A Family Forgives
In the spring of 2003, Merre Phillips and Margaret Weber, nieces of Gerald Gase, sat in a courtroom in Crawford County, Pennsylvania and waited for the man who had confessed to the murder of their uncle in 1985. They had traveled from Tiffin to represent the family at the resentencing of the murderer, Roger Proctor, from a death sentence to life in prison.
He clanked into the courtroom in shackles and sat down at the defense table. Merre and Margaret took turns sitting beside him.
‘’Thank you for coming.’’ Proctor whispered.
‘’How are you doing?’’ Merre asked.
‘’Happy. Nervous,’’ Proctor said.
‘’Well, there are going to be a lot of changes for you,’’ Merre replied.
There would be. No more 23-hour-a-day lockdowns. No more visits by guards with execution warrants. After 17 years Roger Proctor was off death row.
Gerald Gase’s family is well known in Tiffin. His sister, Agnes Phillips, was Eugene Phillips’ mother and Merre Phillips’ grandmother. Gene Phillips worked at National Machinery and retired 18 years ago. He and his family have lived in Tiffin all their lives.
Not so for Gerald Gase. He left Tiffin during World War II to drive a truck at the Keystone Ordnance Plant south of Meadville, Pennsylvania. His brother, Gene Gase, joined him a year later and they started a roofing business. After two decades in business, Gene left to go out West and Gerald was left to finish out the business. He put aside some savings and lived as a bachelor in his adopted town. Family would sometimes visit and Gerald would march them down to Meadville’s farmer’s market where he held the title ‘’market master’’, running the operation.
One of his grandnephews, Martin Phillips remembered, ‘’It always seemed that Uncle Gerald had a new car - a Cadillac - every time he came to visit.’ ’ He usually visited on holidays and always returned to his small house at 743 Garden Street in Meadville where according to court testimony, he occasionally lent money to a family who lived on Walide Court, a street that ran behind his house. The daughter of that family had occasionally stolen money from him before she moved away to Cincinnati in 1985. Her name was Dierdre Owens.
In October of 1985, it was a total shock to the family to get the news that Gerald had been brutally murdered at the age of 84, the first of five siblings to die. Therese Phillips came from Columbus to console her grandmother Agnes. The family arranged for his body to be brought to Tiffin and interred in the family crypt in the mausoleum.
Details about the murder were sketchy at first, but it was not long until the family knew that two persons had been apprehended and charged with the crime: a woman who knew Gerald and a male companion. The family did not go to the trial. During 1986, the family learned that the woman was sentenced to life in prison and her companion sentenced to death. As far as the family was concerned, the case was closed.
Gerald Gase’s sister, Agnes Phillips had been dead six years to the day when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sent her this letter:
‘’This is to inform you that Governor Tom Ridge has signed the death warrant for inmate Roger Proctor. The Department of Corrections has set the execution date for 7 p.m. June 1, 2000 at the State Correctional Institution in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.’’
The letter said as many as four members of the family could attend. It included directions to Bellefonte, phone numbers for eight motels near the prison and a short Q&A with headings such as ‘’What Can I Bring? and ‘’What should I wear?’’
The Phillips family met for Easter nine days later. After dinner they sat down to discuss the letter.
‘’I remember thinking it was so impersonal, sterile, so cold,’’ Merre Phillips said. They consulted Gerald Gase’s other sister, Sister Mary Geraldine, an Ursuline nun now living at a convent in Toledo and all agreed that they did not want Roger Proctor to be executed. Margaret Weber went home to Detroit and wrote a letter to Proctor: ‘’I write to express that I hold no grudge or revenge against you. Your execution would bring no benefit to society or to your family and thus I oppose it. I am willing to express the same to your attorney.’’
Several other family members also wrote opposing his execution. The Phillips family are Roman Catholic and follow the church’s opposition to the death penalty.
Along with the family’s belief in Scripture, Proctor was saved, too, by law. Except for a prosecutor accidentally handing over material that should have been provided 17 years earlier, Proctor’s lawyers would not have discovered evidence that might have kept him off death row.
The family contacted Amnesty International. They also met with Ellen Berkowitch, a lawyer with the Federal Defender’s office and declared as a matter of religious faith they wanted the sentence changed.
Two other lawyers, Jim McHugh and Joe Thornton went to Meadville to Study the case record. In the courthouse basement they found the defense files and the court transcript. They couldn’t believe how little information the defense had to work with.
By now Crawford County had a new district attorney, Francis Schultz. He thought McHugh and Thornton were from the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office to handle the county’s side of the appeal. They allowed McHugh and Thornton to see a bloody carpet sample which showed a foot print much too small to be Proctors and a 285 page binder containing the prosecution’s case, most of which had never been turned over to the defense. The preliminary coroner’s report said ‘’the weapon may have been a knife with an approximate one-half inch blade. There may have been a second weapon.’’
From the new evidence and discussions with Proctor, they were able to reconstruct what happened the night that Gerald Gase was murdered.
This article will be concluded next week
– Mary