10 KILLERS WHO CHANGED THEIR MINDS

Article BY LORI BELL

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We live in a very dark world. From stories of murderers walking free, to killers boasting about their crimes on Facebook, to terrorists targeting innocent civilians, experience shows time and again that a real-life “happy ending “ is more than most victims can expect,. However, sometimes a flicker of humanity can be found in even the most hardened killer’s soul. Here are 10 stories of ruthless killers or would-be killers whose humanity unexpectedly triumphed.

 

The Bomber Who Surrendered:

It was May 22, 2002, and the Palestine uprising was gushing over the Land of Milk and Honey and claiming victims on both sides. Arina Ahmed Shaebat began her long walk toward the Rishon Lezion Mall wearing a backpack full of explosives. A few hundred meters away, 14 year-old Issa Badur was hefting his own backpack, with Arin waiting until the survivors flocked for the safety of the mall before exploding her own. It was the dark days of the second Palestinian intifada, and the two militants expected to kill more than 100 people.

The two had been introduced only on that day, and came from the outskirts of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank with the aim to killing as many Jews as possible in a double suicide bombing pact. Both carried backpacks each containing more than 60 pounds of explosives and nails. Only Arin never detonated her bomb.

When Badir blew up the gaming tables, killing two bystanders, the survivors escaped into the mall without ever noticing the Palestine girl quietly removing her backpack and leaving. All told,dozens of people were spared because of Arin’s unexpected actions. Her motivations for volunteering with the Al-Aqasa Martyr’s Brigades, the Fatah affiliated military wing, weren’t really about political or religious ideology. Hers was more a personal vengence. At the time, she had recently lost her boyfriend, militant Jad Salem, who died in an explosion.

What caused her sudden change of heart? One sleeping child. As Arin stepped into the mall, she passed a mother carrying a newborn baby. Describing the moment later, she said, “I saw a baby with his mother and I thought, I don’t have a right from God to finish that baby’s life,” Instead she left, walking back to her nearby home, where she waited until the IDF arrested her.

When she was released from prison in 2010, she went on record saying she had no regrets about aborting the bombing. “ I couldn’t do the same thing that the Israeli soldiers do and we hate them for. I can’t take people’s lives.”

What turned a young and educational woman into a human bomb ready to kill and be killed? Shaebet, who speaks fluent English and some Hebrew, went to the edge of death and almost brought other people along with her.

 

The Hit Man Who Fell In Love:

In 2011, Brazilian housewife Maria Nikza Simones decided that Iranildes Aguuar Araujo was sleeping with her husband so she hired a hit man, Carlos de Jesus to kill Iranildes for the princely sum of $600. So far, so grim. But then the unexpected happened: Hardened killer de Jesus took one look at Iranildes and fell madly in love.

Instead of killing her, de Jesus confessed to everything and offered to marry her. Then things got really surreal. Rather than simply flee or refuse Maria’s money, they actually got married, faked Iranildes death using ketchup, and pocketed de Jesus’s fee. Unfortunately, they didn’t use it to buy a lifetime’s supply of dark glasses and fake mustaches: Maria stumbled across them kissing in the street a few days later. She then went to the police, who promptly arrested all three.

At least now Maria won’t have to worry about her husband and Iranildes being together. She should have hired a female hit woman with a vengeance for cheating men. Wouldn’t it be ironic if she shared a cell with her husband’s mistress?

 

The Unknown Guards:

Rudolf Brazda was born unlucky. How unlucky? In 1937, Brazda was one of the few openly gay people living in Nazi Germany. If you know anything about history, you know what’s coming next: Brazda was interned and sent to Buchenwald, a wearer of the pink triangle.

In those days, the pink triangle was no joke, Inmates designated as homosexuals were subjected to treatment that was brutal even by Nazi standards. Brazda had his face smashed to a pulp, was taken for a mock execution, and selected for extermination by forced labor. By rights, that should have been the end of his story ---- were it not for two of his guards.

For reasons that are unknown, they took pity on this poor, abused homosexual and quietly removed him from hard labor duties. Then, when the camp was being liquidated and the inmates forced on a death march, one of them hid Brazda in the pig shed ---- a move that saved his life.

Rudolf Brazda was the last known survivor of the “Pink Triangles.” A triangle of pink cloth on their uniforms distinguished them from the Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, disabled and other inmates. Hitler considered homosexuals infectious and sought to isolate or exterminate them to ensure his purpose German master race. Most of the “Pink Triangles” died, possibly up to 15,000 of them. Some were castrated in medical experiments aimed at making them “normal.”

 

The Shooters Who Stopped:

An unnamed 16 year-old gunman burst into his California school armed with a shotgun. After wounding one of his classmates, the would-be killer was preparing to fire again when Ryan Heber intervened. One of the school’s most popular teachers, Heber quietly asked the shooter to stop and hand over his weapon. According to witnesses, the gunman asked Heber to leave saying “I don’t want to shoot you.” But Heber stayed and ---- rather than gun down his favorite teacher---- surrendered his weapon without killing anyone.

The shooter plotted to target two students and found a gun believed to belong to his older brother. The shooter may have had up to 20 shotgun rounds in his pocket. He will be charged with attempted murder. Many students and community members said they knew the boy and said he was often teased and bullied.

Amazing as this is, it isn’t the only time it’s happened. In 2006, a 14 year-old opened fire in a Florida school. Before anyone was killed, teacher Jencie Fagan walked up to him and gave him a hug. That was all it took: The almost killer surrendered his weapon and a tragedy was averted. If only more of these stories ended this say.

Detectives found drawings and writing in the shooter’s locker that suggested he was planning to kill. He was booked on suspicion of attempted murder. He will be tried as an adult. Fagan said she felt bad for him, but that she was grateful no one was more seriously injured. “I felt real emotion for him, and I knew at that point his life would never be the same.”

 

The Letter That Changed A Murderer:

Unlike the people in previous entries, John Paul Madrona was a killer first and repentant later. John Paul Madrona was born in the Philippines in 1975, the third son of a prison guard who prayed that he would grow up to become a priest. In the early 90s he was assigned with carrying out a gangland hit ---- only to knock on the wrong door and kill innocent Tracy Takahashi instead. And there this gloomy story would have ended, were it not for Tracy’s brother.

Before the trial he wrote a long letter to Madrona, telling him exactly how many lives his thoughtless actions had screwed up. It ended with these words : “ You have to realize that you took from this earth someone who was loved dearly. Think about that for a long time. And turn your life around, whether you’re in jail or not. No excuses.”

Incredibly, his words touched Madrona. As the hit man later said, he would sit in his cell for hours on end, hearing them loop around his head ---- thinking about the life Tracy Takahashi could have been living. And, as the years slowly piled up, they began to change him.

He grew his hair, covered up his tattoos and dropped out of his gang. He stopped fighting and began going to church. Slowly, the full horror of his gang life became clear to him. Fast-forward 20 years and Madrona now spends his life caring for dying prisoners. Along with easing their suffering, he works with young gang members, trying to turn them away from their violent lifestyles and toward something productive.

To find redemption, Madrona knew that he had to show a sign that he had repented ---- that he had turned away from what he had been. The work in the hospice was not enough. It would be a letter of remorse and apology to Tracy’s brother and parents. For Tracy, Madrona may have changed his mind too late ----- but thanks to his brothers intervention, Tracy’s death was not in vain.

 

The Born Again Hit Man:

John Veasey was no ordinary criminal. A former Philadelphia hit man, he was implicated in a string of murders so brutal they terrified even seasoned Sicilian gangsters. Most notorious of these was his gunning down of mobster Mickey Ciancalini in broad daylight, a hit that sent waves through even the tough Philadelphia underworld. Eventually, Veasey was caught and sentenced for his part in the hit ---- and when he eventually made it out, everyone expected him to go back to his violent old ways. Only he didn’t. Instead Veasey found God.

Not right away, of course. As recently as 2008, he was arrested for smashing a glass through some poor guy’s face. But fast-forward to 2013, and this former hit man has renounced his mobster life and spends his time volunteering to drive the church bus in a small Midwest town.

Veasey attends weekly worship as a Born Again Christian in a Middle American suburb. There, he lives with a new wife and new identity, but still exhibits some of the old attitude that made him one of the most feared gangsters in Philadelphia.

Veasey keeps himself in shape and works on his boxing skills when he’s not at his job as a top car salesman or at home with his wife. Veasey was asked whether he still might have some of that bad gangster in him. “That’s something you’ll have to wonder … I don’t know,” he says with a laugh, “That’s still open for debate.”

 

The Serial Killer Who Turned Himself In:

By any sane measure, the story of Wayne Adam Ford is a disturbing one. An ex – marine and trucker, Ford was responsible for the sadistic murder of four prostitutes ---- raping, beating, torturing, and dismembering them. By 1998, it looked like Ford was gearing up to become a prolific serial killer, potentially destroying the lives of dozens more women and their families. Then on November 3 of that year, an odd thing happened, something so out of character for a violent, sexually sadistic killer that it almost defies logic: Ford walked into a California police station and turned himself in.

For a serial killer, this was an almost unprecedented move. Most serial killers are sociopaths, missing the part of their brain responsible for empathy. They wouldn’t be able to commit such awful crimes otherwise. But Ford not only confessed to the killings, he wept while doing so, showed remorse, and claimed he wanted nothing more than to die and no longer be a threat to other people. In other words against all logic, this perverted killer had had a change of heart.

Investigators say Ford told them that he killed four women, one of whose name he did not know, someone he picked up in Eureka, took to his trailer and strangled while having sex. Ford allegedly used a saw and knives to cut up her body, storing some of the parts in his freezer and burying her head and other parts in a sand bar of the Mad River, not far from his trailer. The woman’s headless torso was found by duck hunters, floating in Ryan Slough outside Eureka on October 26, 1997. Ford took investigators where he remembered burying her head, but they could not find it ----- perhaps, they fear, because it has been washed away.

Ford also told investigators that he killed Patricia Anne Tamez, a prostitute he picked up in Victorville, whose body was found in the California Aqueduct near Hesperia. Tamez’s breasts had been cut from her corpse, and authorities say it was one of those that Ford gave them.

Police say Ford also confessed to killing Lanett White, a 25-year-old Fontana mother of four. Her body was found in an irrigation ditch near Lodi in September. And they say he confessed to picking up a prostitute in Las Vegas, Tina Renee Gibbs, 26, and strangling her after sex. Her body was found in June in the California Aqueduct near the Kern County town of Buttonwillow.

Ford insists that he is not responsible for any deaths other than the four he has told police about. But investigators are painstakingly tracing his jobs and his trucking routes, matching them against unsolved murders of prostitutes and hitchhikers that go back as far as 1986.

In the initial hour after he turned himself in, Ford told investigators that he decided to confess because he wanted to stop himself from killing again and wanted to let the suffering families of his victims know what had happened to their loved ones. Most of all, he said, he just wanted to die.

Now, this story needs some qualifiers: The fact that he turned himself in doesn’t excuse what Ford had already done. Nor does his remorseful confession mean anything more than there was still a flickering of humanity somewhere in his soul buried under layers of ugliness. But it does show how even the worst killers can sometimes come back from the brink, even when it seems too late.

 

The Warlord Who Gave Up:

If there’s one type of person even less likely to turn themselves in than a serial killer, it’s an African warlord. Yet a Congolese war criminal known simply as “The Terminator” did exactly that.

To understand just how insane this is, we need to back up a little. Bosco Ntaganda is simply one of the worse dudes who ever lived. During a 25-year career as a rebel soldier, he oversaw a vast campaign of rape, wholesale murder, and massed killing that razed entire villages and slaughtered their inhabitants. As an additional bit of unpleasantness, Ntaganda also used drugged children as foot soldiers. And for over a decade he lived openly near the Rwanda border, flouting international arrest warrants and attempts to track him down.

Then in March, he apparently decided he had enough. This wanted war criminal, gangster, and untouchable mass-murderer, walked into the US embassy and politely asked staff to arrest and deport him to the ICC. Why did he do it? No one is sure. All we know is that he’s currently facing trial in the Hague, and justice will finally be done.

Ntaganda faces charges of conscripting child soldiers, murder, ethnic persecution, sexual slavery, and rape during the 2002-3 conflict in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

 

The Terrorist Turned Peace Worker:

In 1974, Sean O’Callaghan was a junior member of the Irish Republican Army ---- a veteran killer, bank robber, and bomber responsible for many deaths. By all accounts, he was a rising star of the Irish terrorist group, destined for big things and carrying a reputation for brutality. And then he changed his mind.

As O’Callaghan tells it, he was in a safe house one evening when news came through that a female police officer had been killed. According to his story, the IRA commander he sat next to responded, “ I hope she was pregnant, and we got two for the price of one.”

For O’Callaghan, that statement marked the beginning of the end. Although he stayed with the terror group for another five years, rising through the ranks to senior commander, the seed of doubt that callousness planted never vanished. By 1983, he’d turned informer, foiling an attack that would have seen members of the British royal family assassinated. A few years later he stopped a mass escape from a British jail. By the time 1998 rolled around, he’d done his time for his previous life and was now working to enhance the peace process ---- turning his back on the carnage that had defined his youth. These days he’s a security consultant and advisor on Irish terrorism, dedicated to peaceful causes. Not bad for a guy once sentenced to over 500 years on terrorism charges.

“I kind of accept that the IRA has the right to kill me. If they succeed, I would say, fair dues, “ said O’Callaghan . He is a soldier once again at war ---- but this time against the organization that taught him to kill.

 

The Reformed Dictator:

To call Hugo Banzer a bad guy would be an understatement. As president of Bolivia in the 1970s, he ran a regime so corrupt and brutal it almost gave Pinochet a run for his money. Opposition parties were outlawed, people “disappeared” and civilians were gunned down by his security forces. By rights, his story should have ended either in a bloody coup or a lifelong dictatorship. Only for once, things didn’t turn out as planned.

After the Era of Latin American dictatorships crumbled. Banzer underwent a surprising makeover. Instead of trying to keep his regime intact, he began to take part in the Democratic process. And not in some sham mugabe – style way, either: He set up a political party and promptly lost a string of elections with good grace and dignity. Even weirder, when he placed first in the 1985 presidential election ---- albeit with less than 50 percent of the vote --- he actually stepped aside to allow congress to elect a compromise candidate. And Banzar stayed out in the cold until 1997, when he won the election fair and square. Back in power, he refrained from going all Pinochet again and ruled like any other democratically elected leader until his death in 2002.

Now, it may just be that Banzer was a canny enough operator to know he had to move with the times, but still; A dictator who became a champion of Democracy? You almost couldn’t make it up. Former President Hugo Banzer, a onetime dictator who led Bolivia to democracy and helped wipe out cocaine production, died of a heart attack at age 75. The government declared 30 days of mourning, and ordered the city of Santa Cruz, Mr. Banzar’s home, to shut down for his funeral.

Quite a few interesting turn around. Let’s just hope that more “killer” instincts turn into empathy. Makes you wonder just how many troubled people are teetering on the edge of becoming a murderer or sway to the side of sanity.