Four States: Chapter Fifty One – Mockingbirds and Amazing Grace

January – July 2007

By Friday afternoon, when the verdicts were in, I felt a sense of relief. The trial was over. No extending into next week. I wasn’t looking forward to spending the weekend replaying testimony in my head or dissecting every moment. I wanted distance from it—from the courtroom, from the language of guilt and innocence, from the weight of sitting still while strangers talked about my parents as evidence.

Some of my family stayed through Saturday. We went out to dinner together. We smiled. We laughed. It was the simple release of pressure—the feeling of a long-held breath finally being let out. For the first time in weeks, maybe months, the trial wasn’t sitting squarely on our shoulders. Being with my brother helped. Being together with family helped. In its own quiet way, the weekend felt like a celebration.

There was still one final matter left. Sentencing.

It was scheduled for March 27th. I was allowed to give an impact statement, as was one other family member. Technically, the statement could influence whether the judge extended mercy—but the two first-degree murder convictions made that point largely irrelevant. Dale would never see freedom again. The heavy lifting had already been done. Sentencing felt like a formality. Still, it mattered. It was my last opportunity to speak openly, on the record, with Dale sitting across from me. My final chance to say what needed to be said.

I had to choose who else in the family would speak. After careful thought, I chose my Auntie Beck. She was grateful when I asked her. Of all my mom’s siblings, she carried her grief close to the surface. I don’t mean that as criticism—only as truth. Her pain was raw and honest, and I believed she could speak not just for herself, but for everyone on that side of the family.

With that decision settled, I turned to my own statement—and immediately struggled.

I waited a few days before going back to the farm. I didn’t think it a good idea to head back up immediately after his conviction with Dale’s family still living at the end of the road. I had time. Buffy had been boarded with her veterinarian during the trial, and I was grateful for that. The last thing I wanted was to open the farmhouse door to an angry, hungry cat. When I picked her up, she seemed perfectly content—unbothered by the disruption. We went up to the farm together.

For the next few weeks, I spent nearly all my spare time boxing up my parents’ belongings. I pulled my own things—still stored in the alpaca barn—inside and began sorting through everything. What to keep. What to let go. What I wasn’t ready to decide on yet.

All the while, my mind kept circling the impact statement.

I had too many ideas. Too many directions. My emotional state changed what I wanted to say. On good days, I wanted to talk about how wonderful my parents were. On sad days, I wanted to talk about what had been taken from me. On angry days, I wanted to confront Dale’s lies head-on. Every draft leaned too hard in one direction. None of them felt right.

There had to be a middle.

One afternoon, while digging through boxes, I found my books. Buried among them was a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. I remembered reading it in junior high, staying up late because I couldn’t put it down. Jem, Scout, and Dill’s fascination with Boo Radley had pulled me in. Atticus Finch had always reminded me of my dad.

I sat there for a long moment, staring at the cover. Then I opened it and started reading again.

Boo Radley had been misunderstood, ostracized, reduced to rumor and hearsay. Stories followed him—violent, grotesque, completely false. It wasn’t until Scout actually encountered him that the truth became clear. None of what they’d been told was real.

That was it. That was the frame. Inspired by Mockingbird I quickly put together my impact statement.

March 27th arrived. We sat on the same side of the same courtroom where the trial had taken place. Dale and his attorney sat at the same table. Dale looked tired, thinner.

He read his allocution statement—his formal opportunity to address the judge before sentencing. He said what he did was wrong. He said he was sorry. He apologized to me and to his family for the pain he had caused.

Then it was my turn.

I wore a black suit with a red tie. I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out my statement.

Your Honor, I wish you could have met my parents. I truly believe you would have liked them.

My mother had a wonderful sense of humor and a way of lighting up a room without trying. My father almost always wore a grin—sometimes a full smile—and he had a genuine interest in other people. He wanted to know what you were working on, what mattered to you, and he encouraged you to give it your best. They were the kind of people who cared more about your problems than their own. No matter what they were dealing with, they always asked how you were doing first.

They lived full, active, productive lives—even in retirement. My dad worked for Ford Motor Company as a United Auto Worker for thirty years. My mom was a travel agent for more than twenty. They supported my brother and me in everything we did—football, baseball, track—whatever we were involved in, they were there. When they first moved back to West Virginia, they managed the Woodlands Apartments on Kingmont Road. My mom later worked at the Clarksburg Travel Agency until she retired.

They loved their alpacas. We had fourteen of them. They went to shows on the weekends, and we were expecting two babies just days after the shooting. Family was always woven into our lives, too. My grandfather suffers from myasthenia gravis, a muscle disease similar to Lou Gehrig’s disease. When it became too difficult for my grandmother to care for him alone, we travelled to South Carolina, brought him back to the farm, and he would stay with us for weeks at a time. My five-year-old cousin came along as well. That Thursday of the week of the shooting, my mom was supposed to pick them both up so they could spend part of the summer with us.

We were renovating the farmhouse ourselves. Building fences. Putting up barns. My parents were active in church. My mom sang on the worship team and practiced on Wednesdays. They belonged to a home group that met weekly, and they regularly went out to dinner with church friends. And yes—we were regulars at the local Cracker Barrel, eating there three times a week.

This was my parents’ life. This was our reality.

It is not the reality Dale wants you to believe.

Dale wants you to believe my parents took advantage of him, that we used a gas line to access our farm. The truth is that this so-called gas line is actually a 147-year-old road—there three years before West Virginia even became a state, and long before Dale ever showed up. Dale wants you to believe my parents and I had nothing better to do than make his life miserable. He wants you to believe my dad was some gun-toting thug who paid off police officers and randomly beat Dale for sport.

That version of my parents simply does not exist.

All of this reminds me of To Kill a Mockingbird and the character Boo Radley. Stories were told about him—that he stabbed his father, that he crept out at night and ate squirrels. It wasn’t until a little girl named Scout Finch befriended him that the truth came out: none of it was real.

None of Dale’s stories are real either.

During this trial, I endured two murders. One was the murder of my parents’ bodies. The other was the murder of their character. I have often asked myself why my parents were killed and I was spared. I believe one reason I survived is to set the record straight—to speak the truth Dale tried to silence on May 16. I am here to represent them.

My parents did not hate Dale. We felt sorry for him. When he did things that made our lives difficult, it didn’t make us angry—it hurt us. We couldn’t understand how someone who had once been kind to us could turn on us so completely.

My parents aren’t here to speak, so I will speak for them.

Dale, we forgive you. I forgive you. It was your choice to destroy the friendship you once had with my parents. You allowed jealousy, anger, and hatred to consume you—until it led to an attack at the post office and, ultimately, to murder. My hope—my prayer—is that you encounter a prison chaplain or someone in prison ministry who can help you confront the anger and darkness that led you to take two lives. I pray that God’s grace reaches your heart, so that when you face our Creator, you may find mercy. And perhaps, beyond this life, you can face my parents again and reckon with the friendship you destroyed here on earth.

To Dale’s family: if you are expecting retaliation or revenge, you are mistaken. You have nothing to fear from me. The tragedy is that you never had anything to fear from my parents either.

I’ll close with one final reference to Mockingbird. When Atticus Finch gives Scout an air rifle, he tells her, “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird, because they don’t do anything but sing their hearts out.”

My parents were mockingbirds.

When I finished reading, I felt a sense of completion. I had said what I needed to say. Nothing was left hanging. The biggest test for me was looking Dale in the eye and forgiving him publically. Offering forgiveness to Dale in what would be the last time I would ever see him took a supernatural courage. In return I got a very soft, “Thank you.”

My Aunt Beck went next. Her words were different from mine. Less measured. Less merciful. She spoke about the devastation of losing her sister and brother-in-law. About how my parents had been the ones who held that side of the family together. When she talked about losing her sister, the room felt it. She wasn’t just speaking for herself. She was carrying all of us.

The sentence was read: two life sentences, consecutive. Dale would spend the rest of his life in prison. Even if he were somehow granted another life, he would spend that one in prison too.

He was sent to a maximum-security prison. Given his age and physical condition, I was told that placement was effectively a death sentence—he wouldn’t last long. West Virginia doesn’t have the death penalty, and even in states that do, inmates typically spend years on death row before an execution is carried out. In this case, simply placing him in the general population of a maximum-security prison would accomplish the same end more quickly—and without the cost to taxpayers.

Dale lasted a little over five months.

July 7, 2007—I got a phone call.

“Dale Eagle died.”

I was told he had developed heart problems in prison. Doctors attempted open-heart surgery. There was a slim chance he would survive. He didn’t. He died on the operating table.

I didn’t feel anything. Not relief. Not anger. Not satisfaction. In my mind, Dale had already died. The trial was over. He had been sentenced. Prison was where he would die. End of story. This was just the final administrative detail catching up.

I made a round of phone calls so family members would hear it from me before hearing it somewhere else. Everyone asked the same question.

How are you doing?

I was fine. It is what it is.

A few days later, I learned something else. Before going into surgery, Dale had made a profession of faith. If it was genuine—and I choose to believe that it was—it changed everything.

I didn’t argue with the idea or wrestle with it. Scripture is clear. God desires all men to be saved. He shows no partiality. A faith that comes early in life is not weighed differently than one that comes at the end. Grace does not diminish with timing.

Some of my Christian friends understood immediately and rejoiced. Others reacted with anger. They hadn’t forgiven. To them, this felt unjust. I felt sadness for them. To reject grace is to misunderstand the depth of our own sin. No amount of good deeds outweighs it. Without Christ, we are spiritually dead—no matter how respectable, moral, or well-liked we appear.

We like to believe heaven is filled with good people who earned their way in, and hell with bad people who failed. The gospel tells a very different story. Heaven is full of people who know they don’t deserve to be there. Hell is full of people who thought they did.

There is nothing we have done—nothing—that God finds unredeemable. And there is nothing we can do that makes us worthy on our own. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. Grace has always offended our sense of fairness.

God has been doing this longer than we have. Long before my story, there was a man named Saul who hunted Christians, town by town, dragging them to prison and death. Then, on a road to Damascus, a blinding light stopped him. Saul was saved, renamed Paul, and became the last apostle—writing much of the New Testament that defines the very faith he once tried to destroy. The same grace that saved the persecuted saved the persecutor.

That is the gospel. God is holy. We are sinners who have broken His law and deserve judgment. Jesus Christ died in the place of sinners and rose from the dead. We are not saved by being good, but by repenting of our sin and trusting in Christ alone. And if that faith is real, it changes a life.

As I tried to process all of this, my thoughts kept returning to my parents. Long before any of this happened, they had mourned their broken friendship with Dale. What hurt them wasn’t just what he had done—it was what had been lost.

A deathbed conversion—if real—meant reconciliation where none had been possible on earth. It meant that the next time Dale saw my mom and dad, their meeting would not be marked by fear, betrayal, or violence—but by restoration.

I can think of no greater way for this story to end.