Scream at the Sky by Carlton Stowers

Author:Carlton Stowers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Though they knew the identity of their daughter’s killer and could find some solace in the fact he had been convicted of the crime, the longed-for peace sought by Robert and Elaine Kimbrew remained elusive. Just as it did for the families of Terry Sims, Toni Gibbs, and Ellen Blau. Time passed, lives moved on, and the murders and their devastating aftermath all but faded from public thought. Except, however, for those who had been directly affected.

Every year on his daughter’s birthday, Murray Blau placed an ad in the Wichita Falls paper, reminding that the long-promised reward was still available to anyone who could provide information that led to the arrest of Ellen’s killer. In the years that followed her death, he always paused at the large photo of her that hung in the hallway leading to his bedroom. “Good night, El” were his last words of the evening. Toni Gibbs’s brother occasionally phoned the Archer County Sheriff’s Office to see if there had been any progress in the investigation, never with any real hope. Terry Sims’s sisters grew into young women, married, and began planning families of their own. Aside from regular visits to her gravesite and the occasional urge to reread some of the poetry she had written, they tried to avoid dwelling on the dark days.

There would, as the passage of time dictates, be changes: marriages and divorces, job promotions and retirements, moves from one location to another. Life advanced, dimming the past to a point where several days might go by without conscious thought of the horror that once visited. But then it would all come rushing back, triggered by a simple sight or smell, the melody of a long-forgotten song or a stranger’s laughter that sounded, just for a moment, exactly like Terry. Or Toni. Or Ellen.

It was at such times that the families of the victims, while strangers, were bonded in a manner they could not be expected to realize. They were united by their endless and unresolved grief. And, collectively, they were convinced that the legal system had grandly failed them.

Certainly that was the case with Robert Kimbrew, despite the fact his child’s killer had been caught. With little knowledge of the workings of the judicial system, he had assumed that when Faryion Wardrip pled guilty and was sentenced to serve thirty-five years in prison, it meant he would remain behind bars for at least a third of that time before parole was even considered.

When, just thirteen months after his incarceration, Wardrip made his first visit to the parole board, Kimbrew was livid. And despite the board’s denial, he launched a campaign that would become his life’s work in the years to come.

The dismal overcrowding of the Texas prison system had given rise to a new definition of the “good time” an inmate could accrue while serving his sentence. Participation in rehabilitation programs, attending chapel regularly, joining the workforce, and, most important, causing no trouble for attending guards could shave years from one’s sentence.

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