Dear John,

My name is Dayly Lawlor. You don’t know me, but if you’ve got a good memory, maybe you’ll recognise my last name. A week ago I was sitting watching the news in my apartment with my mother, and a report came on about three million dollars cash found in suitcases, buried in the desert in Pasadena. Some builders found it, I think. (I have no idea why they involved the police and didn’t just run off with it.) The report said the money probably belonged to a San Quentin death-row inmate named John Fishwick, who buried it there for safekeeping before he was arrested. Some criminologist they dragged on the show said he agreed. I’d never heard of you before, but my mom laughed and said she slept with you a long time ago. Actually, she knew exactly how long it had been: twenty years. I’m 19 years old in February.

You probably get a lot of letters from people on the outside you’ve never met. Crackpots and weirdos who want to know about your crimes. I’ve actually written to a couple of other guys who my mother was hanging out with around the time that I was conceived, and two of them are currently incarcerated, like you. She has always been a rough sort of person. Fell in with the wrong crowd really young, I think. She is an addict who gave me up when she was a teenager. I have mixed feelings about her, but I don’t want to bore you with all that. I wonder if you remember her? You must have been hanging around a lot of bad people. At the time, you were at the height of your career. That was just before Inglewood. My mom said you would turn up to parties at clubs and throw cash around, then leave before the police arrived to get you. I can see the attraction, I guess. You were probably thought of as a kind of Robin Hood. But I have to say before I go on that what you did on 11 May 2001 in the Inglewood Chase Bank was truly shocking to me. I read everything I could find about you and the massacre, and the internet these days has all the grisly pictures available if you happen to take a wrong turn and stumble upon them.

I’m not writing to interrogate you about your crimes. I’m sure you get enough of that. I’m writing to see if you remember Emily Lawlor, who some people called ‘Sneak’. Is there any truth to her saying that the two of you were together around that time? Has she ever contacted you to tell you that you might be my father? Have you had any contact with her at all over the years?

I realise I’ve written this whole letter so far without saying anything about myself, in case you were interested. I guess it’s weird to think that I’d be curious about you and you wouldn’t be curious about me. I live in Toluca Lake, near the studios, because my housemate is an aspiring actress and there are a lot of people like that around, so the rent is pretty cheap. I’m taking community college classes in animal studies, and I like to rescue and rehabilitate animals when I can. At the moment I’m raising a juvenile Botta’s pocket gopher, if you’ve ever heard of one of those. They’re native to the Northwest. Lots of them in Texas, too. I found it poisoned. He’s a very sweet animal (I’m guessing it’s a he – it’s extremely hard to tell). A couple of months ago I had a pigeon that I found on the Ventura Freeway that had been buffeted by a car, and luckily it recovered quickly, because my housemate was pretty grossed out with me for having it here. She was convinced she was going to get bird lice. There are sadder parts to my life, too. I’m not a saint. But I’ll spare you those until I see if you ever reply to me.

I’ve enclosed a picture of myself and my gopher, Pockets. The internet is pretty vague about the photograph restrictions for death-row mail at San Quentin, so I hope they get through.

Kind regards, and hope to hear from you soon,
Dayly