Maybe it is guilt.
If conscience does not nibble at them in life, perhaps fear does in death. Are these stuck souls afraid to meet their maker? Perhaps when they were made of flesh and bone they dismissed the “afterlife” as a fairytale.
Smug in the belief that judgment day would never arrive, they committed their crimes, hurting others for their own gain. What happens when death curls its cold fingers around a murderer? How does a killer react to finding himself without a body?
Psychics and those who have had near-death experiences tell us of a brilliant light. To go to it, they say, is to be embraced by love. Does this same light shine for evil people? Does it offer them the same love?
Maybe. Maybe not.
This uncertainty could prompt a killer to turn away from the light, choosing instead to cower in the darkness.
Most of us take comfort in stories of a peaceful light where our dead loved ones are waiting to greet us. But what if the dead ones waiting for you are your victims? Killers might not be anxious for such a reunion .
When I imagine the heartless wraiths wandering the blackness of the despair they created, I muster a drop of pity for these wretched souls who are afraid of the light. Here are their stories.
”See Ya”
Warren Bridge was a man filled with hate.
His life of crime began when he became a burglar at age fifteen. At age nineteen on February 10, 1980, he and his accomplice, Robert Costa, walked into a Galveston, Texas, convenience store. As they robbed the store, Warren pointed his .38 pistol at the clerk, sixty-two-year-old Walter Rose, and pulled the trigger, shooting him four times.
It was a painful battle between life and death for the victim, who died two weeks later, four days after the robbers were arrested in a drug raid on their motel room.
Prison did not end Warren’s violent streak. Filled with anger, the young Caucasian racist proudly displayed a tattoo of a Confederate flag. His assaults on black prisoners landed him in more trouble.
Despite the fact that Warren Bridge was sentenced to die, defense attorneys fought for his life and warded off the execution until November 23, 1994, when he was fed his last meal. He ate a double-meat cheeseburger, fish sticks, and peaches, and then was killed by lethal injection.
Before he died, he nodded toward his stepfather and said, “See ya.”
Warren had plenty of time to contemplate his death and say goodbye to his family. He once said, “I don’t want to be hanged or ride old Sparky. I’m not very fond of electricity. Just a plain bullet is cleaner somehow.”
Walter Rose was given no choice. He did not get to pick a last meal or say long good-byes to his family. Warren Bridge took all of that away.
I must admit it is hard to not be angry as I write about Warren Bridge. I don’t want to think of the killer stepping into the afterlife, free to roam. But because I received a letter from a woman who knew him well, I must entertain the idea.
Prison Guard Lorie Hopper tried not to think about the evil committed by the inmates she watched. “I treated everyone with respect,” she confided. And the prisoners seemed to respect her for that.
It was not, after all, her job to punish the men on death row. They were human beings who had made mistakes, and their fate was in the hands of the law.
In her letter to me, Lorie wrote about her strange experience in 1994:
After staying home sick from work one November evening, I woke abruptly on the couch with the distinct feeling someone had just leaned over me, kissed my forehead and whispered, “Thank you.”
While I did not SEE anyone, there are some things that you just KNOW, and I KNEW that someone had been there.
It was not a frightening experience. Just baffling. WHO was it?
My first thought, naturally, was that it must have been my boyfriend. Unfortunately, he was sound asleep in our bedroom. Since we had argued earlier that evening, the “thank you” made no sense.
When I returned to work the next day, I learned that while I was off work, an inmate had been executed. While I had previously known that Warren Bridge’s execution was scheduled, it did not cross my mind until that moment that HE might have been my mystery visitor.
Several months later, I finally told my strange story to another officer, and I almost fell over when she told me she had experienced the same thing on the same night.
If Warren Bridge did indeed visit his prison guards after his execution, it may have been just the first stop on a long road.
In addition to those he had to thank, there were many waiting for his apologies.
The Last Resort
Are killers born or are they made? It is a huge question with no definitive answer, though experts find that a combination of the wrong genes and a traumatic childhood are usually factors when a person is without conscience.