I’m sure you’re all anxiously hoping I’ll answer that question. You can relax, because this very long post is your answer. This is an excerpt from a paper I wrote for one of my writing classes a couple years ago.
Why I Married a Murderer
With my eyes wide open, I married a man serving a Life Without Parole sentence for a brutal murder he committed twenty-two years ago. Because of my choice, I have lost people very close to me. They fell with only a quick shake. Friends I had known for decades dropped me without a word, not even an “I don’t approve of your life choice. Good-bye.” I was prepared for doubt and worry, fear and questions, but not for exile. I feel angry that people cannot get past the P R I S O N to see what a brilliant, kind, and funny human being my husband is. I am an intelligent, educated, and well-read woman, and I have found my equal. He just happens to live in a prison. This is my story.
“I’ll have to say I love you in a song” (Croce)—He doesn’t have to use a song (he has the gift of gab), but he does. From the beginning, before we had even spoken on the phone, he has been sending me songs: “I miss you / But I haven’t met you yet” (Bjӧrk). And after we began talking and I worried that I wasn’t talkative enough for him: “It’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart / Without sayin’ a word” (Krauss). Every song in this story is one he has given me.
WriteAPrisoner.com. Little did I know how that site would change my life. But at the time, I had no intention of doing anything but good by making some very lonely men and women very happy. WriteAPrisoner.com is a site that allows citizens to select incarcerated individuals to correspond with through snail mail, texts, or phone calls. Each inmate posts a photo and a personal profile. At the time, I had no conscious romantic intentions. I was fueled by love and charity to make a difference in someone’s life, to give them hope and friendship. This particular August night, I was sitting up in bed and scrolling the site on my phone. Tomorrow was the day. Knowing it wasn’t safe to use my home address, I had set up my first post office box that week, and I was going to select twelve prisoners (men and some token women) and write them each a letter the next day. The fever of the novice acolyte burned in my bones. Which ones would I choose?
As I was scrolling and bookmarking the people I related to, “Ahoy there!” jumped out at me from “a homesick castaway forever marooned behind these jagged shores of the Island of Misfit Toys” (MFT).Well, hello! My interest was immediately piqued, and the more I read, the more I had to write to him. He used words like scrumdillyicious and razzle-dazzle! He signed off with “TTFN (Ta Ta For Now)”! Instead of waiting for the next day, when I would have pen and paper, a table, good lighting, and with my feet planted firmly on the ground, I sent an email right then and there, fervently hoping he’d write me back, but fearing he wouldn’t, because he was so far above me in terms of joie de vivre and eclecticism. Besides the unique vocabulary (and the—I won’t lie—probably six feet of beard and broad shoulders), what was it that drew me to this man, that made my heart leap when I read his words—words about loving people, staying positive and true to himself, and being a former stay-home dad (the happiest time of his life)? Simple. My heart recognized him.
“We ain’t been alone since the day / We met” (Houser)—And we’re not sure we ever will. A kiss at the beginning and end of each visit and holding hands in between is all we get. Most days, the guard unlocks a door. Those who want to can shuffle outside like sheep, past the watchful eye of the shepherd. Our greener pasture is The Patio, enclosed by twenty feet of barbed wire, and with token permission to stand face-to-face, holding both hands in view. But our tummies touch!
But—I hear you say—he murdered someone, what about that? Even before I knew about Celexa, the psychotropic drug he had been having severe side effects from and quit suddenly three days before the murder,[1] even before I knew that he had never intended to kill anyone, least of all a woman, even before I knew that aside from traffic violations, he’d never been in trouble with the law before, even before I knew that his sole purpose that dark night was to see his children one last time before killing himself, even before I knew all that, what he did didn’t matter to me. It didn’t matter because I know that the worst you do does not have to define the rest of your life.
“Something like this just don’t exist / Between a backwoods boy and a fairy tale princess” (Carroll)—”February 30.” Did he seriously just say that? My giggles grew. No matter what it is, whether thinking there are thirty days in February or mispronouncing my last name, he laughs with me when I laugh at his mistakes (he has a fantastic sense of humor). I feel sorry for his poor education, but then he’ll stun me by telling me details I don’t know about Hamlet or Richard III. I am working on my second bachelor’s degree, and he never finished high school,[2] yet he knows more about Shakespeare than I do.
I believe in forgiveness, and I believe that people can change. Yes, he did make some very foolish, very terrible decisions that night in February, decisions that resulted in the loss of life for one woman, permanently affected the lives of two other women and his three children, and drastically altered the course of his own life. But he didn’t set out to kill. That wasn’t his intention. And after it was over, he never denied it or made excuses for it. He took full responsibility for what he did, as he still does to this day. Even the detective who interviewed him the night of the murder recognized his forthrightness: “You’ve been very honest with us, and we appreciate it” (Bernal 79).
“Without you here I am boring. / Something inside you is triggering, it makes me myself. / It makes me funny” (VanderWaal)—He always makes me laugh, a deep belly-laughing that won’t stop, making it hard to breathe. As I flip through the little book in which I write memories about each of our prison visits, I’m struck by how often I have written “He had me laughing SO HARD” or some variation of that thought. I can tell him, “Make me laugh,” and he will. I don’t know how he does it, but he’ll get me going, and he keeps feeding me until I feel that it’s impossible to stop.
It was June 19 at 8:15 in the morning. After a harrowing gauntlet of inspection by two guards and a walk through the metal detector before I was deemed safe to enter, passing through the double iron gates topped with coils of barbed wire, and walking a quarter mile in the desolate Central Valley heat to get to the visiting room, I sat on a slick, padded chair with metal legs at a tiny round table, my feet tapping. Several other men and women waited for their loved ones at their tiny tables, all of us under the watchful gaze of two guards. I kept glancing at the clock, watching the minutes tick by. 8:16, 8:17. When would he come? He had his own process to get through behind the locked door, which included stripping, bending over, and coughing. 8:18, 8:19. The visit was supposed to begin at 8:15, and I jealously watched my time with him tick away. Since visits had only recently opened up after Covid, we were limited to two hours on opposite sides of the tiny table (no touching!) and mask-wearing—unless we were eating. (We carefully spaced our vending machine purchases so that we could eat for the whole two hours.) Finally, the door opened and I saw him! As he walked over to our table, smiling, I jumped up and ran. Since visitors usually wait patiently at the tables, he later told me he felt so discombobulated. “I thought you were going to climb in my lap!” But I didn’t notice any discombobulation as he got down on one knee, in the middle of the sterile, sickly, green-and-white room and asked me to make him the happiest man in the world.
“Give me a minute to hold my girl” (Ezra)—A recent addition to The Patio is artificial grass and a concrete bench. We sit on the bench and I lean against him. The sides of our entire bodies touch and I feel the solidness of him—something I can’t get through a phone call. I close my eyes and try not to smell the manure from the surrounding fields. I feel the hot breeze moving my hair. I imagine we are in a park or on a bluff overlooking the ocean. We are normal.
I never think of him as a murderer. There have been times when I’ll be talking about a news story I saw, about a man who is suspected of killing an innocent person, and I will suddenly remember, “Oh wait. You did that too!” and I’ll feel bad that I made him feel awkward because of how I was talking about the suspect. What he did twenty-two years ago is so far from who he is now as a person. Yes, I have had my share of 3 am worries, but that is also the time of the night when I worry about my wall paint off-gassing or the ache in my knee possibly being cancer. I would actually have far more worries with a man without a documented past. How could I know [fictional ideal man] wasn’t living a double life? How could I really be sure? But the last two decades of MFT’s life are fully documented. He’s been encased in concrete since 2001.
“A jury found [MFT] guilty of first-degree murder of [name] during the commission of a burglary with intent to commit felony false imprisonment, first degree burglary of [name]’s house, and felony false imprisonment of [MFT]’s wife. . . . The court imposed a life without possibility of parole sentence for first degree murder, a consecutive four-year sentence for first degree burglary, and a concurrent two-year sentence for felony false imprisonment” (People v. [MFT]).
The fluorescent-lit room held a scattered amount of people, coupled up at tiny tables on aging linoleum floor. Two olive green-clad men with loaded holsters and big, black boots stood on a podium watching the room. The doors were locked. We stood in front of a blue ocean mural, a cross between Nemo and children’s art. His hands pressed mine firmly against his chest, a stolen privilege (he hoped the guards wouldn’t notice). Our friend stood to the side. We were only allowed to invite one guest, but that restriction didn’t matter. She was the only one who wanted to come. The little chaplain in a brown tweed suit asked us if we were madly in love with each other. My face lit up. His barren home didn’t matter. Our long-distance relationship didn’t matter. Our slim chance of ever doing anything more than kissing under the watchful gazes of the guards didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that I was exactly where I wanted to be—by his side.
Maybe it’s intuition
But some things you just don’t question
Like in your eyes I see my future in an instant . . .
I think I found my best friend.
I know that it might sound more than a little crazy, but I believe
I knew I loved you before I met you.
I think I dreamed you into life. (Savage Garden)
Songs Cited
Bjӧrk. “I Miss You.” Post, Electra, 1995. YouTube Music, https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsme2cg6nQY.
Carroll, Jason Michael. “Livin’ Our Love Song.” Waitin’ in the Country, Arista Nashville, 2007. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=LYnvjM4DNPo.
Croce, Jim. “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song.” I Got a Name, Rhino/R2M, 1973. YouTube Music, https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc8FyMkYXaQ.
Ezra, George. “Hold My Girl” (Acoustic Version). Staying at Tamara’s, Columbia Records/Sony Music,2018. YouTube Music, https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=t3EgOgVQ9GY.
Houser, Randy. “Our Hearts.” Magnolia, BBR/BMG/Stoney Creek Records, 2019. YouTube Music, https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=-WUEN3_FTDA.
Krauss, Alison and Union Station. “When You Say Nothing at All.” Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album, BNA Records, 1994. YouTube Music, https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=UwfpsGTopsY.
Savage Garden. “I Knew I Loved You.” Affirmation,Columbia Records, 1999. YouTube Music, https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=l-QdbmsQAEw.
VanderWaal, Grace. “Beautiful Thing.” Perfectly Imperfect, Greg Wells, 2016. YouTube Music, https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=NuB9ZO8qWDs.
Works Cited
Bernal, M. Transcription. Interview with [MFT]. 03 Feb. 2001. Transcribed 31 Aug. 2001.
“People v. [MFT].” California Court of Appeal. June 1, 2003. Anylaw.com, https://www.anylaw.com/case/people-v-[MFT]/california-court-of-appeal. Accessed 22 July 2023.
[MFT]. Pen Pal Profile. Write A Prisoner. https://writeaprisoner.com/inmates/[MFT]/penpal. Accessed 05 Aug. 2019.
[1] Here are six pages of links to news articles about murders or suicides committed by people who were taking Celexa: “Archive for Celexa (citalopram).” SSRI Stories, Data Based Medicine Global Ltd., 2023, https://ssristories.org/category/drug/celexa-citalopram. Accessed 06 July 2023.
[2] In June of 2025, despite severe dyslexia and other learning disabilities, MFT earned his high school diploma!