A Straight Road to Hell

By Jerry Boyer

At the age of eighty, Melissa Ann Parker was the oldest woman ever to be executed in the state of Texas. Her crime of passionthe murder of her only son, Kendallwas one that she refused to ever explain. She took the reasons for her actions with her into death. During her twenty-year tenure on Death Row, she meets reporter Charlie Dodson, who is sent to interview the oldest person awaiting execution in Texas. Charlie becomes enchanted with this strange, ethereal woman, continuing to visit her until her demise.

After her death, he discovers that she has left her considerable estate to him. In order to put her memory to rest, he resolves to uncover the reason for her crime. His efforts lead him down a path of corruption so dark and evil, the worst criminal would have loathing for persons who could involve themselves in such a venture.

Charlies quest for understanding is rich in intrigue, deception, vice, and danger, but he cant step away until he knows why Melissa Ann chose to brutally murder her only son.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462024728

Book preview

PART I

Chapter I

Melissa Ann Parker was in her eightieth year the day she walked the last mile. She had been on death row for twenty years after she was convicted of the brutal murder of her only son, Kendall, and the subsequent arson cover up.

On that sad day, there were no family members present. She had none. There were no angry vengeance seekers eagerly awaiting her last mortal moment. She would have been the only person to qualify for such a role and she was in no position to wear two hats that day. The warden was there as were the chaplain and customary medical personnel. There were a few attorneys who had worked on her case in some capacity. There were several reporters present, pens and pads ready to record any last words she might have left us with. And that was about it.

We watched soberly as Melissa Ann Parker, the oldest woman ever executed in the State of Texas drew her last breath. I watched helplessly as her frail body trembled like the delicate leaves of an Aspen before she became eternally still. It was at that point that I noticed the smile on her face and the aura. I can’t speak for the rest of the witnesses, but I will forever wonder what on earth she was thinking in those last few minutes of her life that gave her so much peace. Her face glowed as if it had been backlit.

I had been making the trip from San Antonio to the Gatesville Correctional Facility for Women once a month for the last ten years to interview and to visit this enigmatic woman. My first several visits with her were prompted by an assignment my editor gave me. Melissa was determined to run out all of her appeals and legal options. My editor felt that she was a good candidate for a feature in case she did become the oldest woman to be executed in Texas.

I continued my visits with her for the last ten years leading up to her execution because I, like everyone else who knew her, had fallen in love with her. I know it sounds strange to say it that way, but she provoked people to more than just like her. She provoked people to adore her, become intensely loyal to her, to think of her and to address her as a guru who was blessed with some strange and rare intelligence. She was quiet spoken and nonjudgmental of others and herself. She was disarmingly candid and objective about telling the harshest of truths, but only if those truths were about herself. She never, or at least I never heard her, discuss other people’s shortcomings.

It would have been easy to dismiss my obsession with her by saying I was in love with her mind, however, her physical appearance had everything to do with her persona. She was a small woman, barely five foot three and thin. If you looked at her without knowing how strong her personality was, you would think of her as a fragile, breakable, exquisite piece of hand blown glass.

Her eyes were her most notable feature. If eyes are indeed the windows to the soul, then her soul was well camouflaged. Firstly, the color of her eyes changed. Sometimes her eyes were an incredibly clear emerald green. At other times they were a Caribbean blue. Still other times they were pure gold similar to the color of animal eyes. You could always see youth in her eyes. She had the most seductive eyes I have ever seen on any person. When she listened to you, she listened with her eyes. When she spoke to you, she spoke with her eyes. As a bonus, a sparkle of humor accompanied every graceful look.

Melissa could put the lightest touch on the heaviest of subjects. But could you read her thoughts in those wonderful eyes? I couldn’t. I never knew what she was thinking. I never could tell if she was telling me the truth or a lie or anything in between. And yet, I believed every word she said. After ten years of what I can only describe as an intimate relationship, at least on my part, I still did not know why she had killed her only child.

Her prison caretakers, all of whom were much her junior, called her Mom. Most lived in the nearby town of Waco and took tales of her out of the prison facility and into the town where she became quite the legend over the years. She was often quoted and used as an example of good and bad behavior to straighten up errant children.

She became especially famous in the Mexican culture of Texas as a modern day Llorona, the spook who walked in search of her children who had died by her own hands one fateful day.

Over time, the life and death of Melissa provoked songs, stories, blame and glory. In death, she became an example of good and bad behavior, something she would have abhorred had she been alive.

Melissa died not knowing she was a folk hero. Tales may leave a prison’s walls but very little information is readily available from the outside. Most news doesn’t even apply to prison life. A prisoners’ only objective is to get out and in Melissa’s case, that didn’t even apply.

As she walked from her cell to an awaiting van, which would drive her to her impending death in Huntsville, the warden on one side, the chaplain on the other, her fellow inmates called out to her.

Goodbye, Mom.

Love you, Mom.

I’ll miss you, Mom.

Many in Gatesville cried that night, even those who thought she should pay for her crime with her life.

The day of Melissa’s execution, she was moved to the Huntsville prison for men. No such facility existed for women because of the rareness of such an occasion. The trip was a long one for the entourage who accompanied her on this last day of her life. Her apparent serenity made it even longer because of what she was about to experience. She had not asked for any medication that day nor was she given any.

Meanwhile, outside the walls of Huntsville prison, hundreds of people who had come from all over the world to protest something were amassing. There were protesters for and against the death penalty of course. There were people with age discrimination issues. There were people with right to die and assisted suicide issues. Some people argued that if it was legal to make a citizen’s arrest, it ought to be legal to perform a citizen’s execution, which is what they believed had happened in this case. There were more than a few people who had studied the particulars of this case and believed, rather blindly, that Melissa had rightfully executed her son.

Surprisingly, the many differences of opinion that evening did not turn ugly. In addition, the debates going on outside the walls of Huntsville prison were not sophomoric. There were serious, where do we go from here discussions, with answers in mind. I still believe there are no answers to some of those questions. Otherwise, why would they still be topics for debate? Melissa would not have agreed with me.

There was a loud, profound silence emanating from the hundreds of people standing in the moonlight outside the gates of the Huntsville Correctional Facility for Men when they announced Melissa’s death. The silence spread like a shroud over, around, and through the profusion of pine trees surrounding the prison facility. Even the full moon could not lighten up the darkness of that night.

The medical entourage packed up the body, loaded it into a waiting ambulance and drove the long way back to Waco for an autopsy. Can you imagine the legal need for an autopsy after a State ordered execution? But again, I digress.

Melissa had requested that I remain with her body after her death so I could carry out her burial arrangements. Happily for me, her request was honored.

Besides the driver, there were two med-techs, and the young doctor who had administered the lethal drugs. He was sitting in the back with the body checking for a pulse every few minutes. Seemingly, he was having a hard time accepting the fact that she had passed on. His decision to accompany the body back to Gatesville was only one of the unusual decisions made by people associated with Melissa.

After a long ride in deep silence, the doctor noted aloud, his face filled with anguish, I was never so scared in my life. Her skin was so thin and her veins were like threads. I used the smallest needles I had, but it still felt like I was trying to stick a telephone pole in her arm.

I don’t think they should execute a person that old, added one of the med-techs.

It’s like putting a pillow over your grandmother’s face, said the driver with an accusing glance over his shoulder at the doctor.

Did you see that glow on her face? I wondered if anyone else had noticed the aura.

Yeah, what was that all about? The driver shook his head wonderingly as everyone else nodded in agreement.

I saw it too. That smile on her face is still with me. One thing’s for sure, I’m not doing any more executions.

The doctor had just been in practice for a couple of years and looked younger than anyone in the ambulance. He was so starved for money after medical school that he would have taken any job to augment his meager income and help pay off his substantial student loans. The money he earned for executing Melissa Ann Parker, however, proved to be not nearly enough. He checked for a pulse one more time before he fell into a silent, guilty reverie for the remainder of the trip.

The warden of the women’s facility reported in a later interview that she got no sleep that night and very few all night sleeps for the rest of her life. The chaplain in attendance spent the night on his knees praying that he had delivered Melissa’s soul to heaven rather than hell. It was said that he was praying the same prayer on the day he died.

Two days after Melissa’s final ordeal, I accompanied her body on the train back to El Paso, Texas, where she was born. I saw to it that she was buried next to the man she had murdered. That’s the way she wanted it.

Her will was read in an El Paso attorney’s office. At that time, I learned that her father had set up a small trust fund from the rent he received from her house. All of her worldly belongings had been kept in a double storage shed, which the attorney had continued to pay rent on for the last twenty years. This, and any other expenses she had incurred had been paid for out of that fund.

Melissa’s mother had passed away within a year of her daughter’s imprisonment and her father about six years after that. Their estate, which was a hefty million and a half dollars, had been left to her in a separate, more secure trust fund. Since Melissa was an only child, her parents held out the hope that their beloved daughter would somehow be freed from her appointment with death. The trust they set up could only be broken when Melissa was either freed from prison or by whomever she left it to in the event of her death. Her father’s lawyer oversaw her trust funds and paid any debts that were owed.

I was not surprised to learn that she had left her entire estate to me. We had talked about it many times. I was, however, amazed at the size of the estate.

I had the key to her storage facility and the deed to her house in my pocket when I left the attorney’s office. I opted to liquidate the money from the smaller trust fund, which was then transferred to my bank account. I left the large trust fund in the care of her father’s attorney. He had done an excellent job of managing her affairs up to now. He only smiled when I asked him to continue. I’m sure he and his family took an extensive, and, I felt, well-earned vacation shortly after that.

I wound up staying in El Paso and, of course, researching the causes for Melissa’s criminal behavior.

Chapter 2

Melissa had lived in the same house since 1956. To my surprise, a few of her neighbors were still there. They gave me the names of those who had been closest to her, most of whom had moved away or passed away. I had hundreds of hours of taped interviews with Melissa. Still, it was reassuring to talk to people who had known her and even nicer to corroborate information she had shared with me about her life.

I decided to start with a childhood friend Melissa had mentioned many times. I had a few weeks available to me before the present tenants moved out of her house making it available for me to move in. Melissa often spoke fondly of a Nancy Boyd. She claimed Nancy to be her oldest and dearest friend. Melissa had ended their relationship because she felt it would be too difficult to maintain under the circumstances. She did, however, mention the last time she had heard from her, years earlier, she was living in Prescott, Arizona. This information was revealed to me only weeks before her appeals ran out. One of the promises I made to her was to look Mrs. Boyd up and tell her of her friends death. I decided to see if I could contact her.

Before packing my bags, I made a phone call to Prescott in an effort to locate Melissa’s old friend, Nancy. Honestly, I never dreamed that finding her would be so easy. She was actually in the phone book. She answered my call on the first ring.

Nancy was an upbeat, friendly, person who seemed anxious to meet me. I thought she might be somewhat morose because of the circumstances of my visit, but there was not a hint of that. She was anxious to hear as much as I could tell her about Melissa’s last years and she was equally anxious to share her knowledge of Melissa with me. Before we said good-bye, she gave me detailed directions to her place adding, with a teasing lilt to her voice, that I would be a working guest.

Don’t think you’re going to come up here just to chitchat, Charlie. There’s lots of work to be done and you’ll have to pull your weight just like the rest of us.

With that, she burst into loud and long laughter. In fact, she was still laughing when she hung up. I liked her already.

The first thing I did when I arrived in Prescott the next day was to call Nancy and tell her I was in town. I was fully prepared to stay in a motel rather than cause her any inconvenience.

No problem, she said. Just come on up to the house and we’ll figure it out from there.

When I showed up at her door that evening, I was greeted by a seventy-six year old woman dressed in faded jeans, a torn western shirt, and a well-worn pair of cowboy boots. Her voice was raspy with age and way too loud. Her skin was as dry and cracked as the Arizona desert. Still, she was an attractive woman with wonderful high cheekbones and a strong determined look about her.

She must have missed her husband very much because she greeted me with, Hi. You must be Charlie. I’m Nancy. She stuck out her hand to shake mine. I see you found the place with no trouble. My husband, Gary, usually took care of directing people out here but he died about ten years ago and I’m still mad as hell about it.

As we stood there, sizing each other up, I noticed by the look on her face that she wasn’t exactly sure what she had signed up for. Finally, she took a step back all the while looking me up and down in a not too approving way. Despite her obvious reservations, she resigned herself to invite me in.

Follow me, she barked.

I followed her to the kitchen where she immediately started writing out a shopping list, which she thrust into my hand.

Drive back into town, Charlie. You’ll see a Wal-Mart off to your left. You’re going to need all this stuff if you’re going to hang around here for a while. Those sandals you got on won’t last a day out here.

I did as I was told. I never felt so silly in my life as I did when I showed up at her door the second time wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and cheap cowboy boots. I needn’t have been embarrassed because Nancy smiled approvingly and we began the process of getting to know each other.

She had turned her twenty-acre spread into a dude ranch after her husband had passed away. She ran it virtually by herself. She allowed me to stay in the big house, as she called it, and treated me like a special guest out of respect and love for her old friend, Melissa.

As busy as she was, we had lots of time to talk. I felt like a newborn colt following his mother around the ranch as she tended to her unending chores in her open Jeep or one of the dune buggies she kept on the place. Nancy got up as early as four o’clock in the morning to start her daily routine. Around nine, she would return to the house for breakfast and coffee.

She put me to work the day after I arrived. It was my job to have breakfast and coffee ready when she returned from the stables. I, in fact, took on all the cooking chores. I was a good cook as long as the main ingredient was hamburger meat. It was a chore I enjoyed doing.

There was no maid service available on the ranch. Nancy would deliver fresh sheets, if needed, and towels to her tenants and pick up the soiled laundry. It was the tenants’ job to strip and remake their own beds. Therefore, we spent the afternoons doing laundry together, which gave us some time to share our memories of a most remarkable woman and to get to know each other better.

Nancy’s description of her own life was almost as interesting as Melissa’s. She was a good listener but she was an even better storyteller. I felt comfortable around her from the beginning and vowed to keep her in my life in some capacity for as long as I could.

As Nancy told it, she had started out with one guest cabin for her friends and relatives to stay in when they came to visit. As her friends and relatives dwindled, she began renting it out to people who were recommended to her by her neighbors or other acquaintances. Word quickly spread of this Old West reincarnation and Nancy was in business.

The big house was situated on the highest hill overlooking the rest of her land. She and her husband had it custom-built to accommodate their life style and their respective businesses, which they conducted out of their home.

The one thing Nancy and her husband had failed to consider when they built their home on top of that hill was the wind. The globe willows they had planted around the circumference of the house served as a windbreaker, however, the wind was relentless. Outdoor entertainment was not possible in that environment. Nancy said she didn’t have time for entertaining at home anyway. The only respite from the wind was a covered front porch where one could sit and enjoy the view. For some reason, that porch was cool, pleasant, and immune to the ever-present Prescott gales.

Nancy could have cared less about the wind. Besides, she added. That’s where I scattered Gary’s ashes when he died. The wind took them right away. That’s what he wanted and when I die, that’s what I want my friends to do with my ashes.

They each loved horses, so caring for stables and other horsy necessities had always been an integral part of their daily routine. I had never ridden much in my life, but in the two weeks I spent with Nancy, I rode enough to be able to eat my dinner sitting down after the first few days. We celebrated with Champagne the first night I could do that.

Her cabins now numbered ten. In addition, she had two bunkhouses for student wranglers who came and worked on the ranch during the summer. Some of the parents paid Nancy handsomely to provide their kids with the experience of a lifetime. Other kids were homeless or neglected and worked the ranch for room and board as an alternative to a terrible reality. She worked them hard, but I noticed they all wanted to come back.

Chapter 3

So, how long had you known Melissa? I asked as we threw a load of sheets into the industrial sized washing machine Nancy had wisely invested in.

I can’t remember not knowing her, Nancy began in her gravely voice. It seems impossible that she’s gone. She had the most incredible life of anyone I have ever known. When I was a young girl, I was very interested in music. You know, writing songs, playing the piano, singing in my awful singing voice, which I, mistakenly thought was right next to angels and Dolly Parton. It wasn’t until I heard Melissa sing that I knew I would never have a life on the stage. For my tastes, it all had to be country and western. I was a Texas girl and proud of it. Actually, I had known Melissa for years before I knew she could sing the way she did. In fact, she didn’t sing to anyone’s knowledge until she was in high school. But let me tell you, Charlie, when she started to sing, people started to listen.

I watched as she unconsciously got up, moved the linens from the washer to the dryer and returned to her chair by the window.

There wasn’t anyone who could sing better than she could. Of course, her parents took a dim view of anything that smacked of show business but Melissa was a headstrong girl and if she wanted to do something, she generally did it. Both of our parents were well off as you probably know by now. My parents were supportive of anything I did and spent a lot of money trying to provide me the skills I needed to realize my dreams. Melissa’s parents were the opposite. They tried every trick in the book to divert Melissa’s interests into all things more conservative. They sent her to college to become an architectural engineer thinking that would incorporate her artistic abilities and temperament into something she could take to the bank. Melissa went to college but she never became an engineer. She dropped out after her third year and never looked back. It was so ironic to me that she never took a lesson in piano or voice and yet she was the most talented musician I have ever known.

Nancy got up and went to the refrigerator. With the door open she turned and announced in her loud, scratchy voice, I’m having a beer. Do you want one too?

Of course I did. She brought over two cold cans and sat down sprawling her long legs over one arm of the chair. She opened the pop-top on hers, took a long sip and began again.

"I started taking piano lessons at the age of five and never had a chance of being as good as Melissa was. I studied art in college for four years and never got good enough to paint a barn. Melissa never took a single