­tar for The Jef­fer­son Air­plane sat in the row behind us. A full­back on the Boston Uni­ver­si­ty foot­ball team sat on the oth­er side of her. They were very inter­est­ed in her, and they were both good-look­ing, nice guys. I hat­ed their guts.

We were sit­ting on a blan­ket hav­ing a pic­nic lunch in front of the camel exhib­it at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston when I asked her to con­sid­er return­ing to Mary Bald­win for anoth­er year.

“Why?” she said.

“I want to keep see­ing you.”

She looked at me curi­ous­ly, as though she didn’t under­stand, and I real­ized I had to tell her the truth. I swal­lowed hard. “I want you to mar­ry me after graduation.”

I don’t remem­ber much about the camels, the zoo, or the rest of the day. She was all I could think about after she said she want­ed to mar­ry me, too.

That fall, I met her fam­i­ly. I over­heard a neigh­bor talk­ing to her father. “What says they’re going to get mar­ried?” the neigh­bor asked. “That old pin, I guess.” The neigh­bor wouldn’t let up. “Is he going to give her an engage­ment ring?” A long pause. Then, “I don’t know.”

I planned to give her an engage­ment ring, but being flat-out broke, I hadn’t fig­ured out how I would spring for it. Back at school, I asked her what kind of ring she want­ed, think­ing it would be a tra­di­tion­al dia­mond. She launched into a detailed descrip­tion of a green jew­el sur­round­ed by a cir­cle of lit­tle dia­monds on a gold band. “A lit­tle green flower,” she said, giv­ing me that grin that got me in trou­ble in the first place.

I knew noth­ing about jew­el­ry, but I fig­ured a lit­tle green flower would be hard to find. The first ring I saw in the first jew­el­ry store I walked into sat in the cen­ter of a glass case near the door – an emer­ald sur­round­ed by a cir­cle of dia­monds perched on a gold band. A lit­tle green flower.

I thought it was meant to be! Until the jew­el­er told me its price. When I recov­ered my voice, I explained that I had to have that ring even though I couldn’t pay for it. The jew­el­er returned the ring to its red satin bed inside the glass case and turned the key on the lock.

Short of armed rob­bery, I couldn’t think of a way to get that ring.

“Why don’t you sell your stamp col­lec­tion?” my moth­er said.

When I was a lit­tle boy, my moth­er and I would save our loose change. Every cou­ple weeks, she would take me to a stamp collector’s store in Williams­burg and drop me off while she gro­cery-shopped, and I pieced togeth­er a lit­tle col­lec­tion of stamps that didn’t cost much.

“My stamp collection’s not worth any­thing,” I told my mom.

“Some of those stamps are pret­ty old,” she said. “Give it a try.”

I went to a collector’s shop in Char­lottesville. When the own­er gave me his bid, I almost faint­ed. My moth­er was right. Over the fif­teen years my stamps lay in a shoe­box in my bed­room clos­et, a few of them had become valu­able. The sale got me with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the ring’s price, and I bor­rowed the rest.

The lit­tle green flower burned a hole in my blue blazer’s side pock­et as I drove my auburn-haired blind date down Route 250 at noon toward the new Chi­nese restau­rant every­one was talk­ing about. It was closed. I sped back toward Char­lottesville and drove around fran­ti­cal­ly for what seemed like sev­en­teen hours, look­ing for a roman­tic lunch spot where I could give her the ring. There was no good place!

Des­per­ate, I lurched off the street into the Howard Johnson’s park­ing lot and pulled her by the hand into the din­ing room. Dur­ing the six years it took to get a wait­ress to take our order, I began to chick­en out. I had pro­posed in front of a camel. Now I was giv­ing her an engage­ment ring at a Howard Johnson’s. I was blow­ing it!

It didn’t mat­ter. I had to get that ring on her fin­ger before I had a ner­vous break­down. I put my hand in my pock­et to draw strength from the flower. You have THE RING, I told myself. That’s what’s important.

“You know that engage­ment ring?” I said.

“Yeah?” An unsus­pect­ing tone.

“Which hand does it go on?” Because I was so stu­pid I tru­ly didn’t know.

“This one,” she said, extend­ing her left hand across a plate of fried clams.

“Which fin­ger?” I’m not that stu­pid. I was stalling while I tried to pull myself together.

She showed me her ring finger.

I took a deep breath, pulled the ring out of my pock­et, and slipped it on. It only made it half-way down her fin­ger because she clenched her fist with super­hu­man strength, crush­ing my fin­gers, both of us shak­ing all over, she from excite­ment, me from excru­ci­at­ing pain.

We got mar­ried the week­end after grad­u­a­tion. We had three chil­dren. Four grand­chil­dren came along a gen­er­a­tion lat­er. We cel­e­brate our forty-ninth anniver­sary next month.

My blind date still wears the lit­tle green flower. As I wrote this, just to see if I could raise that pix­ie grin, I asked her what she thought my old stamp col­lec­tion would be worth today if we’d held on to it.

“Not as much as my ring,” she said.

She’s right about that.

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.