Cover Story
Marriage of Inconvenience Harris and McDonald photographed by a guard at the prison
But this midweek sojourn to the maximum-security prison in Nashville was different. On this Thursday afternoon in June 2003, McDonald would leave a newlywed.
Already wearing a gold wedding band he bought for himself, McDonald went through the usual metal detector checkpoint and pat-down before a guard escorted him to a small, beige cinder-block room that serves as the prison’s chapel. The space was far from a religious sanctuary, McDonald recalls, but compared to the cold, cavernous visitation room it was a welcome change.
Accompanied by his fiancée’s two teenage children, McDonald waited quietly for his bride-to-be.
Wearing her usual blue-denim uniform, Teresa “Deion” Harris was brought into the chapel by an armed guard. There was a brief ceremony, and when it was time to exchange rings, McDonald slipped the gold band off his right ring finger and handed it to Harris, who in turn placed it on his left hand. Prison regulations prevented McDonald from presenting her with a wedding band.
They were allowed a brief embrace, a peck on the lips and that’s all. After a few minutes of visiting with her new husband and two children, Harris was escorted back into the bowels of the prison, and McDonald made the two-hour drive back to Huntingdon without his new bride. “I just went home and opened up a can of Campbell’s Soup and that was my wedding night,” he says. Because conjugal visits are not permitted in Tennessee, a short kiss is the most affection they’ve ever shared as man and wife.
The prison would have allowed up to four guests to witness the wedding ceremony, but the inmate’s son and daughter were the only relatives willing to attend.
“When I told my family what was happening, they said, ‘What’s that going to do to our image, our family? You have to think about us,’ ” McDonald recalls during a recent interview. “My family disowned me, cut off all communication. Even my daughters refused to attend.”
Marrying a prison inmate was bad enough in their eyes. That McDonald was marrying a convicted murderer was all the more appalling.
Harris is one of three defendants serving life without parole for the murder of a 19-year-old man in rural Huntingdon, Tenn., on July 30, 1993. Authorities say the trio kidnapped the local college student when he stopped to help with their broken-down truck. After shooting him to death, they then dismembered his corpse. The victim’s charred remains were found the day after the murder without legs, a right arm, penis or heart.
The horrific crime shocked and angered residents of the small western Tennessee town, and rightfully so, says McDonald. But he insists that although Harris was present for the barbaric butchering, she was scared for her own life, not a willing participant, and therefore not some cruel killer sociopath.
The victim of years of physical and sexual abuse, Harris was barely a teenager when she became an addict. At the age of 22, she was in yet another violent relationship that revolved around alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. That time, the man she was with would be her downfall, leading her to a young man’s brutal slaughter, and ultimately to a life behind bars.
“Yes she was there, in horror. She was made to participate, and as a battered woman, she went along with it,” McDonald says of Harris, now his wife of four years. “She did not choose. She simply stood there comatose, going along with everything.”
Devoted Husband Timothy McDonald visits his wife each weekend at prison.
Photo by: ericengland.net
On a recent Sunday afternoon, Tim McDonald walks into a bustling Nashville coffee shop and orders a large double latte. “You can’t get this in Huntingdon,” he says with a halfhearted smile as he sits at a small two-top table in the back of the noisy room.
McDonald just spent four hours visiting with his wife at the prison, which he does most every Saturday and Sunday, driving 120 miles from Huntingdon to Nashville.
In between sips from an oversized white porcelain mug, McDonald, 62, recounts how he came to be where he is today: living in a rural Tennessee town that doesn’t want him; disowned by most of his own family; and married to a woman serving life for murder.
“I’m being drawn by forces I don’t understand,” McDonald says. “I just had to take care of her and her kids.”
Originally from Washington state, McDonald retired in 1990 after a 23-year career as a commercial pilot for Northwest Airlines and started a business rehabbing historic buildings near Seattle. In assembling a construction crew, McDonald knowingly hired employees with criminal pasts, believing if they were willing to work, they deserved a second chance.
McDonald soon learned that a member of his crew had jumped parole a few months earlier and had been re-arrested. When the employee asked his boss for a loan, McDonald agreed to lend the money in exchange for a letter explaining how he ended up behind bars. Much to McDonald’s surprise, the man responded with a moving 3,000-word essay, which eventually was published in the local newspaper.
When the employee was released from prison a few months later, McDonald again hired him, and helped him find an apartment and get a driver’s license.
The experience sparked McDonald’s interest in the criminal justice system, particularly the treatment of prisoners, and while researching the issue he stumbled upon a website with a list of inmates seeking pen pals.
After writing dozens of letters to prisoners across the nation, McDonald randomly selected Deion Harris’ name from the list in February 2000 and sent a form letter introducing himself. A few weeks later, he received a response.
Before McDonald even opened the first letter from Harris, he was struck by her handwriting on the envelope. Handwriting analysis is a longtime hobby of his. Just from looking at her penmanship, he could see she was “spiritual, intellectual, earthy and sexual.”
As the two exchanged regular letters, McDonald’s marriage of 30 years was crumbling. He explains that he and his wife—a flight attendant—had grown apart years before, but remained married for the sake of their two daughters. “By the time our children were grown, I really just wanted to get on with my life.”
Although he had not yet met Harris—who is 26 years younger—McDonald says, “I knew I was developing feelings for her, and because of what I was going through, there was a void in my life.” Once his divorce was final, he asked Harris to send him a visitation form. For months she refused, but ultimately agreed.
There was an immediate connection when they met in September 2000, and from the beginning both say the dynamic was open and honest. Because McDonald is a retired pilot, he was able to fly to Nashville frequently, and before long he was making the trip a few times a month. McDonald asked many questions, and Harris was willing to answer. They often talked about her two young children, who were only 3 and 4 when she was arrested, as well as her turbulent past.
After about three months, McDonald finally asked about the murder.
It had been almost eight years since the crime, and almost as long since Harris had spoken of that night to anyone other than her lawyers. When she was finished recounting the gory tale, he couldn’t believe what he had heard: “I truly believed she was innocent,” he says.
Death and Destruction The victim’s remains were found inside his charred pickup truck.
The partying started early on the afternoon of July 29, 1993. Harris, along with Walter Smothers, her live-in boyfriend of about two weeks, smoked marijuana and threw back beer after beer, a fifth of tequila and a pint of whiskey.
As they partied throughout the day, an ex-boyfriend repeatedly called Harris, until finally an enraged Smothers grabbed the phone. The two men argued, and Smothers threatened to track him down that night for a fight. As Smothers continued drinking, smoking pot and taking Valium, he became even more intoxicated and more violent than usual.
Later that evening, next-door neighbor Stacy Ramsey joined the pair, and the binge continued until finally Smothers decided it was time to follow through on his threat. Harris claims she was reluctant to accompany Smothers, but the 22-year-old went along with the plan, as did Ramsey, who brought along his .20-gauge shotgun at Smothers’ request.
Following Smothers’ orders, Harris gathered her two children and piled them into Ramsey’s pickup truck. They took the children to spend the night with Harris’ ex-husband, who lived just up the road. Harris’ ex urged her to stay behind, but as she wavered Smothers “physically lifted her off her feet and placed her in the truck,” according to court documents recounting that night.
The three drove around Carroll County searching at local hangouts for Harris’ ex-boyfriend. According to Harris, she pretended not to remember where he lived because she was afraid of what Smothers might do if they found him. Eventually, their truck broke down, and Harris was relieved the search was off.
Because Harris was an attractive young woman, Smothers suggested they would have better luck hitching a ride if she appeared to be alone. So the two men hid behind the broken-down truck as she stood on the side of the road.
Headlights soon appeared, and Harris waved her hand in the air.
The driver, 19-year-old Dennis Brooks Jr., was on his way to spend the night at his grandparents’ house after working a shift at a nearby Subway sandwich shop when he noticed Harris shortly after midnight. As Brooks pulled over his Ford Ranger pickup to help the woman, two men emerged from the darkness.
Wielding a shotgun, Smothers ordered Brooks to get out of the truck and lay on the ground. When Brooks didn’t comply, Ramsey threw him to the ground, and the young man began pleading for his life. “He started screaming, and that is when I hit him, and I was telling him to be quiet so he wouldn’t get killed,” Harris later testified. “I was telling him to be quiet so Walter wouldn’t shoot him.”
Following the orders of his captors, Brooks got into the bed of his truck and was accompanied by Smothers, who was armed with the .20-gauge. Ramsey jumped into the driver’s seat and, with Harris by his side in the cab, sped away on Highway 114. After they started down the road, Smothers slid open the window leading to the cab and handed the shotgun to Harris as he attempted to climb through the tiny opening. If Brooks had attempted to escape at that moment, Harris said she would have let him go. “I wish he had jumped out of the truck,” she later sobbed in court.
When it became clear Smothers wasn’t going to fit through the small window, he took the gun back from Harris and retreated to the back of the pickup.
Then, as the truck picked up speed along the dark, winding road, the shotgun fired, and Brooks screamed in agony.
Apparently, Smothers lost his balance, slipped and the gun went off, shooting Brooks in the hip.
Smothers ordered Brooks to lie down, insisting they would take him to the nearest hospital if he remained quiet. A resident living on the rural stretch of highway later told investigators that after hearing the shotgun blast, he heard a woman “screaming like she was scared…just terrified is what it sounded like.”
As they traveled toward town, Smothers loaded a new shell in the shotgun, and the injured young man continued to cry out in pain. When lights from the town became visible, he screamed even louder, hoping someone would respond to his cries for help.
“The boy was still hollering, and then…I heard the gun go off again,” Harris later told a jury. “I heard the gun go off, then I turned around to see what had happened, and Walter, he said..., ‘I just blew his fucking brains out.’ ”
Harris testified that Smothers told them not to worry because this wasn’t the first time he had committed murder, and that everything would be alright.
“I turned around and sat down. I remember looking at Stacy, and Stacy looked at me. We was both in shock. We didn’t know what was going on.”
Trying Times Photograph in the Carroll County News-Leader shows Harris on her way to trial.
After the fatal shot, the trio sped toward the nearby town of Hollow Rock. At one point they were pursued by police, but managed to elude officers and make it back to Harris’ home, where they discussed how to dispose of the victim’s body.
The first idea was to bury Brooks using a backhoe from Ramsey’s construction job, but when they arrived at the site, the machine had a flat tire. That’s when both Harris and Ramsey claim their accomplice came up with the idea to dismember the body.
They gathered an ax, shovel and butcher knife. Smothers and Ramsey got back into the victim’s pickup, and with Harris following in her car, the three drove along a gravel road to a remote area known as Haunted Bridge.
When asked at trial why she went along with the gruesome act that followed, Harris said, “Because I was scared. He had just killed somebody, and he could kill me too.” As for whether Harris had any involvement in this plan, Smothers testified at her trial, “I can’t honestly say she stated any remarks.”
Once they arrived at Haunted Bridge, Harris watched as the two men dragged Brooks’ body out of the back of the truck and proceeded to cut off his legs with an ax. They then removed his right arm and his penis, before Smothers began stabbing the victim’s stomach and chest area.
That’s when Harris testified that Smothers “handed me the knife and told me to do it, so I done it, I stabbed him in the stomach.” Next, Smothers extracted the boy’s heart and told her to drink the blood. According to Harris, she pretended to do it because she was afraid to disobey Smothers, but then dropped the heart to the ground before ever putting it to her lips. “I was scared for my life, and I was scared for my kids too. I thought maybe he might try to hurt my kids,” she testified. Smothers would later admit to cutting off the victim’s arm and legs, and he said he also removed the heart, but only because he claims Harris “wanted the heart.” He says each of them then held the victim’s heart and pressed it to their lips.
An autopsy later revealed the victim’s heart had discolored areas on it consistent with a person sucking blood from it, although it never was proven who actually performed the heinous act.
The trio drove Brooks’ truck to an empty field and, after stealing the car radio, speakers and several of the victim’s personal items, doused it with gasoline, setting it ablaze with Brooks’ mangled corpse inside the cab.
They returned to Harris’ home, showered and laundered their bloody clothes.
The next morning, after Dennis Brooks failed to show up at his grandparents’ house, his parents reported him missing. Police searching for the victim in a helicopter that afternoon observed smoke rising from a field in northern Carroll County. At the scene, they found a smoldering pickup truck with charred human remains inside.
Police soon determined the body was Brooks, and it didn’t take long to identify the first suspect. The night before, sheriff’s deputies responded to a call about gunshots on Highway 114. There, they found Ramsey’s broken down pickup truck, and about a half-mile up the road they discovered blood on the pavement.
As the investigation continued into the evening, the three suspects once again met up to drink and smoke marijuana. They later headed over to Casey’s Bar, a gritty watering hole on the edge of town. Inside the dark and smoky cinder-block bar, witnesses said the three took shots and drank beer. As Smothers and Ramsey played pool, Harris was reportedly “more active” than usual, dancing and singing with the jukebox. Witnesses said she was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, which investigators later identified as belonging to Brooks.
The first suspect questioned in the murder was Ramsey, who was brought to the Carroll County jail to discuss why his truck was left on the side of the highway. During the interrogation, investigators noticed blood on his shoes. Ramsey claimed the blood was from a deer he poached a week earlier, but his sister told police he got the shoes from Harris.
A detective questioned a nervous, trembling and upset Harris, and within a matter of minutes, she tearfully confessed, “They are the boy’s shoes.… They shot the boy.”
She recounted the story in its entirety and consented to a search of her home, pointing out where the ax, knife and bloody clothes were hidden. The detective later recalled that when he asked why she participated, and whether she was afraid for her life, Harris responded, “Yes. I was crazy at the time. It could have happened to me.”
Bride Behind Bars Teresa Deion Harris
Photo by: ericengland.net
Deion Harris was 6 years old the first time she was sexually molested. It happened again two years later, this time at the hands of an older male cousin. A relative caught the two children engaged in a sex act in a barn behind the house, and an ashamed Harris confessed this wasn’t the first time. The boy’s mother chastised the children, but when Harris’ mother found out, she admits she did nothing. “I knew this behavior to be abusive and unacceptable, but I did not seek counseling for her or attempt to separate Deion from this abusive situation,” her mother wrote in an affidavit submitted to the court in 2006 as part of an appeal.
Her mother admits she knew her eldest daughter—who was 15 and married at the time—provided alcohol and drugs to her little sister when she was 9 years old. “I knew this because Deion would come home intoxicated.… I later learned [my older daughter and her husband] encouraged Deion to drink and laughed at her when she got intoxicated.” Eventually, she learned that after getting Deion drunk, another older male relative would prostitute her out to his friends when she was passed out and incoherent.
Her mother says Harris was “severely sexually and physically abused from a very young age” and was “an alcohol and drug addict prior to entering her teenage years.”
Harris was 14 when her parents allowed her 18-year-old boyfriend to move into their house. They did so, according to her mother, because the boy’s uncle “had been supplying Deion with alcohol and drugs, and he had been sexually molesting Deion.” Although the boyfriend was supposed to sleep on the floor, her mother knew they were sharing a bed and having a sexual relationship because she interrupted them in the act several times.
Harris was 16 and addicted to alcohol and drugs, including cocaine, when her parents finally tried to intervene. The couple tricked their daughter into taking a ride one afternoon, and instead took her to an adolescent rehabilitation center. It was while undergoing counseling at rehab that Harris first said that the same older male relative who allowed his friends to have sex with her had raped her on numerous occasions, beginning when she was 10 years old. After learning of the alleged sexual abuse, Harris’ mother confronted the relative and, according to her affidavit, “He denied ‘raping’ Deion, but said that he was sorry for the ‘things’ that happened. He also told me that ‘it’ would not happen again.”
As a result of the turmoil and violence in her life, Harris attempted suicide twice before her arrest. She tried to overdose on Tylenol at the age of 14. At age 21, a few months before Brooks’ murder, she slit her wrists.
During her teenage years, Harris was hospitalized more than once because the men in her life beat her. She suffered black eyes, dislocated bones, bruises, cuts and concussions. “My daughter always refused to press charges against these men,” her mother recalls, adding, “Deion was never involved with a man that did not abuse her.” As for her role in all of this: “My husband and I never got Deion counseling for her sexual or physical abuse.”
It was because of her addiction to cocaine and other drugs that Harris ended up in a relationship with Walter Smothers, a man she says raped her several years earlier. Just two weeks before the murder, Harris ran into Smothers at Casey’s Bar. The following is her description of their relationship, as reflected in a psychiatric report filed last year as part of an appeal:
Even though I had spent very little time around Walter and had previously been raped by him, he supplied me with drugs and alcohol, and I began dating him.… During our brief relationship we had sexual intercourse only two times. On the first occasion, Walter pulled out a knife and asked me to cut him on the chest. When I refused Walter placed my hands on the knife and cut himself. I was terrified of Walter. He claimed to have killed someone before and threatened to kill me while my children watched if I ever resisted him.
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Wedding Day Harris was photographed with her son, daughter and new husband.
The visitation room at the Tennessee Prison for Women resembles a high school cafeteria, with dozens of tables and chairs scattered throughout and a row of vending machines lining one wall. Wearing dark denim pants and a light-blue shirt with “TN Dept of Correction” stamped in black letters on the back, Harris enters alongside a guard. Smiling self-consciously, she admits she’s nervous as she politely extends her hand. She comments on the cold temperature in the stark room, almost apologetically, as though it’s something she can control.
When asked how she came to be married while serving life behind bars, she starts by describing McDonald as a genuinely caring person, someone who truly has the best interest of her and her children in mind.
Harris says that, ever since she was arrested, she has done everything possible to remain a strong presence in the lives of her children, who have been raised by her parents. Each month she sends them the majority of the meager wages she earns as a telephone operator for the state’s TennCare health care program. It’s not much, but over the years she’s managed to save up enough money for a few luxury items, such as a pair of tickets for her daughter to see the band ’N Sync, and a PlayStation for her son. She’s also written letters to teachers demanding that she be informed of her children’s progress at school.
When she learned her mother was allowing the same relative who molested her to be around her daughter, Harris wrote a letter to the Tennessee Department of Human Services. Although she says the agency did nothing, it was enough to persuade her mother against allowing any further interaction between the two.
“He told me anyone trying as hard as I am to better myself, to raise my children and to heal deserves help,” the 36-year-old wife and mother says in a soft, shy voice. “He wanted to help me.” Over time, McDonald became a positive force in her children’s lives, although Harris says that at times they were resistant. At first her children viewed McDonald as someone they could never be. Just last month, he accompanied Harris’ daughter to register at Jackson State Community College. Given that Harris was the first in her family to graduate high school, having a daughter enrolled in college is a major accomplishment.
But Harris admits she kept McDonald at a distance for a long time. “I couldn’t see having a relationship with someone since I’m serving life without parole. I couldn’t see anyone caring about me or wanting to know me.”
But McDonald was persistent, and eventually Harris became comfortable divulging details about her past. “He could tell there was something wrong with me deep inside. For me to heal, he knew I would have to get it out.”
Harris told stories about physical abuse and violent, often unwanted, sex, and she admits she was surprised at first by McDonald’s shocked reaction. She described dozens of encounters with men who had sex with her as a young teenager after plying her with alcohol and drugs. Sometimes, several men would take advantage of her in the same evening, and she would have no idea until someone told her about it the next morning. Until she discussed this with McDonald, she never fathomed such an act would be considered rape.
“I thought that it was normal,” she says. “He’s the one who said those things aren’t normal.”
McDonald contacted a rape-crisis counselor who worked with Harris at the prison, and eventually she confronted the male relative who repeatedly molested her. Although she says his response was that she wanted it, it was a major step toward healing.
Harris also has learned to forgive her mother, whom she says did the best she could given her own difficult upbringing.
“I’ve grown a lot since meeting Tim,” she says, revealing a striking smile for the first time during the conversation. “He loves me for who I am, not for who I was or the things I’ve done. He taught me to love myself.”
And Harris admits that for a long time, that was difficult.
When asked about the murder, Harris tries to describe the person she was back then—a battered woman who was addicted to drugs and in a relationship with a man of whom she was terrified.
But she knows the horror in which she was complicit.
“It was a senseless murder. A mother lost her son, and that’s hard for me,” she says quietly, on the verge of tears, adding that her son is now the same age the Brooks boy was when he died. “They think that because I was there I should’ve stopped it. But the way I was at the time, there was no way. I was trying to survive.”
The gruesome murder of Dennis Brooks Jr. shook rural Carroll County, and as shocking details about the crime emerged, the public’s outrage intensified. Less than a week after the suspects were arrested, petitions were circulated in the community urging prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
Because the suspects gave conflicting stories implicating one another, a judge ordered them to be tried separately. Because of so much publicity about the murder, finding an unbiased jury in such a small town was unlikely, and so the judge also ordered that the defendants be tried in another county.
Harris, who was to be tried first in nearby Henry County, declined to accept a plea deal, even after prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty. Walter Smothers, however, agreed to testify in exchange for a deal.
While in jail awaiting trial, Harris twice attempted suicide, and was transferred to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. Dr. Phillip Morson, a psychiatrist with a state-run mental hospital, wrote an extensive report after meeting with Harris. The following are excerpts from the report, which he provided to her lawyers:
She did admit to witnessing the murder. She did admit to doing nothing to stop the murder. She did become quite tearful at times in relating the details of the murder.…
She stated that she felt remorse for not having the courage to somehow help the victim and somehow stop the murder.… She stated that she was too fearful to go up against her boyfriend, Walter, for fear he would harm her.…
She unwaveringly said that she was rejecting a plea bargain and agreeing to go to trial because she was not guilty of premeditated murder.…
Ms. Harris is a very unfortunate young woman. She came from a very unstable family environment, a family that allowed her to be raped.… A family that allowed her participation with alcohol and marijuana and later her use of cocaine and narcotic drugs to go untreated.… Most unfortunately it allowed her to become associated with persons such as her recent boyfriend who is the co-defendant in this case. This of course led her to be subsequently present at and unwillingly a participant in a horrible crime.
Although the report would have undoubtedly aided Harris’ defense, her two court-appointed Huntingdon attorneys failed to present it as evidence. In fact, they barely delved into her abusive past during the trial, instead relying on the argument that she did not pull the trigger.
When Smothers took the stand, he admitted, “I shot him because he was hollering,” referring to the second shot that killed Brooks. But he went on to implicate Harris in the mutilation, claiming she asked him to cut out the victim’s heart.
Finally, during a dramatic closing argument, the prosecutor urged the jury to find Harris guilty, proclaiming, “He who runs with the pack shares in the kill.” And within a matter of hours her fate was sealed when the jury found her guilty of first-degree murder.
It wasn’t until after she was convicted that her legal team called Dr. Morson to testify during the punishment phase, the point at which the jury was to decide whether Harris would be executed or spend the rest of her life behind bars. During this phase, the victim’s father asked that Harris be spared execution, and she was sentenced to life without parole.
A year after Harris was tried and sentenced, Smothers sent her a letter apologizing for testifying, explaining that otherwise he would have been put to death. He further stated that much of what he said on the stand was a lie: “Sorry about the state’s evidence from me, but I would have fried. Now I’m ready to make amends.… Now time has passed for me to recant my statements.… You and Stacy said I held a gun on ya’ll. Well—I did. If there is anything I can say or tell your lawyers that might help.… Me, the ringleader and forceful as I am, maybe I can help on appeal or maybe a new trial,” he writes, before closing the letter with the disturbing line, “I think it was the worm in the tequila bottle that caused it all.”
The letter was presented as part of an appeal, and Smothers was brought into court to testify. But once there, he recanted the statements in the letter, proclaiming it was his way of getting out of prison for a day to “come to court, see the countryside.”
Harris’ most recent appeal was denied in federal court in Nashville earlier this year, and now is pending in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. As part of this appeal, yet another psychiatrist, Dr. William Bernet of Vanderbilt, echoes the conclusions made years ago by the expert who inexplicably was never called to testify at trial. In this recent report, Bernet concludes, “Harris became paralyzed into inactivity during the course of the murder. At the time, Ms. Harris was not able to take appropriate action, such as running away or interfering or stopping the other people involved with the murder.”
For those too young to remember the murder of Dennis Brooks Jr. 14 years ago, their parents have relayed the horrific story as a sort of warning to beware, even in a small country town like Huntingdon.
And when McDonald married Harris and moved to town, some say his presence was a constant reminder of the tragedy.
McDonald is open about his prisoner bride and vocal about the fact that he believes she’s not guilty of murder. The front license plate on his car reads, “Teresa Harris Is Innocent,” and he’s written letters to local newspapers over the years sharing the sentiment. “They convicted her, and whether she’s guilty or not, they don’t want to be wrong,” McDonald says.
But Shirley Nanney, editor of the local Carroll County News-Leader, suggests Harris is just as culpable as her co-defendants.
“When this testimony came out that she took part in the sucking of his heart, taking out the organs of his body.… She didn’t pull the trigger of the gun, but people held her as accountable as any of the three,” says Nanney, who covered the case extensively over the years. “They were all just about equal in it. All three participated in such a gruesome crime.”
Nanney says it was the most heinous crime ever committed in Carroll County, and it infuriated the community.
The longtime newspaper editor also suggests that when McDonald first moved to town he tried to “intimidate” the people of Huntingdon, although she says he keeps a lower profile these days.
“I think people wondered why he did this. I guess he just felt sorry for her and thought maybe she wasn’t guilty because she didn’t pull the trigger,” she says. “I think his goal is to get her released because he feels she isn’t guilty.”
That is indeed McDonald’s goal, but four years after his wedding, he still lives alone.
“I fully admit I thought she’d get out. I felt her conviction was unfair and I really thought she’d get out on appeal,” he says. “If she’s never getting out, I don’t know what I’ll do for the rest of my life.”
After sitting quietly for a moment, pondering what he just said, tears well up in his eyes and he adds, “I can’t imagine ever abandoning her. I wouldn’t do it. I will die for this cause.”