Christmas 1988

I was sitting in the living room jamming out to Twisted Sister’s “Stay Hungry” when I heard the postman crunching up the sidewalk. I opened the front door to let a blast of freezing cold winter air rush into the house.

“Merry Christmas!” I said, not realizing it would be the last time I would look forward to a Christmas season ever again.

He handed me a card. “Merry Christmas to you too,” he said. I heard his boots crunching on the snow as he continued his mail route. I didn’t see him leave. I was too busy staring at the return address on the card.

Tim Nagle. My dad. It was the first Christmas card in my 16 years on earth that I had ever received from him. I opened the card and out fell 20 bucks.

Woo-hoo, party money, I thought.

The card had a little fairy-like angel on the front and the inside read, “I HOPE CHRISTMAS IS HEAVENLY FOR YOU. LOVE. DAD.”

I will never forget those words written in that card by Hallmark. They spoke the truth that was yet to come. That truth that changed my life forever.

I ran to the kitchen. The microwave clock said 3:35 p.m. I tried to call my dad. No answer. I left a message on his answering machine. “Hey dad, are you there? Pick up the phone, I got the Christmas card. Thanks for the money. Call me back. Love you!”

I call my best friend, Sebreena, “Hey what you doing tonight? My dad sent me 20 bucks for my Christmas present.”

“Cool. Me and Danny will come pick you up. We can get some beer and trip on some acid,” Sebreena said.

“Cool. Tell Danny I got gas money and I’ll buy the beer. And hurry up before my mom gets home or she’ll be having me doing something stupid before I can go.”

I hung up and tired my dad again. Now it was 3:39 p.m. on the microwave clock.

“That’s so weird. He’s not answering and he works at 4,” I said out loud to no one.

I ran around the house picking up my teenage mess. Pop can, ashtray, blanket. I turned off the music. I put on my coat and waited to hear Danny’s ’74 Nova rumbling up the street. The Nova was primer rusty red with two big black racing stripes from hood to trunk and jacked-up in the back. It was a badass classic with a badass stereo, too.

I could hear ACDC’s “Back in Black” coming up the street. I ran out to the car. Sebreena hopped out to let me in the back seat and off we went.

Danny was 21 so he could buy the beer. I gave him my 20 bucks and we stopped at the liquor store and headed over to pick up a friend, Jack, and then go to our buddy Scott’s place. He lived in south Minneapolis in a special apartment building for handicapped people.

Scott had been in a motorcycle accident and was in a wheelchair. He could only use his left arm. But he still could think clearly and he liked to party, just like us.

Each of us popped open and beer and started talking trash to each other, joking around laughing. It was a normal party night like any other night we were together.

All of a sudden I got this sick feeling that washed over me. I just knew I needed to call my mom. I called her and she said I needed to come home right away. She would not tell me why, just to come home.

Danny and Sebreena drove me home. I walked into the side door where the family room was. My mom stopped Sebreena at the door and wouldn’t let her come in. Being a teenager I wanted to argue with her, but something stopped me from doing that.

That’s when I could tell she had been crying. “Mom, what’s going on?”

“There has been an accident, your dad has been shot.”

My mind couldn’t wrap around what she had just said to me.

Shot? What do you mean, shot? my mind was screaming. But all that came out of my mouth was, “Is he ok?”

I was grasping at anything to understand what I didn’t want to believe.

“No, he’s not. I’m sorry.” My mom started to cry and she reached out to hug me. “Who did it?” I asked.

“He hasn’t been caught. Jane was attacked but got away. Michael was down the street at a friend’s house,” she said.

My dad’s boss was also attacked. The police knew who it was and were searching for the man.

I didn’t know a person could become completely numb but I did. I can’t tell you how long I sat there or really what I was feeling. I finally got up and walked through the kitchen wiping away my tears. I came into the dining room and where my mother’s boyfriend, Elfman, was (I called

Elfman because of his ears). Elfman thought right now was the appropriate time to be wrapping his Christmas presents to his own kids. Maybe I took it too personally but the words he said next have stuck with me my whole life.

“I’m sorry about your dad, Jenny, but people who live that life die that way.”

I stared at him in disbelief. How cold can someone actually be?

“Shut up Elfman, don’t talk to me!” I screamed and went to my bedroom slammed the door. I turned on my stereo blasting my music. Any other day my mom would have banged on the door insisting I turn down the music. But today she left me alone.

I laid down on my bed tears silently rolled down my cheeks. I fell asleep and I dreamed that my dad came to my room that night. He sat down on my bed touched my shoulder and said, “Don’t worry they will catch him.” I want to believe he really was there and he came to say goodbye.

The next few days went by in a blur. My mom’s sister and I got into the Jetta and drove five and a half hours north to East Grand Forks, Minnesota. We drove in a horrible blizzard and we had to follow a plow truck up Interstate 29. My mom is a pro at driving in these dangerous road conditions. There were points in the drive all we could see was the taillights of the plow and the avalanche of snow coming off the plow blade. But we made it and got a room at the Townhouse hotel in downtown Grand Forks, North Dakota.

My Dad used to take me there to spend time with me growing up because they had mini golf, a pool, and an arcade, though I’m pretty sure the bar had some pull on us going there, too.

A murder in a small town is not a small event. And with it being Christmas holiday the front page headline screamed DRUGS MONEY MURDER!!

That was the first newspaper headline I read.

My Dad grew up in East Grand Forks. My grandparents had a photography studio that was on the main street in town for years. Everybody knows everybody. The murder of my Dad shocked the town. My grandparents were on a plane coming from Texas. They would be there the next day they had a room just down the hall from us.

The next morning the police said we could go to the house.

It was the first time I’ve ever walked in and through a crime scene where police had already done the investigation. They don’t clean up the mess. In fact, they make it worse. There was yellow crime scene tape, fingerprint dust all over the door entering the side porch and on the windows. On the door entering the kitchen there were more black hand prints and smudges everywhere.

The Christmas tree with all the unopened presents sat undisturbed in the living room unaware of the heartbreak it would bring as a reminder of the horror of this day.

Walking through the kitchen my dad’s answering machine was next to the fridge, left open. I wonder if he listened to my messages.

My dad had been shot in his basement. I don’t know why I went down there. It is something I should have never seen. There was a pile of clothes that Steve had attempted to hide or cover my dad’s body after he shot him in the head three times with a .22-caliber pistol. I got to the bottom of the stairs and saw the brownish-red blood stains. I will never forget picking up this ugly tweed jacket, mustard yellow and brown plaid. It was completely stiff because of my father’s blood. I stood there just holding the jacket in shock.

I will never be able to tell you just how long I stood there holding that ugly blood-stained coat. But 35 years later and it’s still fresh in my mind.

I looked around the basement trying to replay the scene in my mind. Did my dad know he was about to die? Did he fight with his attacker? Where were they standing?

Why why why?

My uncle Ronnie had tried his best to clean up the blood.

Funny thing about blood…no matter how much you try and scrub it or wash it away, it leaves a mark. On the walls, on the floor, on my heart, and on that ugly tweed jacket.

The man who shot my dad was sentenced to life plus 12 years for the murder of my father as well as the attack on my dad’s boss and his wife.

* * *

Spring of 2001

Through the years I kept tabs through friends I had in Stillwater prison, and of the man who murdered my father.

A friend of mine approached him in Stillwater prison and asked him if he would be willing to answer my questions, The truth to the rumors and lies I was told about so many years ago, and also as to why.

I learned about a program called Restorative Justice and contacted them. Within six weeks I was driving to Stillwater to meet the man.

My friends Jenny and Michael, the father of my two daughters, came with me to support me through this meeting. I was allowed to have one support friend in the meeting. Jenny came with me inside and Michael was there for the aftermath when I was done, like he always was.

I can’t describe the prison or driving up to it or what I was feeling. Some things I think only through experience will another person truly understand.

The psychologist and Lydia from Restorative Justice were there to meet me in the parking lot.

They had a room set up with cameras, two tables and six chairs. Jenny and I sat on one side of the table. The doctor was on one end and camera crew on the other. Two empty chairs awaited the man who killed my father and his support friend,.

When the man finally came into the room I couldn’t believe how big and tall he was. When he sat down across from me and put his hand on the table, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. That hand took my dad from me, that hand, that hand is all I could see for a moment.

Then the doctor asked if we were ready to begin. That brought me back to the room and the whole purpose of why I was there.

The meeting lasted four hours but we took breaks in order to not get too overwhelmed. He told me that it was a deal gone bad and that in the end he’d killed his friend—my dad—over little green pieces of paper.

He said, “I know you hate me for what I’ve done.”

I interrupted him and said, “I don’t hate you, you took your kids’ dad away, too. All I’ve ever wanted was the truth and you told me that today. I forgive.”

I left the prison and we drove straight to the bar in downtown Stillwater. I don’t remember if we even drank those three drinks. But on the ride home I got into the back seat and slept all the way home. Michael and Jenny brought me home and would you believe I was so emotionally drained I slept for the next eight days. But I didn’t feel complete hate anymore. Meeting with him gave me freedom from pain I carried inside me for so long. I finally was given a little peace over my father’s murder.

I hoped my dread of Christmas holidays would begin to be easier.

Death of a loved one is hard no matter when it happens. We remember the anniversary of their death. I feel when a tragic event happens around a holiday like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, or Valentine’s Day, the commercialization brings the memories to light sooner and won’t let you forget the day or the pain.

Christmas advertising starts before Thanksgiving is done. The trees and the lights are up in and on everyone’s house. Everywhere you look its Christmas. When I was a small child my grandparents took me every year to drive the neighborhoods to see the beautiful light shows. It was a wonderful memory for me. But since1988 when the advertising starts and the lights go up and the holiday season is in full cheer, I am standing there in my mind holding that blood-soaked ugly tweed jacket of my father’s. I still have not figured out how to let go of that jacket 35 years later. Writing this I hope will finally free me.

All the years that passed have led me to prison three times. Drugs have taken so much from me and my family. A person would think that having your father murdered over a bad drug deal that I would have stayed far away from anything to do with that lifestyle. But I ran right to it, the rough crowd, the drugs, and the lifestyle. I found a sense of family and acceptance with others who were broken and lost.

* * *

Would you believe that my father’s murderer and I were not done being in each other’s lives?

In 2004 I was arrested by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and looking at some very serious time. My lawyer said anywhere from 188-235 months.

Months later at my sentencing in November 2004.:

Judge Kyle said, “Before I sentence you, Ms. Nagle, I want to read you a letter I received on your behalf.”

It was from my father’s murderer, asking the judge for leniency because he took away my father.

Judge Kyle sentenced me to 60 months.

* * *

2012

The man who killed my father was up to see the parole board. I went to that meeting and said “Let him go. He has served 22 1/2 years. I know how much life changes and how hard it is to build any kind of bond with family. Even living day to day is a challenge. Prison is not rehabilitation; it is just nothingness. I found in my heart to forgive him for what he has done. Just let him go.”