Correction by Ben Austen

Author:Ben Austen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

The chief prosecutor asked what Knights was doing, and whether he was alone.

WILCZENSKI: At that time, Mr. Knight [sic] was with approximately seven or eight youthful children.… He was standing with the children on a little sidewalk.

Knights, like Johnnie, insisted that the two of them barely knew each other and had no history together. Johnnie was seventeen and in a gang; Knights was twenty-three, a janitor and livery driver. “Johnnie and I did not conversate. He was on a different plane of life than I was with totally different pursuits and associates.… My brother and I would be with others our age and older,” Knights would say. “Johnnie was a person that I would see come and go, nothing more and nothing less.” With each passing year in prison, Knights’s knowledge of the law grew in direct proportion to his anger. “What political prisoner do you know who puts stock in the system that has made them a political prisoner?” he said of his incarceration. He had little faith he might win his freedom at a hearing that he couldn’t attend and at which board members faced a roomful of cops.

When Knights heard from John Severin, he was understandably dubious. Both he and Johnnie had received numerous letters from other Severin and Rizzato family members, from police officers and others. Taunts on holidays and notes disguised in greeting cards telling them they were going to die in prison and rot in hell. Nearly forty years into his prison bid, Knights had seen the letters taper off into a trickle. But Knights knew the relatives of the officers still protested his release each year. He typed out a reply to John Severin.

“I must admit that I am skeptical of your intent given the fact that over the years your father sent me harassing mail. If your intent is to inflict mental anguish, don’t bother, it would be a futile endeavor.” Knights remained gracious, however. “If on the other hand you are sincere, I shall meet you on your terms.”

“I am not like my father, who played games with you,” Severin responded. His father had died in 2006, and John seemed also to be working out some personal family issues that had less to do with his uncle’s 1970 murder and with parole. “In order to look them, convincingly, in their eyes, I must look you in your eyes,” he wrote Knights. “I think the first Severin voice to the Parole Board to recommend parole is groundbreaking, and I am man enough to stand up to my relatives.”

Severin contacted the parole board in 2011, urging them to release Knights. He mischaracterized his correspondences to some extent, saying Knights expressed “extreme regret and anguish about the murder of my uncle.” Knights never admitted to the crime in the letters he sent John Severin, although he did acknowledge the tragedy that befell the entire Severin family. John Severin told the board that Knights was “literate, self-schooled,” that he “poses no threat to society.” He said Knights’s term of imprisonment had been sufficient.

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