I Wouldn't Take It

I shot and killed my husband 9/29/88 after I had filed for divorce on 8/10/88. Myself, my daughter age 5, my son age 4 and my mother who lived with us ran for 2 months in shelters for battered women, hospitals after he had beaten me, hiding in hotels before the money ran out and staying with family out of town. The thing was that my husband told judges and many others that he was going to kill us. I had worked for attorneys since I had graduated from high school in 1979 and they witnessed a large part of the abuse and as a result our office was locked and one of the attorneys even kept a gun in his drawer. My husband had physically assaulted one of the attorneys I worked for. Finally one day an officer told me to get a gun. He said he knew the type and they couldn't be there at all times and they knew his type. So on the day I came home which he had destroyed (over $40,000 in damages) he told his mother he was going to kill me, the children, my mother, himself and then burn down our home. I had seen this movie before but it never entered my mind. I remember him driving in the driveway and the children screaming and my mother running with them. I ran in the opposite direction hoping he would come for me rather than the children and he did. I remember I was wearing this t-shirt and a very loose pair of shorts. I had been a size 14 at 170 lbs when I filed for the divorce and within 2 months dropped down to 119 lbs at a size 2 or 3 and the weight of the .22 weapon in my pocket was pulling my shorts down on my leg. I pulled the gun out and I don't even know if he took me seriously or even saw the gun because it was so small. I couldn't run any longer and we were face to face. I fired the gun and it jammed and he came toward me and I was just shaking the gun and I remember seeing the bullett come up into the chamber and without even looking, I fired the gun. It hit him in the abdomen on the left side. The irony was that the gunshot wasn't powerful enough to exit the body and the bullet penetrated every organ he had. His last words to me were "You goddamn bitch, you shot me!" That's when he started running across the front yard away from me and back to his truck when he collapsed. I ran to the phone and called 911. The police arrived and escorted me to the car and I asked why had they not gotten an ambulance there and they told me that he was dead. I had walked past him with the blood running out of the right corner of his mouth and I remember being scared that he was going to reach out and pull me down. I still can't accept that I killed him and don't think about it but watching this movie and so many other movies and just watching the news nightly reminds me that I did the right thing. In fact I was watching tv one night several months after I had been cleared by a grand jury on self defense and saw where a husband had killed his wife and children. Every news story I hear about a husband or man killing his wife or girlfriend, it takes me right back to Sept 29, 1988 when I was running for the last time. My husband who died was 6'5" and 250 lbs. He worked out with weights and that was all he would do. He did keep a job but that was about the only good thing he ever did. The thing was that he beat my children so much, especially his son who was only 4 years old.

In Dec, 1989 I came home and pulled into my garage and our song was playing on the radio. We always liked the song "Sailing" by Christopher Cross and as I listened to it I heard him and he said "You did the right thing, you're going to be okay!" I told some people about it but mainly just thought I was crazy until I watched "White Noise" with Micheal Keaton and learned about EVP. Watch the DVD extras in closed captioned. They often say the dead are very brief when they contact us if they ever do and if they do "it is often to just let us know they are okay and that we are going to be okay!" I've seen The Burning Bed several times but just today did I realize that at the beginning of the movie when she is speaking with her attorney she tells him that she dreamed that Mickey had the keys to her cell, opened up her cell door came in and told her that "she was going to be okay". I sincerely believe men who are abusive have severe mental issues and when they pass they find a peace that maybe they have never known before. I worried for so many years that my exhusband was in hell because of his intentions when he died but I heard the tone of his voice that night 15 months after he had died, and his voice was very peaceful and calm and I know he's in the right place and is at peace. In fact, I had "At Rest" written on his headstone.

I got on the computer because I wanted to learn more about this woman but then I find myself telling my story. I kept a good relationship with his family until his mother finally died of cancer in 1991. We never talked about it. The only thing she ever said about it was that Buddy had told her what he was going to do and that Buddy just wasn't Buddy anymore at the grand jury hearing. I wish that I could have talked with her about it. That I had no intentions of things ending up the way that they did but he just wouldn't stop and she had seen where he had beat on her grandson and she knew and she never held anything against me. In fact, she sent her pastor to the jail to tell them what Buddy had said right before he left to come to our home and for me to get out of there and take of those children. She never saw how he tore up the home, she never witnessed him beating on me or the children but she saw the aftermath of what he was doing to us. The strange thing is that it started to happen after we moved into a home that had been empty for a couple of years. The people that bought the home from me divorced quickly and I resold the home. Quickly thereafter they resold the home (I don't know what happened to them) and they told it to the family who is living there now. I went there recently and the house is closed up, the grass is grown up and the neighbors have no idea where the owners are. Bad things happen in that house just like "The Amityville Horror". Is all of this a coincidence or what?