My friend's killer
Redmond, Mark
THE LAST WORD NY FRIEND'S KILLER Mark Redmond Iam away on vacation in upstate New York. I decide I should visit an old acquaintance, because he is so nearby. I didn't pick the Finger...
...I began writing to him and a correspondence developed...
...It is, in fact, the same town where I take my son for ice cream each night...
...It is only when I get upstate that I have this vague feeling that the prison where Santos is doing time is somewhere close...
...The next evening he returned to the house, the sister was murdered, a search for Santos ensued, and he was eventually convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years...
...He never brought it up either...
...The corrections officer in charge of the visiting area tells us our hour is up...
...It was something I wanted to do and in some ways needed to do...
...When he wasn't doing drugs he was an absolute gentleman...
...I haven't seen Santos in nine years...
...I believed him...
...He tells me I am the first person to visit him since he left Rikers...
...I asked him in Rikers if he did it...
...Santos, at that time, was a nineteenyear-old crack addict...
...His first chance at parole will be in the year 2003, and he talks about 2003 the way you and I talk about April when it's March...
...I never heard him speak disrespectfully to our staff...
...And it is...
...We finally had to ask him to leave...
...What motivates him...
...Ives achieves a kind of peace...
...And I am certain that if she were alive, my murdered friend and colleague would have done the same...
...I am, of course, surprised by how much older he looks...
...Certainly Jesus' statement, "And when I was in prison you visited me," comes to mind, but so does a scene from Oscar Hijuelos's novel, Mr...
...And he is going prematurely bald...
...What keeps him from plunging into a deep, dark depression...
...My ten-year-old son is waiting for me back at our cabin, probably eager to go fishing...
...I wonder how someone can hold onto hope for that long, especially knowing it is a dim hope...
...It was obvious to us, and we pleaded with him to get help, but he refused...
...It just works out that way...
...I'm not sure what to talk about, and neither is he...
...Quite a combination...
...Afterwards, I am glad I went...
...I was the program director...
...It is an effort at reconciliation...
...I take out my address book and discover that Santos is incarcerated in a minimum-security facility in a town I've actually been to...
...She was a nun, in her late sixties, who volunteered at a shelter for homeless teen-agers in the South Bronx...
...Commonweal 30 March 12,1999...
...So how does Santos get up each day and go about his prison life...
...A little like Mr...
...I didn't pick the Finger Lake region as my vacation spot for this reason...
...Ives' Christmas...
...I bring up the names of the various staff members from the shelter...
...In the novel, Mr...
...I knew her well...
...There are a few relatives living in New York City, but none has come to see him...
...I sign in at the prison entrance, emptying all my pockets and going through the jail-house rituals I know so well, having worked with troubled kids for seventeen years...
...But I can tell you with all sincerity that he was not a bad kid...
...He then brings up the issue of parole...
...By this act Mr...
...But he was hooked on crack...
...Santos had been arrested for murder, the murder of one of my co-workers...
...Once he was convicted, he was shipped upstate...
...We hug each other good-bye, and I encourage him to hang in there...
...I never again asked him about the crime...
...I wait while they summon Santos...
...He is functioning in that prison, and I don't want to set off the mental dominoes that will take him off that course...
...He told me he was so high that night he honestly could not remember what he did or didn't do...
...He's no longer a teen-ager...
...He does not do so to accuse the man or unleash upon him the agony he has felt because of the loss of his son...
...I'm tempted to ask, but I don't...
...Dairy Queen and the Cayuga Correctional Facility...
...Genetics, or a result of ten years of prison life...
...His family is in Puerto Rico...
...Chances are a person convicted of killing a nun will not be paroled at the first opportunity...
...Ives visits the man who mindlessly murdered his son some twenty years earlier...
...We trade stories about them and about the kids who were there...
...When he arrives he is surprised to see me...
...Most of the stories are funny, and I discover Santos hasn't lost his sense of humor...
...That was when I visited him at Rikers Island, the first jail those arrested in New York City are likely to face, particularly if awaiting trial...
...Correspondence is easier than being face to face...
...Mark Redmond is associate director of the Domus Foundation, a residence for homeless teen-agers in Stamford, Connecticut...
...He got up on time, he made his bed, he did all the right things...
...I'm half-relieved...
...So I decide to visit him...
...Ives, I guess...
...I have felt awkward seeing Santos...
...He's almost thirty, an adult...
Vol. 126 • March 1999 • No. 5
