Favorite Sons (17 page)

“Tina Westmoreland.”

His eyes widened. “Oh, yeah, Tina . . .” He closed his eyes and smiled, as though recalling a fond dream. “That was one fine piece of ass.” As the words left his mouth, there was a scuffle in the hall and a thump against the door. I heard one cop say, “No, Nick, no.” Ricky again looked up at the two-way mirror, smiled, and said, “Oh-oh, Daddy must be one of the cops watching from behind the mirror.” He wiggled the fingers on his right hand. “Hi, Daddy.”

And then he began talking; it was the most repulsive two hours of my professional career. He told me in sickening, graphic detail of the final week of Tina Westmoreland's life. He just happened to be driving down the road when he saw her grinding her starter and lowering her forehead to the steering wheel in exasperation. It was an opportunity. He smiled and asked if he could help. She said thanks. Her car wouldn't start and her cell phone battery was dead. He thought, Ricky Blood, it's your lucky day. Would he mind giving her a ride to her father's house? Why, precious thing, he didn't mind at all. He didn't know she was the daughter of a cop. That was just a bonus. He hated cops. Tina was so grateful and happy that she didn't have to stand out in the cold and she thanked him several times before he turned in the opposite direction of her father's house. Where was he going? He just needed to make a quick stop by his house, then they would go. She must have known at that moment that she was going to die.

Ricky had me where he wanted me, dangling the critical information in front of me, when he stopped the narrative and said, “What the fuck, am I going to get something to eat, or what? I ain't sayin' nothin' else until I get some food.”

I stepped out of the room and a uniformed cop was sent for twenty dollars worth of burgers, French fries, root beer, and deep-fried
cherry desserts. Ricky Blood tore into the grease-stained bag and began stuffing food in his mouth. “Where'd I leave off?” he asked.

“You said Tina knew she was going to die.”

He nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

When he pulled into the dark alley behind his house, he hammered her face against the dashboard until she slumped in the front seat. He carried her unconscious to the basement and strapped her down with rope, duct tape, plastic ties, and handcuffs, just like the ones those cocksucking cops use. Then he raped and sodomized her, over and over again. When he left during the day, he taped her mouth. When he heard on the news that she was the daughter of a cop, he cut her with razor blades and tortured her with a cigarette lighter and rubbing alcohol. He put a revolver to her temple and clicked on empty chambers. He cut off her ears and bit her. When her once beautiful face became so battered and disfigured that he couldn't stand the look of it, he wrapped it in gauze and duct tape, leaving only her nostrils to keep her alive so he could continue raping her. At first she pleaded for her life to be spared, then for days she pleaded for death, but he only laughed. He attended a candlelight vigil outside the Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church and snickered to himself as hundreds around him prayed for her safe return. After a week, he wrapped her in a tarp, threw her in the trunk of his car, drove to the national park, doused the bitch in gasoline, and torched her.

“Ricky, the coroner's report states there were more than three hundred razor blade cuts on her body.”

He thought about this for a minute, nodded slowly, and said, “Yeah, that's probably about right.”

By the time I had extrapolated every detail that I thought possible, I was exhausted and beyond rage. When the uniformed officers entered the room to take him to his cell, he smiled and extended a cuffed hand and said, “This was fun, Mr. Van Buren. I liked talking to you. You're a straight-up guy. You come back sometime and we'll chat some more.”

Ricky Blood—proof that we spend way too much time preserving the lives of those who have repeatedly proven themselves unfit for our society.

*    *    *

On Wednesday, September 15, 2004, I awoke at 3:45 a.m. Despite the ungodly hour, I ran on the treadmill in my basement for thirty minutes because I knew it would be my only opportunity of the day to work out. I ate breakfast while standing at the kitchen counter and watching the Weather Channel. I had a bowl of shredded wheat and strawberries, a toasted English muffin dry, a splash of orange juice, and a cup of black coffee, which I finished while I showered and shaved. I tossed my briefcase in the back seat of my 2004 Chrysler Pacifica and before inserting the key in the ignition I pulled my digital recorder from my suit coat pocket and set it in the cup holder. The recorder had become more of a crutch than my cell phone. Six months earlier I had been driving south on Interstate 77 while talking on the cell phone and scribbling notes on a notepad in my lap, totally unaware of the traffic congestion in front of me. I came within inches of rear-ending a family in a minivan. Since then, I used the recorder religiously to leave myself verbal notes and reminders.

With the dew heavy on the grass of my lawn, I nosed the Pacifica out of the garage and headed for the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville to witness the execution of Richard Terrance Buchanan Junior. As the county prosecutor, I believed it was my duty to attend the executions of the men I sent to death row. If you stand in front of a jury and ask them to sentence a man to death, then you should have enough guts to look the condemned in the eye before he dies.

It is a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Akron to the southern Ohio community of Lucasville in Scioto County, and I planned to arrive an hour before the 10 a.m. execution. Officially, my presence was simply as a witness, a requested guest of Nick Westmoreland. There was little chance of a last-minute appeal or stay of execution, so I felt no obligation to arrive at the death house any earlier than
was absolutely necessary. I stopped by an all-night hamburger joint and bought a large black coffee in a Styrofoam cup, requested a dollar of my change in silver to buy a
Beacon Journal
and a
Plain Dealer
from the metal boxes by the front door, then continued along the darkened streets on the short drive to the entry ramp to westbound Interstate 76.

The road was empty and I cruised along the interstate at seven miles over the speed limit, nothing but the hum of the tires in my ears. Unlike in my teen and early adult years, I rarely played the radio in the car. Occasionally, I listened to an audio book, but mostly I drove in silence. I enjoyed the silence. It was a time to think, plan my day, or just daydream, and I was grateful for the solitude. I was a little surprised that the political reporter from the
Beacon Journal
hadn't asked to ride with me to the execution. Barbara Zeffiro had been shadowing my every move since I announced my candidacy for attorney general, and the conviction and death sentence of Ricky Blood had been big news locally. I was glad she hadn't asked. It was an execution, and I didn't want to turn it into a political campaign sideshow.

My time was rarely my own and the Pacifica was my one sanctuary. The exception to this rule was the tether that is my cell phone. I had been careful not to freely distribute the number. My secretary, Margaret, would not call unless it was an emergency. My campaign manager, Shelly Dennison, however, didn't give me the same consideration. When she got up, even if there was no urgent need to talk to me, she would hit my speed dial number before she sat down on the toilet. That was one of the downfalls of sleeping with my campaign manager.

Shelly pleaded with me not to attend Ricky Blood's execution. With less than two months before election day, some polls had me up by as many as eighteen points. She was a savvy strategist and wanted me to sit on the ball and run out the clock. “This one's in the bag,” she said. “Don't get careless.” She fretted that by attending the execution I was setting myself up for an ambush question from some reporter and it would cost me serious points. She didn't care about my moral or professional obligations to attend Ricky Blood's execution. I believed I owed it to Nick Westmoreland, Tina Westmoreland, the
voters, and in an odd way, Ricky Blood. She refused to listen to my reasoning. Her eye was on the prize—the November election—and Shelly was infinitely more concerned about votes than my obligation to justice.

Given my past history with the Petey Sanchez affair, the irony was not lost on me that I was the Summit County Prosecuting Attorney, a proponent of the death penalty, and a man sworn to uphold the law. Petey Sanchez represented a part of my life that was long past and, I hoped, forgotten by all but a few. Looking back, it was easy for me to justify my actions as youthful indiscretion. For God's sake, I was only fifteen at the time; I would be forty-nine in a month. As you would expect, I had never been able to totally suppress the memory of that June morning, but I certainly didn't dwell on it. I moved on with my life. I had a job to do, which occasionally involved sending violent criminals to death row. I never lost much sleep over sending those men to their deaths, and I certainly hadn't lost any over the impending execution of Ricky Blood. I was elected by the voters of Summit County, Ohio, to uphold the law, keep the bad guys off the street, and put the really bad ones to death. That is exactly what I did and usually with great proficiency.

Ricky Blood's conviction had been a foregone conclusion. We had Ricky's confession on tape and he did nothing to refute the story. He was convicted in thirty-five minutes. Before the jury left to deliberate the penalty phase of the trial, the defense attorney paraded in a cast of characters who testified to Ricky's abusive childhood, and to his good heart, and how his life should be spared. My remarks were simple. I reminded the jury that the man sitting at the defense table had raped and tortured an innocent girl for an entire week before dousing her with gasoline and burning her alive. I told them that pure evil had a face, and it was that of Richard Terrance Buchanan Junior, and the only just punishment was death.

The jury concurred.

*    *    *

Just north of the village of Lucasville, U.S. Route 23 intersects with Lucasville-Minford Road. Turning east, you pass a ball field and a few
houses before you see the glint of razor wire that caps the fencing around the sprawling campus of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. As the main parking lot came into view, I could see the marching circle of chanting, dour-faced protesters carrying signs and decrying the cruelty and inhumanity of the death penalty. In one corner of the lot a victim's advocacy group had set up a card table with brochures about their group and a clock with the ten and twelve painted red, signifying the time at which Ricky Blood would die. From the front of their table hung a banner with a scanned and digitally reproduced photo of Tina Westmoreland with her infant son, and the simple words, “Remember Tina.” This group was having coffee, eating donuts, and smiling.

I introduced myself and shook hands with the two men and three women at the victim's advocacy table, told them I appreciated their efforts, then walked over to where Nick Westmoreland and the oldest of his two sons were sitting in a Ford sedan that was backed into a parking space in front of the protestors. “How ya doing, boss?” I asked.

“I'll be a lot better in about an hour,” he said.

I had been through enough of these to know that Nick Westmoreland was not going to find peace of mind with the death of Ricky Blood. It is a misconception that the death of the perpetrator brings peace to those who loved the victim. It doesn't. It helps bring some closure, but never peace. The solace Nick Westmoreland was seeking would not be found in this world. He would carry to the grave the emptiness in his heart.

As we started across the parking lot toward the administration building where we would fill out the appropriate paperwork to be allowed inside the prison and then searched, an Associated Press reporter approached me and asked, “Mr. Van Buren, can we talk for a few minutes after the execution?” I nodded. My talking points were already prepared. I would talk about Tina Westmoreland and her father and her brothers and a son who would grow up never knowing his mother because of Richard Terrance Buchanan Junior. One of them would doubtlessly ask if I thought the death penalty was a deterrent, and I would shrug and say, “It's certainly going to deter Richard Buchanan from ever hurting another person.”

The protestors paid no attention to me, with one notable exception. As we neared the administration building, a nun of about four-foot-eight stepped out of the protest circle and stood in my path. She was carrying a white placard with red lettering that read, “Stop State-Sanctioned Murder.” It was Sister Bernadine, who headed the Ohio Catholic Council on Human Rights, an organization that opposed the death penalty and was a general pain in my ass. You couldn't not like Sister Bernadine. She, on the other hand, thought I was the devil incarnate.

“Here to witness the murder of another of God's children, Mr. Van Buren?” she asked.

“No, Sister, I'm here to witness the execution of a vile, heartless predator. Would you like to meet the father of the victim?”

She ignored my offer, saying, “‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,' Romans . . .”

“Romans, twelve-nineteen. I know the verse, Sister. But I prefer Genesis nine-six, ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.'” Growing up with Deak Coultas had taught me a few things about the Bible. I winked and kept moving. “Have a good day, Sister.”

A prison guard who walked like he was chafed and had a bulldog's jowls and disposition led us to the Death House, a tan brick structure just across the courtyard from the administration building. I sat in silence with the Westmorelands and six newspaper and television reporters in a witness area that was separated from the execution room by a large picture window. At about ten minutes before ten, Ricky Blood walked into the execution room, looking atrophied, smaller, less intimidating than in the days when he had worked out and done pushups by the hundreds to make himself more intimidating. I could see the jaw muscles of Nick Westmoreland tighten. He looked at me and I nodded. No words were exchanged.