Ben Wilson was rated the nation’s best in class in 1984. And just days before he was to begin his senior season, he got into a beef with two 16-year-old gang members, Billy Moore and Omar Dixon.
Moore pulled a .22-caliber pistol out of his waistband and shot 17-year-old Wilson twice. The high school basketball star died in the hospital.
Wilson’s murder made national news. And nearly three decades later, the circumstances of his premature death has made for a most moving documentary.
What is most interesting is, not his funeral, which drew more than 10,000 mourners. Not the grace with which the young man’s mother, a devout Christian, behaved herself after her son was violently taken from her.
But the redemptive story of Billy Moore, young Ben Wilson’s killer.
Moore was sentenced to 40 years in prison for Wilson’s murder. He spent 19 years behind bars before being granted parole in 2004.
Agreeing to appear in the documentary, Moore remembered praying that Wilson would survive the shooting that would claim his life. Perhaps, he said, praying as hard as the victim’s mother.
At his sentencing, Moore said, he spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, Ben’s grieving parents. “I gave them my deepest apology,” Moore said. “I didn’t want to be the one who stole (their son’s) dream.”
Today, Moore is a youth counselor. In 2009, he actually was recognized as a successful example of rehabilitation in a White House ceremony.
Twenty years ago, I would have argued that Moore should have been tried as an adult in Ben Wilson’s death and, if convicted, sentenced to life in prison, if not sentenced to death. I also would have strenuously objected to his parole, after serving little less than half sentence he actually received.
But my thinking has evolved over the past two decades.
I now believe there is no one beyond God’s redemption. Indeed, His Word promises: “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
Billy Moore, the reformed killer, is living proof.
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William “Billy” Neal Moore stands in the gymnasium of the medium-security Floyd County Prison in Rome and meets the eyes of convicted thieves and drug dealers as they come into the room.
He stands before the prisoners and cites a passage from the Bible.
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Then he pauses and meets their gaze, looking from one to the other, directly in their eyes.
“Do you know what forgiveness is?” he asks them. Most of the men nod in response. But then Moore hits them with a question that makes many of them shift uncomfortably in their seats: What if someone murdered one of your family members? Could you forgive them then?
It was 1974, and Moore was a 22-year-old Army specialist stationed at nearby Fort Gordon Georgia . He and his wife, who lived in Ohio, were having marital trouble, so he had brought his 2-year-old son, Billy, to live with him. But he had a problem paying his bills. He had authorized the Army to send his paychecks to his wife, and now he had fallen behind on his rent.
He needed money, and he needed it fast.
He heard about a man who carried a lot of cash, so late one warm night in April, while he was high on marijuana and Jack Daniels, Moore broke into the home of 77-year-old Fredger Stapleton. Moore was met with a shotgun blast and he fired back with his .38-caliber revolver, killing Stapleton. Moore rummaged around the house and found two wallets in a pair of pants under a pillow and stuck them in a pocket. Then he grabbed both guns and took off.
When Moore got home, he emptied out the wallets and discovered more than $5,000. But instead of elation, he was overcome with fear and shame.
He knew the cops would be coming for him, so he called his sister and asked her to come and get young Billy. Then he waited.
Those first few hours in jail were desperate ones for Moore.
“My heart was killing me,” he said. “There was no way I could fix this. When you take someone’s life, you can’t give it back. Not only had I killed a man, but I hurt his family. I destroyed my son’s life and hurt my family.”
On July 17, 1974, Moore was sentenced to death. Execution was set for Sept. 13, 1974.
A cousin in Ohio told Moore he needed to get right with the Lord, but Moore wasn’t hearing it — he was preparing to die. But a week before Moore’s date with the electric chair, Pastor Nealon Guthrie of Rome paid the prisoner a visit at the request of a pastor in Ohio. When the minister arrived, Moore and some other inmates were playing cards through the bars for nickels, dimes and pennies.
“My eyes fell on him and I said, 'My God, that could be my son,’ ” said Guthrie, who still maintains a fatherly relationship with Moore. The two men bonded immediately. “I could tell he was very remorseful. He didn’t try to blame anybody. He was never resentful. He just said he was sorry.”
Guthrie told Moore that although a judge in Georgia had sentenced him to death, there was a “just judge named Jesus Christ” who “died to save people like you.” He told Moore that somehow God would bring him through this trying time. Then they prayed together, and before Guthrie left that day, he baptized Moore in a prison bathtub with two trustee inmates as witnesses.
Moore said he felt a peace that he had never experienced before. It “freed me from a lot of the pain I had been carrying for years,” he said.
Moore’s execution date came and went, and three days later he received a letter from his lawyer. He had neglected to advise Moore that there is an automatic appeal for death penalty cases. Moore fired the lawyer and decided to represent himself.
He requested a copy of the police report and discovered it contained the names and addresses of the victim’s family. And then he did something that changed the course of his life. He wrote to Stapleton’s niece, Sara Stapleton Farmer, and apologized for killing her uncle.
The letter was simple but hard to write.
“I want you to know that I am truly sorry for all the pain and suffering that I have caused each one of you,” Moore wrote. “And if you can find it in your hearts to forgive me, I really would truly appreciate it. But if you don’t, I understand because I don’t forgive myself for the terrible suffering I have brought you all.”
A week later he received a response. “Dear Billy,’ she wrote, “we are Christians and we forgive you and pray to God for your soul and hope for the best in your life.”
Moore was stunned.
“This was showing me this is what real Christian people do,” he said. “That really helped me because I’m still hurting and I’m writing to hurting people. And they’re helping me.”
Then he began to wonder: How do you do that? How do you get to that place of forgiveness? He wrote back and thus began a letter-writing relationship that lasted for many years. Stapleton’s family even fed and housed Moore’s family members and legal team when they came to visit him in prison.
“It took them six years of writing me to get me to the point I could forgive myself,” Moore said.
Stapleton’s family has rarely spoken publicly about the murder and several refused comment or didn’t return calls for this story. But Sara Farmer’s son, Harold Farmer, 60, indicated that Moore’s remorse and faith helped the family forgive his actions.
“It’s not my role to judge him,” said Farmer. “I’m not God. If he asked for forgiveness from the Lord, confessed to what he did and made a new beginning, I’m all with that. The way I look at it, when Judgment Day comes he’s going to be judged by what he did or didn’t do.”
People can be cynical about jailhouse conversions, but Moore seemed sincere. He became an ordained minister via online coursework through Aenon Bible College.
He led a study group for other inmates. He prayed with them. He baptized some. He became known as a peacemaker, settling disputes between inmates.
Even some of the guards, who used to hassle him, started leaving him alone.
His death penalty case began to receive national attention as his execution was postponed 13 times over the course of 16 years. Not only did world famous death penalty opponents including Mother Teresa speak out on Moore’s behalf, but members of Stapleton’s family also begged for clemency.
Nevertheless, his appeals continued to be denied. Eventually all of his appeals were exhausted, and his execution was set for Aug. 22, 1990. But 20 hours before his scheduled execution, Moore’s sentence was commuted to life by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole.
“This was a heinous crime and we do not excuse the conduct,” then-parole board chairman Wayne Snow Jr. told the New York Times. “But to say the least, the board was impressed that we had the family of the victim urging clemency. That is not something we often see.”
Moore was released from Reidsville State Prison in 1991.
“God was with me all the time,” he said.
He spent 16 1/2 years on death row
Billy Moore travels the world telling his story to churches, colleges, prisons and high schools. He talks about redemption, forgiveness and faith, and he has become a much sought-after death penalty opponent.
When Moore speaks to a class, students are spellbound, said Stephen B. Bright, senior counsel of the Southern Center for Human Rights.
“It’s important for students to hear from someone who is actually guilty,” said Bright. “Billy is a living demonstration that there is such a thing as redemption. Somebody can be involved in committing a very bad act and spend the rest of his life doing very good things.”
For Moore it’s payback.
“I think about (Stapleton and his family) all the time,” said Moore. “That is one of the reasons I do what I do. It helps to pay back what they gave to me to help keep young people from getting into trouble and so they can stay out of prison.”
“This allows me to teach them what real forgiveness is, what God has done for us and what a family did for me,” Moore said. “Not only did they forgive me, but they went to the parole board and said that I was their brother and the state cannot kill me.”
Sara Farmer died last year, but not before she was able to speak one last time with Moore, who was traveling in Spain.
Moore told her that the story about her family’s forgiveness was being heard around the world.
“Every place I go, I talk about Sara Farmer and her family and I put out a challenge: 'Are you open to this type of forgiveness?’”
Two stories about two different guys, who needed forgiveness.
