GOING TO SLEEP
“If a man were torn to pieces in my presence it would not have been so repulsive as this ingenious and elegant machine by means of which they killed a strong, hale, healthy man in an instant.”
Leo Tolstoy, on the execution of Francis Richeux, April 6, 1857
“This was my first execution and I was completely fine with it. Many, many people asked me if I was really okay. I really was. In fact, I felt bad, like, ‘Am I supposed to be upset about this? Do people think I’m evil or something because I’m not?’”
Michelle’s journal, on the execution of Javier Cruz, October 1, 1998
An inmate once told me I brought sunshine to death row. He’s not the only one. Do you know how many people have told me I radiate light? On a recent trip to London, a colleague told me that she enjoys doing things with me, because I have a “genuine enthusiasm.” A lot of people have told me similar things: that my enthusiasm is child-like, that I’m youthful, that I always seem happy. Some of this is true. I genuinely get excited about crushed ice, hand fans, cheese fries, light-up toys, novelty cups and pretty much anything covered in glitter or rhinestones. I get weirdly competitive at board games and never just let children win. I love scavenger hunts and mystery games and escape rooms. I let people believe that is all I am, because I hate letting anyone down, no matter how life, or the people in it, let me down. I will gather friends around a table, drink cocktails and entertain them with sarcastic quips and stories, because that is what people have come to expect of me. I joke around, because it makes me uncomfortable to talk about serious things. I am comically self-deprecating, especially about things that have brought me pain. But, in secret, I cry more than any of them would think. I have a pocket of inner darkness that sometimes consumes me and makes me want to shut out the world. That’s how I feel now, thinking about the things I saw and heard in that death chamber. I can’t get the tears to stop rolling down my cheeks.
It’s a big deal to be born in Galveston. In Texas, people ask all the time: “Oh, are you a BOI?”—meaning, was I “born on the island.” I even have a BOI sticker on my car. My brother was born off the island and I like to tell him that he’s inferior to me for that very reason.
Galveston was a cool place to grow up, very laid-back in a lot of ways. I had a summer job in one of the tacky souvenir shops and friends who worked as lifeguards or on burger stands. We had a condo right on Seawall Boulevard, with a view of the beach, and a hunting cabin up in Texas Hill Country, which my dad, uncles and grandpa built from scratch. There was no electricity, a wood-burning stove for heat and a giant rain-water tank. It was rugged and remote and there were scorpions, snakes and all sorts of freaky bugs. All we had for entertainment was this big radio that stayed on around the clock, playing old country songs. I felt so safe and content, curled up in bed in the dark, listening to the grown-ups talk and laugh and play cards with the radio playing softly in the background.
My father started his career as a journalist in Galveston, which is how he met my mom—he was a dashing young police reporter and she was this young, foxy thing working as a records clerk at the Galveston Police Department. I remember hugging him when he got home from working at the Galveston County Daily News, and inhaling the comforting smell of newspaper ink. It’s still one of my favorite scents. When I was 16, we moved to Illinois, where my dad got a job as a publisher of The Benton Evening News. Benton is a quiet little town, with a population of less than 10,000, but it’s had its brush with infamy: shortly before we moved there, four members of the Dardeen family were viciously murdered in the town. The father was found dead in a field with his genitals stuffed in his mouth, and the mother and son were found beaten to death in their trailer. Even worse, while being beaten, the mother gave birth, and the baby was battered to death as well. Bizarrely, one of the prime suspects—a guy named Tommy Sells, who they believe killed 20-odd people in total—wound up years later on Texas death row, and I ended up face to face with him in the interview room.
Moving to Benton meant breaking up with my boyfriend and losing my first love, but I soon found a new one: the Evening News needed a darkroom technician, so that became my job, even though I was still in high school. I would go to work at 6 a.m. every day, the photographers would bring me their film and I’d develop it. My hands were a mess, because of the chemicals, and I ruined most of my clothes, but I delighted in that job. I became a photographer, a 17-year-old covering car wrecks and fires. I had no issues taking those kinds of pictures, except for one time I was dispatched to a wreck involving a girl I went to school with, I got upset and refused to get close. My dad said, “You need to get in there!” And I finally snapped: “I can’t! I know her!” I shoved the camera into his chest and walked away. Later, he impressed upon me that, as a journalist, there would be times I’d witness scenes that would disturb me, but I’d have to do it anyway, in order to relay the news to the public, which was what I was being paid to do. I came to realize he was right. It taught me that I was doing a job, and if you’re doing a job, you need to do your best, even if it means having to take pictures of someone you know who might be badly injured.
Although my parents wanted me to go into journalism, I was a rebellious teenager and decided to study business at Texas A&M University instead. I didn’t know what type of business I wanted to go into, but I pictured myself wearing cute suits and making lots of money. But after a few business math classes, I realized I was awful at it. So I took a journalism class, just to see if I might like it, which I did. I switched my major to journalism, and a wonderful professor named Ed Walraven set me up with a job at the local newspaper, The Bryan-College Station Eagle. There was no going back from there.
I thought I was going to be reviewing restaurants, but was the obituary girl instead. I’d get all these forms from local funeral homes and write up these dead people’s lives, some of them fascinating, most of them humdrum. I had a stint as the police reporter, during which I covered a Christmas Day escape from a county jail and an explosion in an oil field in a little town called Dime Box. One of the workers was killed by the explosion while he was standing on a platform, and he’d died where he was leaning. Because of the flames, they couldn’t get close enough to remove his body, so I watched it burn all day, until it was a charred, black figure. It was disturbing, but somebody had to cover this stuff. Even though I was a young college student, I was also a police reporter, and I wanted to be good at it, so I never let things get to me.
Looking back, it seems inevitable that I’d end up working in death, and it’s true that I’ve always had a macabre side and a wicked sense of humor. I’ve always been interested in crime, and Texas is a hotbed of the craziest crime stories. I also like mysteries, riddles, puzzles, anything that needs to be solved. It’s probably why I’m interested in smart, complex, multi-dimensional people. What makes them tick? Why do they think in a certain way? What makes them do what they do? And in the prison system, there’s a whole population of people whose brains work differently than the norm.
After stints at the Chicago Sun-Times and a newspaper in Leavenworth, Kansas, my dad took a job as the publisher of The Huntsville Item, about 70 miles north of Houston and 45 minutes from College Station, where I was still a student. I met the editor of the Item at a job fair in 1998, found out they had an opening, interviewed for the job and got it. My dad had no idea. The managing editor went into his office one day and said, “Hey, good news, we’ve filled that reporting position.” My dad said, “Great. Who is it?” and the managing editor told him it was me. Later, my dad said he was a bit unsure about it, because either people might think I was the favored one or he would have to be harder on me. It was the latter route he went down.
My first beat was city government, with a hodgepodge of things thrown in, like covering the local hospital and writing feature stories. Because it was a small newspaper with only three reporters, it was not uncommon for me to write three to five stories a day. Suddenly, I was a big fish in a little pond, and I loved it. One day, the woman who covered the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) wasn’t able to witness an execution, so I was asked to step in—not only are a victim’s and inmate’s loved ones invited as witnesses in the death chamber, but there are also spots for five reporters, with one always set aside for the Item. My dad called me to his office and asked, “Can you handle it?” And I said, “Yeah, I’ve got this. This is not going to be a problem for me.”
The woman I replaced gave me a rundown of what was going to happen that night: I’d go to an office building across from the Walls Unit, where all the executions in Texas take place, and meet a guy named Larry Fitzgerald, who was the manager of the TDCJ Public Information Office; he’d take me to his office, where we’d hang out until we got the call. Then, I’d be escorted to a witness room in the death chamber, where the inmate would already be laid out on a gurney, with the IV lines attached to his arms. He’d make a last statement, he’d go to sleep, and I’d return to the office to write my story. That’s how it was presented to me and that’s exactly what happened.
Javier Cruz had killed two elderly men in San Antonio in 1991, so I went into the death chamber thinking, “Hmmm, this man beat two old men to death with a hammer and he’s just going to sleep? I can deal with that…” It really didn’t bother me at all, to the extent that I don’t remember much about Cruz’s execution. I got back to the office, my dad asked if I was okay, and I said, “I’m fine, I’m going to write the story.” I wrote it in less than an hour. I was 22.
“Looking to his family while repeating, ‘I’m okay,’ and waving aside his chance to make a last statement, 41-year-old Javier Cruz was put to death Thursday night—the 15th person to be executed this year in Texas…”
From Michelle’s story on Javier Cruz, The Huntsville Item, October 2, 1998