Faces of Evil by Lois Gibson

Author:Lois Gibson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780882825236
Publisher: New Horizon Press
Published: 2016-04-28T04:00:00+00:00

A week later, while I was at the Artesian building working another case, I saw Sgt. McClelland coming down the hall.

“Did you do a line-up?” I called out.

He gave a triumphant, “Yes!”

“Was Jane Carr there?”

Again, he yelled jubilantly, “Yes!”

By this time, he’d drawn close to me and I said, “Well, did she pick him out?”

Suddenly, he lunged down onto one knee, pumped a fist in the air and gave a cheerleader shout: “YES!”

When he got to his feet, I laughed with happiness and said, “Did she cry?”

With a relaxed grin, he answered, “Ye-e-es.”

“And did you hug her?” (I already knew the answer.)

In a satisfied, peaceful tone, he nodded and said, “Of course.”

It was over, for us, but for the victims of Theodore Goynes and their families, it would never be over. In Illinois, for example, three women, who had believed the monster who had tried to kill them would be locked up for forty years, now had to come down to Texas to testify, once again, as to the horrors they’d experienced at his hands years before.

After sitting, dumbstruck, through hours of testimony by women who’d been raped, sodomized, bludgeoned, stabbed, tied up and set on fire by Theodore Goynes, the jury two hours later convicted him of capital murder in the death of Angelica Jackson. They sentenced him to death by lethal injection.

Vivien Jackson was there. She praised the homicide detectives who she said “didn’t get any sleep at all” during the investigation. She also thanked God and the jury, saying, “The system is still broken, still needs fixing,” but stated that the trial had helped her come to terms with her loss and had drawn the family closer.

And she continued the fight. “They’ve put a lot of Theodore Goyneses out there,” she told newspaper reporters, “and every one of them can hurt a lot of people.”

She added, “They’re just like cockroaches...and one cockroach can lay a thousand eggs.”

Eventually, this determined lady testified before both the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice and the Texas Pardons and Paroles Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Because of her efforts—and those of others like her—reforms were eventually instigated in Texas, such as the “three strikes you’re out” law, that locks felons up for life after the third conviction and the “life without possibility of parole” sentencing guidelines which had not been available to Texas juries before then.

Her brave and determined efforts came too late to save her own family from the vicious consequences of Theodore Goynes’s crimes, but untold numbers of unsuspecting potential victims of other savage criminals like Theodore Goynes are going about their lives today, thanks to the protections put in place by the reforms Vivien Jackson helped to bring about.

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