In Cold Pursuit by Paul Echols

Author:Paul Echols
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780882824208
Publisher: New Horizon Press

14

Negotiating Death

As Jim and I drove away, we talked about how we wished we could’ve gotten a full confession. Morley’s decision about seeking the death penalty had blocked that and we weren’t happy. But we also understood that he and others felt differently about this brutal serial killer’s sentence. We hoped that maybe we had said enough to get Tim to call us back, just like he did the day after my first interview with him in the Sheppard case. If not, then we needed to convince Morley to change his mind. That was not going to be easy.

The next day, I got a message from Lieutenant Schuler on my voicemail. He had called late the day before. My heart raced as I waited to hear him say that Tim wanted us to come back so he could confess, but the message went in a different direction.

“Hey, Paul, this is Schuler. Tim called me to his cell after you and Jim left yesterday. He wanted me to tell you guys he doesn’t want to talk to you again until he gets an attorney. Sorry.”

Damn, I thought. We missed our best opportunity. We pushed him too far. I had been afraid of that. Jim and I had discussed how far to push him. We had known it was a gamble but a gamble we had to take. I called Jim immediately.

“He told Schuler he’s not going to talk to us again until he gets an attorney.”

The line was silent on Jim’s side. I heard him take a deep breath followed by an expletive. We both grew even more upset at Morley for not giving us the latitude we felt we needed to get Tim to admit the real scope of his crimes. Jim told me Carl also was upset with Morley. We now had to focus on trying to change Morley’s mind. There was no chance of a death penalty in Illinois. In 2003, Illinois Governor George Ryan, who was serving time in a federal prison himself, had commuted the death sentences of 167 Illinois death row inmates. Then he placed a moratorium on death sentences while a commission studied the situation. Unlike Illinois, Missouri was still carrying out death warrants. And Morley knew that.

I found myself in an awful quandary. I was pushing hard to save Tim’s life to get a full confession, knowing he deserved to die. In a way, I felt as if I was betraying Bernie Sheppard, Deborah’s father, who would be willing to personally place the needle in Tim’s arm if given the chance. But I also thought about the practical side of pushing for the death penalty. Tim was about to turn sixty-three years old. Was it really possible to go through a trial, convict him, get a judge to give him the death penalty and then wait out his automatic appeals and put him to death before he died a natural death? To me, it didn’t seem likely. It was frustrating, but there was nothing I could do.

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