What I said to My Father's Killer, Tell The Truth Even If Your Voice Shakes and Your Leg Shakes

I am having de ja vue.   The bench I am sitting on is hard. The air is cold. My younger brother is sitting beside me. My stomach is in my throat. The lights are bright and then I see him.

He is 56 and frail. His hair thinning and he grows it long, combs it back just like my father did.   His glasses are the same as the last time I saw him. I was 16 then and 33 now.

His bottle cap glasses thick. I begin to tremble. It’s a nervous energy that happens every time I am in the courtroom with him.

Gary Michael Benn, the man that murdered my father.

Feb 10, 1988.

My mind goes to the 14 years he has spent on death row in Washington State. I think about the fact that he and my Dad were in the same grade school.  About the same age.

I wonder what my Dad would look like after 14 years?

I am expecting to feel the same rage I did when I was 16. I remember sitting on this same bench wanting to pull out every nose hair he had, I wanted to hang him I pictured myself causing him the kind of pain that I have lived with since he took my father away.

But I didn’t feel this feeling.

I felt sadness and I felt sorry for this frail man.

My 16 year-old self sat here in this same courtroom in Tacoma, Washington with my disabled Mother in 1990.

I wanted the jury and Gary Benn to see what he had done.

I wanted the jury to see what happened to my family because of Gary Benn’s choice to brutally murder my father on that cold day of February 10,1988.

Did he know that he destroyed my family?

That he took my father away on the happiest day of our lives?

The day my mother was finally beginning to heal from almost dying from encephalitis?

He dropped an atomic bomb on my family that words can’t even describe.

My mother is dead now she died when I was 22.

I am married but my husband is in Saudi Arabia where we live and work as teachers for the Aramco Oil Company, and he can’t be here.

I look around the court room. My younger brother is with me he is 29. He wasn’t at the first trial. Behind me on my side of the courtroom is Gary’s brother Monte. He is sitting on our side of the courtroom

His family isn’t happy.

I feel some sort of comfort knowing that the jury sees that he sits near my brother and I .

I am jet lagged and exhausted and I can’t believe I am here again.

The judge looks up,” Angela it is your turn to address the court.

I stand up and I listen as she says,” You are not allowed to look at the defendant directly but I will allow you to speak.”

I hear her words but they don’t register.

I step up onto the podium and my leg begins to shake like a rubber band. I don’t know what is happening but I have thought about this moment since the murder of my father. I have had nightmares for the last 16 years. Why did you do it? Why did you shoot him? What did my dad say? What where his last words? Why did you shoot him twice? Did he try to run? Did you feel sad shooting your friend. Did he say anything about us? What were his last words? You knew about us how could you be so selfish?

I raise my right hand and I swear that I will tell the truth and the whole truth. When I reach the microphone the words truth run through my body and my legs begin to shake even more.

I turn and I look right at Gary Benn, my fathers murderer.

This is what I say,”

“I have thought about this moment every day since you senselessly murdered my father”.  I thought about what I would say to you and oh the questions I wanted to ask you. I have even killed you in my nightmares. My hands sweat, my heart racing and my leg never stops shaking.

“Gary you took my father from me at a time when our family needed him more then you will ever know. You left us to pick up the pieces of the mess you created. My mother was ill, we went to foster care, we lost our home, my horse, our family. My mother died shortly after.

You took so much from me.

I turned even more and looked into his vacant eyes.

Gary Micheal Benn I am here to tell you that you may have taken my father but I refuse to give you one more second of my life. Nothing that happens will ever bring my Dad back. That part is gone. But as for me and this life you are dead to me. I am going to live because you can’t rob me of that. You destroyed my family but you will never destroy me.

I hope and pray that from the bottom of your soul you are sorry. I think about all the lives you ruined and the 14 years you spent on death row, I look at you now and the lives you have destroyed and I pity you.

“You will never take another day from me.”

The judge doesn’t stop me, the tears fall and my leg keeps shaking like it never stop, my body shakes, my eyes shake and somehow I know that I have spoken my truth and Gary Benn is dead.

6 months later I was pregnant with twins.

My life begins and I get to create the childhood that was robbed from me by parenting them. By showing up, by telling the truth and let me be clear.

This is not about forgiveness but it is about letting go of the anger.

Because holding on to that is just like drinking poison and expecting my Dad’s killer to die.

Letting go of the anger and choosing to live.

My father didn’t get to do that so it’s my job.

This is my truth and may you always remember to tell that truth even if your voice shakes and your leg because it will set you free.  Your body remembers.