Joe, 89

(1/2) “I was married about 53 years. I had some sorrows and some good times. My wife smoked a lot and that’s what killed her—lung cancer. My daughter was a nurse and she moved in with us, and we had an apartment built in the basement. She had two grown children and she was divorced. She took in a boyfriend who stayed with her. He had been there for three or four months and she told him not to come back because they weren’t getting along. That night, he came back and he put a ladder up on the third floor. That night, she had said he’s not coming in and she locked all the doors. But he went up there to the third floor with a ladder I had there and climbed in and stabbed her to death while she was asleep. She was 48. My wife was still living with us. She died two months later, and I was by myself and so I moved in here. He got 40 years, and the funny part about it is they said he could be paroled in 20. I don’t know how you can commit cold-blooded murder and get paroled in 20. He’s up in Hagerstown somewhere. I had seen him plenty of times and he didn’t seem like that type of person. I didn’t see her alive or dead after that morning when she said he wasn’t coming back. She was cremated and I didn’t get to see her. It was like she disappeared off the face of the earth.”