XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: rhk@pfeiser.com   
      
   VERO BEACH -- The years have not healed Don Ryce’s pain, only   
   prolonged it.   
      
   It was 1995 when his son, a gap-toothed 9-year-old named Jimmy,   
   was snatched from a Redland school bus stop, raped and killed.   
      
   As Ryce counts the last few days until Wednesday’s scheduled   
   execution of his son’s murderer, his anger burns as hot as it   
   did more than 18 years ago. And his sorrow has only been   
   compounded by two more deaths he traces back to that first,   
   monstrous act of a pedophile named Juan Carlos Chavez: the heart   
   attack that killed his wife, Claudine, in 2009 — a “broken   
   heart,” he says — and the suicide last year of his daughter,   
   Jimmy’s half-sister, Martha.   
      
   “In both cases, Jimmy’s memory, I can tell you, was very much   
   weighing on them at the time of their death,” Ryce said, talking   
   about the tragedy during a 90-minute interview in his Vero Beach   
   home. “So forgive me if I don’t shed many tears for Juan Carlos   
   Chavez.”   
      
   The losses of his wife and daughter blindsided him, just as   
   Jimmy’s did all those years ago when it seemed as though   
   everyone in South Florida showed up to help with the three-month   
   search for a boy grabbed yards from his doorstep. The abduction   
   and horrifying details that emerged later — Chavez had raped the   
   boy, shot him when he tried to escape, dismembered the boy’s   
   body but kept his book bag, all at a trailer less than a mile   
   from the Ryces’ home — marked the sad beginning of a new and   
   disquieting vigilance that reached far beyond South Florida.   
   Parents clutched their children closer. Authorities scrambled to   
   create better, faster ways to hunt for missing children.   
      
   And always the Ryce family was there, front and center, holding   
   each other up, in a national crusade to protect children from   
   predators. Eventually, their son’s legacy would include the   
   Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction; the Jimmy   
   Ryce Law Enforcement Training Center; a program to raise money   
   to give bloodhounds to police departments and the Jimmy Ryce   
   Act, a state law legislators are pushing to toughen, designed to   
   keep sexual predators in custody even after their sentences end   
   if they are still deemed dangerous.   
      
   Through it all, Chavez — who sowed the seed of so much pain —   
   has remained alive on Death Row, courtesy of Florida taxpayers.   
   If Chavez is executed Wednesday as scheduled under the death   
   warrant signed by Gov. Rick Scott, Ryce will be there to watch   
   the man he characterized as “a reptilian mutant” draw his last   
   breath.   
      
   It’s a promise he and Claudine, both lawyers, made to each other   
   after Chavez was sentenced to death. Don Ryce was the one with   
   health problems at the time, hypertension he developed during   
   the trial, a hellish three weeks of graphic testimony held in   
   Orlando after an impartial jury couldn’t be seated in Miami-Dade   
   County. To make their case, prosecutors used Chavez’s confession   
   in which he told police he pointed a gun at Jimmy and asked him:   
   “Do you want to die?”   
      
   One juror burst into loud sobs after a detective displayed three   
   plastic pots that had held Jimmy’s remains. Three others broke   
   down after rendering the guilty verdict.   
      
   Afterward, the Ryces pledged to each other that they would   
   witness the execution and “if one of us wasn’t going to be   
   there, the other would, for both,” Ryce said.   
      
   If the execution is delayed — legal appeals have been filed,   
   largely based on questions about the mix of chemicals used to   
   render killers unconscious before the lethal injection — Ryce   
   said it will be one more instance in which the predator is given   
   more consideration than the victim or victim’s family.   
      
   The prospect infuriates him, he said. “Most of us would only   
   wish we could have that painless a death, as he will have… Talk   
   about cruel and unusual, it would have been cruel and unusual to   
   let him try and escape and shoot him in the back and have his   
   last memory be someone standing over him and gloating over his   
   pain. That happened to my son.”   
      
   That last sentence comes out choked with anguish, his voice   
   breaking on the final word.   
      
   He struggled for control, steeling himself to return to the   
   point: He has no doubt that Chavez is guilty. Police testified   
   in the trial that Chavez himself begged police for the death   
   penalty, writing in a note before giving the confession led them   
   to Jimmy’s body: “My only wish and objective is to die.”   
      
   Chavez would later take the stand to deny his own confession,   
   pointing the finger at someone else.   
      
   But the evidence, Ryce said, is overwhelming. “No one that has   
   an ounce of intelligence and looks at the evidence in this case   
   can come to any other conclusion. He’s the guy. He did it. He   
   enjoyed doing it, and he’s about to pay the price that he ought   
   to pay for having killed my son.”   
      
   Strong words, reflective of how the Ryces faced tragedy from the   
   start, without sparing themselves and without blaming each   
   other. Private people at heart, they went public after Jimmy’s   
   death, harnessing their pain for prevention work. On the   
   family’s website, jimmyryce.org, they have posted dozens of   
   pictures of their boy’s South Florida childhood from infancy to   
   fifth grade — on the beach, posing by a fallen palm tree,   
   running in shorts with the dog — while also discussing in   
   unflinching terms what they could have done differently as   
   parents.   
      
   In today’s world of Amber Alerts, it’s hard to remember how few   
   parents had any real awareness of sexual predators, Ryce says.   
   “I remember how horrified we were when we first found out what   
   the probable motivation was for Jimmy’s abduction. We were   
   convinced he was abducted — we knew right away that he was not a   
   runaway — and these people were trying to break the news to us   
   of what likely was the reason. That was rough to learn.”   
      
   It hasn’t gotten easier, not really. The pain is a part of him   
   now, as it was for Claudine up to the day she died.   
      
   “You can’t imagine the strain you feel,” he says, his hand   
   straying to his chest. “You hear someone died of a broken heart   
   — and honestly, you feel something going on inside. I mean,   
   that’s as close to a broken heart as I ever want to happen. I   
   think finally it just got her.”   
      
   They never saw a grief counselor, serving that role for each   
   other, “which was far more meaningful. There are very few grief   
   counselors that can help in a situation like that.’’   
      
   The years and anguish have taken a physical toll. He uses a cane   
   now, a remnant of complications following knee replacement   
   surgery. His constant companion since Claudine’s death is a   
   small white Havanese dog named Ginger who wedges in next to him   
   on his customary chair in his living room. At 70, he is working   
   as an arbitrator on financial cases, basing himself in the Vero   
   Beach home he and Claudine bought in the years after Jimmy went   
   missing, with orange, fig, lemon and pistachio trees in the back   
   yard. At the front door, a large oil portrait of a smiling Jimmy   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)