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July 27, 2018
Jerry Strobel’s mother, Mary Catherine Strobel, was murdered in December 1986. He and his three siblings asked prosecutors not to seek the death penalty, believing that is what their mother would have done. Photo by Andy Telli The grief, the pain, the overpowering sense of loss never leave the loved ones of victims of violent and heinous crimes.
But for some, taking a life for a life offers no comfort.
Mary Catherine Strobel, bolstered by her Catholic faith, answered the call to help others throughout her life. In December 1986, as she was delivering food to a homeless shelter, she was kidnapped and murdered by an escapee from a Michigan prison psychiatric hospital.
Her four adult children, Veronica Strobel-Seigenthaler, Jerry Strobel, Charles Strobel and Alice Eadler, in the depth of their grief, had to decide whether to ask prosecutors to seek the death penalty for their mother’s killer.
“There were many, many, many people” who urged them to seek the death penalty, Jerry Strobel recalled.
But he and his siblings followed the example of their mother. “We knew she would say don’t execute him,” Strobel said. “Like the crucifixion, ‘Father forgive them … .’”
“It was pretty clear for us,” Strobel said of the decision to ask prosecutors not to seek the death penalty. “There was no discussion.”
“I don’t think we had a right to do that,” he added. “We don’t have a right to kill another person.”
At Mrs. Strobel’s funeral, her son Charles, who founded the Room In the Inn shelter for the homeless, said, “Why speak of anger and revenge? Those words were not compatible with the very thought of our mother. So, I say to everyone, we are not angry or vengeful, just deeply hurt.”
He added, “We know the answers are not easy and clear, but we still believe in the miracle of forgiveness. And we extend our arms in that embrace.”
Despite the Strobels’ wishes, prosecutors sought the death penalty for their mother’s killer, who murdered five more people in four states on a killing spree. But the jury was deadlocked on the death penalty and William Scott Day was ultimately sentenced to three life sentences.
‘Wrongheaded’ penalty
James Staub also was blindsided by the tragedy of losing a parent to murder. His mother was killed when he was 11 years old. The case has never been solved.
Raised as a Catholic, the faith played a role in his decision to oppose the death penalty, said Staub, who is a member of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “As a child I came to the conclusion that the death penalty was wrongheaded,” he said.
“A human life is precious. Learning to treasure each other, even when we make terrible decisions about each other, is vital,” Staub said.
But the emotional pain lingered for Staub. “There was a real struggle of just not knowing, trying to be OK with the fact that my mother’s murder was unsolved,” he said.
“In the late ’90s when I was in college, I watched ‘Law and Order’ like an addict,” Staub said of the long-running crime show on television. “There was a crime, and in an hour it was all tied up.”
But it was another crime show on television that helped his healing. The last episode of the show “Homicide: Life on the Streets” included a story arc about a Catholic nun whose sister is murdered by her husband. The nun asks the detectives if she could visit with her brother-in-law in his jail cell.
“It might help me make sense of this if I can meet him, talk with him, offer my forgiveness,” she tells the detectives.
When one detective tells her the murderer is unworthy of her forgiveness, she answers that it’s not about her brother-in-law. “It’s about what I believe about the frailty of man, about the love of God.”
The nun is later shown sitting in the jail cell next to the murderer, taking his hand in hers.
“I had never seen anybody trying to reach out,” Staub said. “It was like something got untied inside me. I had this new incredible model. … It is a connection to the people who are alive that I was yearning for.”
Staub was living in Chattanooga when he first encountered members of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Through the group, he found a community of other relatives of victims whose murders remained unsolved.
“That’s been a connection incredibly valuable to me,” Staub said. “Being in a room and talking honestly with people … is a healing experience.”
A generous heart
For Strobel and his siblings, the grief remains. “Still, I can’t get over it, because she missed so much with her grandchildren, watching them grow up,” he said.
But there is comfort in remembering his mother and her life. “She was quite a lady,” Strobel said. “She just loved people.”
Her concern for others was evident even as a child when she would ask her father for money to buy food for struggling neighbors.
When her husband died from a heart attack in 1947, Mary Catherine Strobel was left with four children under the age of 8 and two elderly aunts to take care of. Nashville’s fire chief offered her her husband’s job as secretary to the fire marshal, making her the department’s first female employee.
“She loved it,” Strobel said of his mother’s job with the fire department. “Till the day she died, when she heard a siren she would drop to her knees and say a prayer.”
Growing up in the family home in North Nashville just down the street from Assumption Church, Strobel recalled that the homeless in the neighborhood could always count on a meal and kindness from his mother.
That generosity continued throughout her life. “Her car was like a traveling store, flowers for the cemetery and food and blankets,” Strobel said. “Anything you would want.”
Her extensive efforts to help the less fortunate are memorialized in the Mary Catherine Strobel Volunteer Awards given out to top volunteers each year by Hands On Nashville.
Victims’ families unite
Strobel and his siblings have spoken publicly against the death penalty over the years. They have been joined in opposing the death penalty by the families of other victims.
“We have a lot of murder victims’ family members who are involved in the work we do,” said the Rev. Stacy Rector, a Presbyterian minister and executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
Some of the victims’ families are like the Strobels whose opposition to the death penalty is rooted in their faith, Rector said. “Other families thought they supported (the death penalty), but the process has been so difficult and painful and protracted, it hasn’t been helpful to their healing,” she said.
And still others are like Staub, whose relative’s murder has never been solved, Rector added.
Some of the resources now spent on death penalty cases could instead be used to investigate unsolved cases and to help victims’ families and others traumatized by violence, Rector said.
“A lot of people are suffering from trauma and not being cared for,” she said. “And that causes lots and lots of problems.”
The situation for each victim’s family is different and they need different kinds of help, Rector said.
A low-income family whose main breadwinner has been murdered may need direct financial assistance, she said.
“Others … need access to information about the case and the choice about whether or not to make use of that access,” Staub said.
And still others need “access to services that help them be in a group of people who understand,” Staub added. “That is what’s helped me the most, being with other people who understand.”