he brings gaia to the residential treatment unit to visit inmates recovering from mental health problems. see you, little buddy. hairy little dude, ain t he, for a little one. after aaron had gaia for a little while, he seemed to start thinking outside himself. he actually started to become much more involved with other people. everywhere aaron went he took gaia. that opened the door for him. he suddenly started engaging with other people, talking to staff, being more open. he had a softer, more nurturing side that emerged after gaia came into his life. aaron and i never had an overt conversation about the fact he killed his parents and now he was parenting a kitten. it was obvious to me though that whatever he couldn t feel for his own family and certainly the people he killed, he seemed to transfer all of these emotions over to this cat, which was interesting to observe, and we spent weeks there and i would check in with him periodically,
the location did not dissuade him. he forged ahead. staked out the place, planned my escape route, went to mcdonald s, grabbed something to eat, went to some abandoned horse trail and put on my arm and my disguise, a hat, glasses, jacket, and went and waited, and i waited for, i don t know, seemed like forever. so i remember i said out loud to nobody or anything in particular, i said, hey, if i m supposed to do this, have my favorite song come on, and i just hit scan on the radio and it went through all the stations and all of a sudden my favorite song started playing. he parked in the parking lot about 20 feet from the front door of the daycare center. i remember i pulled in his blind spot, and i got out of the car, and i slowly crept to his window. i just remember taking the gun, and i tapped it a few times on his window and kind of startled, and he looked at me. i just started shooting. dropped the gun and took off. he was later identified, arrested and convicted.
you don t want to take justice into your own hands. his crime was that of a vigilante. you know being a christian means you don t have to be scared of your past because your sins, no matter how ugly they are, and we have some ugly ones in this room he is an inmate preacher at the prison s chapel and can trace the ugliest of his sins to a bizarre series of events that began with the loss of his arm. after the air force medically retired me, i retired to little rock, arkansas, started selling clothes in the mall. all i thought about all day long was having one arm, being in the big city where i didn t know anybody, and i already had like self-confidence issues before that. so finally one day i decided, the only way i m going to get over this and not miss out on the best years of my life is just to do everything i wanted to do before. i learned how to talk to girls. i learned how to build confidence and i did what i wanted to do. but the benefits of his newfound confidence revea
ten victims? at the most. it sounds like a lot, yeah. though only two of the eight victims were homicides, the others were robbed and in some cases badly beaten. when he was telling us the story of his crimes, it was almost like listening to somebody describe playing a video game. he was that detached. one of them was lost her eyesight in one of her eyes and punctured a lung accidentally, but she survived. she was found in time before she bled out, basically. we wondered if his experience in iraq played a role in his behavior. no, that s the thing. i don t want to blame it that s what all these guys try to come home and say, oh, shame on you know, boo me, i got problems. i saw somebody die so i should [ bleep ] get off. i should have total immunity. i m not saying that. he did not seem to have been bothered by the military experience at all. if anything, i feel like he got a little bit of a charge from it. to an extent it was fun.
prison s pet therapy program. he brings gaia to the residential treatment unit to visit inmates recovering from mental health problems. see you, little buddy. hairy little dude, ain t he, for a little one. after aaron had gaia for a little while, he seemed to start thinking outside himself. he actually started to become much more involved with other people. everywhere aaron went he took gaia. that opened the door for him. he suddenly started engaging with other people, talking to staff, being more open. he had a softer, more nurturing side that emerged after gaia came into his life. aaron and i never had an overt conversation about the fact he killed his parents and now he was parenting a kitten. it was obvious to me though that whatever he couldn t feel for his own family and certainly the people he killed, he seemed to transfer all of these emotions over to this cat, which was interesting to observe, and we spent weeks there and i would check in with him periodically,