One of the kitchen trustees who passed out the food to the inmates in the holding cells said he had heard I was a Christian. When I told him it was true, he asked me why I never attended the Bible study services held inside the jail. I had never heard of any Bible study classes but was interested in attending. The trustee promised to get me on the list of approved inmates to attend the services.
While studying the Bible on my own and at the class, I had come to one conclusion. It was a sin to lie about my crimes. Detectives, prosecutors, and lawyers had come many times investigating the Mississippi murder, and I had always lied to them. In my heart, I felt horrible about doing it but felt I had to deny all of it. It was what you did when you were accused of a crime. I knew it was interfering with my relationship with God, and my cherished peace was beginning to crumble. I knew I had to confess, but the fear of the consequences prevented me. The thought of being sentenced to death or spending the rest of my life behind bars was frightening. I tried to push these thoughts from my mind when they swirled around my mind, but the task was becoming increasingly difficult. I had purposely never confessed the murder to God asking Him to forgive me for it. I wasn’t sure if He would forgive me, and I knew I would have to own up to it if I was sincere in my profession of faith in Christ. Days passed with this fight taking place in my heart; and, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I fell down on my knees and asked the Lord to forgive me for the murder and for lying about it. I vowed to tell the truth from that day forward no matter the cost.
The joy and peace I had felt the first night I prayed to God flooded back into my mind, and the weight from holding the guilt of my crimes lifted from me. That night I wrote a letter to Sarah telling her I was going to confess to the murder. It was such a release to be able to write those words down and not have to worry about hiding it any longer. From that moment on, my life changed dramatically forever. I was finally free from the person I had been. There is a passage of Scripture that describes what I was experiencing. It says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians :17). I indeed felt new.
I decided to begin writing Sarah on a regular basis, and we tried to form a new relationship. Forgiveness wouldn’t come easy for either of us, but it was a step in I knew I needed to take. She had also given her life to Christ, I had heard, and we were able to begin the process of forgiving each other and moving on from our horrible past. There was still a lot of pain and hurt between us from all that had transpired. Each of us had tried to blame the other for what had happened, and we had said some pretty nasty things. I didn’t know where it would lead, but I was happy to begin working past issues out.
A few weeks after I wrote the first letter to Sarah, my public defender came to see me. Sarah had given my letter, in which I confessed, to her lawyer. To say it didn’t bother me would not be true, but it wasn’t important in the long run. I had planned to tell the Mississippi authorities myself, but I wish she would have given me the chance to do it. Of course, my lawyer was furious. When I explained I was a Christian now and told him I would no longer lie about my part in the crimes, he thought I had lost my mind. He berated me with red face and informed me I would never get out of prison. I didn’t care. I knew what I was doing was right and that was all that mattered to me.
Days later, the Mississippi district attorney for Desoto County and one of his assistants came to see me. They wanted me to take a handwriting sample to compare to the letter I had written to Sarah. I think I shocked them both when I told them I wanted to just confess. The assistant dashed outside to find a tape recorder while the other just sat there with the biggest grin on his face. They couldn’t find a tape recorder, so I just wrote out a confession giving them enough details to ensure they would know I was the one who committed the crimes. I think those two men left that afternoon as the happiest prosecutors in the country.
Back in my cell, I thanked God for helping me to confess my crimes. It was quite odd to express thanks for something that could result in my execution, but I hoped this would bring some solace to the victim’s family. I hated to think about the pain I had caused that family and the wider community. I knew the long wait for a resolution must be hard on them, and I wanted to help speed up the process if possible. As strange as it may sound, I looked forward to the day I could stand before the judge and plead guilty to murder.
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