Post by Anja Nieser on Oct 1, 2006 7:16:49 GMT -5
Woman whose son, daughter-in-law were murdered to speak at anti-death penalty event
By THERESA CHURCHILL - H&R Senior Writer
The death of a child is thought to be the worst loss a parent can endure.
That's why forgiveness for the person who murdered your child must be renewed each and every day.
So says Antoinette Bosco, an anti-death penalty activist and the next speaker coming to Decatur on behalf of Macon County Citizens Opposing Capital Punishment and the Millikin University Chapter of Amnesty International.
Author of "Choosing Mercy," published by Orbis Books in 2001, Bosco grew up near Albany, N.Y., hearing about a relative who died in the electric chair at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Her lifelong opposition to the death penalty went from an intellectual issue to a personal matter in 1993 after an intruder shot and killed her son, John, and his wife, Nancy, as they slept in their beds.
"Forgiveness is not the first impulse of anyone in their right mind," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Brookfield, Conn., "but it was necessary if I was going to do anything good with the rest of my life."
For four long months, however, Bosco did not have anyone to forgive as sheriff's deputies in Big Fork, Mont., investigated the shootings.
A neighbor who had expected to hear from Nancy Bosco had called authorities after discovering the couple's van parked outside their home, still packed for a camping trip they were supposed to have taken a week earlier, and a basement window open.
The break in the case didn't come until after Joseph Shadow Clark, the 18-year-old son of the couple from whom the Boscos had purchased the house, read about it while home for Thanksgiving and talked about the killings to his roommate at the college he was attending in Oregon.
He later confessed to authorities and told them where the gun was.
"At first, I wanted to kill him with my own hands," Bosco recalls. "I asked the Lord to help me, and I asked John to help me."
death
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Her prayer was answered within days of Clark's arrest when she dreamed John came to her in her kitchen but shrank away each time she asked why he had to die.
"Come back because I love you!" were the words she finally said to bring him back by her side.
"Where I am, all that's important is love," John told her.
As a result, Bosco and her five surviving children wrote a letter to the judge asking that Clark not be given the death penalty. He later was sentenced to 220 years in prison as the result of a plea bargain.
She said putting him to death would have given her and her children no closure or peace, and her heart went out to Clark's mother. "It is only a delusion to believe that one's pain is ended by making someone else feel pain," she said.
A Roman Catholic, Bosco also believes God should be the only one who determines when life begins and ends.
"I want to tell everybody about the journey I had to go on," she said. "We've become a society that wants vengeance, but that's not what God wants."
www.herald-review.com
By THERESA CHURCHILL - H&R Senior Writer
The death of a child is thought to be the worst loss a parent can endure.
That's why forgiveness for the person who murdered your child must be renewed each and every day.
So says Antoinette Bosco, an anti-death penalty activist and the next speaker coming to Decatur on behalf of Macon County Citizens Opposing Capital Punishment and the Millikin University Chapter of Amnesty International.
Author of "Choosing Mercy," published by Orbis Books in 2001, Bosco grew up near Albany, N.Y., hearing about a relative who died in the electric chair at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Her lifelong opposition to the death penalty went from an intellectual issue to a personal matter in 1993 after an intruder shot and killed her son, John, and his wife, Nancy, as they slept in their beds.
"Forgiveness is not the first impulse of anyone in their right mind," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Brookfield, Conn., "but it was necessary if I was going to do anything good with the rest of my life."
For four long months, however, Bosco did not have anyone to forgive as sheriff's deputies in Big Fork, Mont., investigated the shootings.
A neighbor who had expected to hear from Nancy Bosco had called authorities after discovering the couple's van parked outside their home, still packed for a camping trip they were supposed to have taken a week earlier, and a basement window open.
The break in the case didn't come until after Joseph Shadow Clark, the 18-year-old son of the couple from whom the Boscos had purchased the house, read about it while home for Thanksgiving and talked about the killings to his roommate at the college he was attending in Oregon.
He later confessed to authorities and told them where the gun was.
"At first, I wanted to kill him with my own hands," Bosco recalls. "I asked the Lord to help me, and I asked John to help me."
death
Continued from B1
Her prayer was answered within days of Clark's arrest when she dreamed John came to her in her kitchen but shrank away each time she asked why he had to die.
"Come back because I love you!" were the words she finally said to bring him back by her side.
"Where I am, all that's important is love," John told her.
As a result, Bosco and her five surviving children wrote a letter to the judge asking that Clark not be given the death penalty. He later was sentenced to 220 years in prison as the result of a plea bargain.
She said putting him to death would have given her and her children no closure or peace, and her heart went out to Clark's mother. "It is only a delusion to believe that one's pain is ended by making someone else feel pain," she said.
A Roman Catholic, Bosco also believes God should be the only one who determines when life begins and ends.
"I want to tell everybody about the journey I had to go on," she said. "We've become a society that wants vengeance, but that's not what God wants."
www.herald-review.com