Under a Cloud of Loss

This episode originally ran in 2016, and we pulled it out of the archives to share with you here, and to kick off a new season of TTFA Anthologies, where we pull together a themed season of some of our best episodes. This season the theme is Grief: It’s Complicated…stories about the kind of grief you won’t find in the sympathy card aisle. Stories like the one you’re about hear. We have a separate podcast feed for these seasons. It’s linked in our show description, or you can find it on your podcast app by searching TTFA Anthologies.

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Damon’s grandparents were murdered 18 months before he was born. He never knew them, but their deaths — and the trial for their killer — defined much of his childhood. 

For nearly three decades, Damon’s mother has attended every parole hearing to deliver a victim impact statement. 

When we meet Damon, there is another such hearing coming up, but his mother is unable to attend. For the first time in his life, Damon prepares to see his grandparents’ murderer face to face.  

Originally published 1/23/2017

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Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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This is where we pull together a themed season of some of our best episodes, and this season, the theme is grief. It’s complicated.

These are stories about the kind of grief you won’t find in the sympathy card aisle, stories like the one that you are about to hear. We actually have a separate podcast feed for these seasons. Again, it’s called TTFA Anthologies.

It is linked in our show description, or you can find it on your podcast app. Just search TTFA Anthologies. The first three episodes are out right now on that feed, and episodes drop every Thursday on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

That weekend, I had called my mom and dad because I talked to them every day, and I couldn’t find them, couldn’t reach them.

So on Monday morning, I went to work. My husband went to school, to college, and about 11 o’clock in the morning, he came into my business, and he said, You need to get your purse, we need to leave. And I was just like, are you crazy?

I have a job here, I’m not in college. I can’t just leave because get your purse.

And he went over to my boss and spoke with him and then they pulled me into his office and told me that my brother had found my mother and my father and that they had been shot in the head.

This is terrible. Thanks For Asking. The show where we ask people to give honest responses to the question, how are you?

I’m Nora McInerny, and that was Deidre Doty. On that day, January 24th, 1977, Deidre was a young newlywed living in Texas.

It was as if someone ripped your stomach out of your body and then ripped your heart out of your body, and you just don’t know which way is up or which way is down.

And being so young, I relied on my parents because they were both very strong people, and I relied on them for so many things that I didn’t even know I did until I could no longer talk to them.

Two days before, on January 22nd, a man named Lee Jackson had called Deidre’s father, Jesse Doty. Jackson worked for Doty at Doty’s underground construction business in Mobile, Alabama, laying gas, water, and sewer pipes.

Jackson told Doty that some other coworkers were coming by their house with some deer meat for processing. Soon after, a man named Richard Frazier arrived at the Doty’s front door and rang the bell.

Deidre’s father, Jesse Doty, answered it, and Richard Frazier shot him in the head. He had been paid $5,000 to do this. Jesse’s wife, Irene, came running in, and Richard Frazier shot her, too.

He had not been paid to do that. Deidre’s brother then found his parents lying side by side in their home two days later. The full details of this case are beyond confusing.

This is mostly because, for both Richard Frazier, who pulled the trigger, and Lee Jackson, who orchestrated the deal, the evidence in their trials was based on testimony of four witnesses whose credibility was highly questionable.

And that’s a quote from the Alabama Criminal Court of Appeals. Amongst just three of those witnesses, there were 28 felonies, including robbery, forgery, and drug possession, and one life sentence.

Richard Frazier’s attorney remarked that these witnesses were, and I’m quoting again, hardly the prom queen, the archbishop, or the mayor of Mobile. Lawyers are funny.

This is to say that between these four people, there were at least eight different versions, given under oath, of what happened on January 22, 1977.

Because of these inconsistencies, Lee Jackson’s trial was dismissed, and Richard Frazier’s trial, multiple appeals, reversals, and retrial, lasted for more than 15 years in total before he was ultimately convicted for the last time.

We tried to make this episode with an explanation of all different versions, of all these details, but it came out sounding like your grandmother trying to explain the plot lines of four different long-running soap operas all at once.

What you do need to know is that through all of this, Deidre tried to keep on keepin on. She had two boys, Damon and Graham, and the family would travel with their mother from their home state of Texas to Mobile, Alabama, for every trial.

It was a lot of like, this is all really weird, and Alabama’s really weird, and my cousins are weird, and I’m here for a trial.

So it was just a lot of like, I remember leaving there with way more questions than answers, but at seven years old, I was the oldest in the family. I was smart enough to know to just keep my mouth shut. Like now is not the time.

You could just feel the tension in the air, and you could feel the palpable discord and just dreariness, you know what I mean?

That is Damon Doty Gokner. Damon is Deidre’s oldest son. He’s tall and strong.

He has a toothpaste-add smile, and a big bushy beard, and one of those old-timey haircuts that’s real close on the sides and long on top. He’s funny and a little flashy. He does CrossFit, and he runs a marketing company.

When he talks, and you’ll probably hear this in some of the recordings, he punches one fist into the palm of his other hand for emphasis. When we did this interview, it was only a few weeks until Richard Frazier would have another parole hearing.

Something that happens every one to five years. Up until this year, Damon’s mother has attended each one. She has done this so that someone in the family is present to provide the victim impact statement, which is what it sounds like.

An opportunity for the victim or the victim’s family to tell the court or the parole board how this crime has impacted them. It puts a human face and a human story to the crime.

Again and again, Deidre has stood in front of her parents’ murderer and the people deciding his fate and put into words how their murder changed her life and her family’s.

But this year, Deidre won’t be there. So Damon is going. For the first time.

Taking over this duty from his mother, a generational passing of the torch. Damon wasn’t alive when his grandparents were murdered. He was born 18 months later.

But their deaths are a cloud that covered his young life. Because Richard Frazier’s first trial alone lasted nine years. And young Damon would be in Montgomery when the family went back to testify.

The earliest childhood memories I have of my mom’s side of the family is going to the trial for my grandparents when I was about seven years old.

And staying at my aunt and uncle’s house. It being this weird family vacation horror tragedy at the same time. Like nobody’s happy, nobody wants to see each other.

But we’re all family and we’re all supposed to be getting along. And the kids are trying to just make the best of it.

I didn’t want them to be in Alabama because it was such a negative effect on me when I was in that state. Even to this day, it’s really hard. I just wanted my kids to have normal, something normal, if normal is normal.

And I wanted us to have, be a very close family. I wanted us to have values and I wanted us to have our own holiday traditions. So our little nucleus is and was still very tight.

So I just wish I had done a little better job of explaining, I think, everything to the kids, you know, Damon and his brother, Graham. I’m sure that was me. It was very difficult for me to talk about.

So I didn’t ever want them to really have to come to terms with it, I guess.

How did you explain it to your children?

It wasn’t in the very beginning that we told them they were murdered. I think it’s when they started to get a little bit, you know, maybe six years old. And we told them what had happened and that, you know, a bad person had taken their life.

And I said, you know, for everything you do in life, there is going to be a reaction for your action. So you need to think about it before you do it, because repercussions sometimes are not so great.

I think that that’s when we were going to go to the trial the first time, I had to sit down and kind of explain.

We didn’t let them watch TV because everything was on TV again and the pictures of them being slayed and, you know, they shot them twice in the head after they fell. And, you know, they didn’t need to see that.

Damon, do you remember that conversation where your mother explained what had happened to your grandparents?

No, but you know, it’s weird, Nora. I remember being like eight or nine years old and knowing that I could make myself cry at any time. That’s what I remember.

Wow.

That’s what I remember.

Wow.

All I had to do was just think about my grandparents and they’d just come.

So it was like, I always thought like, damn, I need to be an actor because I can cry any time. You want tears? Give me two seconds, here they come.

But that’s what I remember. No, I don’t. I remember always knowing that my mom’s parents were murdered.

A man paid another man to kill my family. There’s a gravity to that that I don’t know that can go unnoticed, right? So however that affects a kid, I’ve known that for as long as I’ve known my name, it feels like, in all reality.

Yes.

You know, I remember a lot of conversations with my parents about a lot of things, most of which have zero meaning in the grand scheme of things.

And I don’t remember that conversation, probably on purpose.

Damon doesn’t remember that conversation, but he doesn’t need to. The grief he’s been carrying his entire life is his inheritance from his mother, and so is his anger. Why shouldn’t it be?

Through his entire life, he’s seen trials, appeals, a retrial, parole hearings. He’s watched her suffer that loss over and over.

And the last time, my brothers and I both said, we cannot go through this again. We can’t go through the pictures. We can’t be put on stand and try to make our parents look like they were evil people.

And because we chose not to go through that again, they reduced his sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

With the possibility of parole, a possibility that comes up every one to five years with a parole hearing. What can you tell Damon about what to expect?

Well, it’s very much like an institution. It’s very staunch. It’s very cold.

It’s not any warm feelings, fuzzy, nothing. You go in there and it makes you cold all the way to your toes. They don’t treat you as if you’re human.

Everything is sort of like almost like a cattle call, so to speak. The coldness of it is just something that you never get over, or I’ve never gotten over.

And I hope that he is allowed to be strong and stand up in front of him as we have and say what he wants to say. He’ll have my letter too. And I want this man just to know that none of us are ever going to forget.

It doesn’t matter how many years it takes.

What’s it like to see the man who took your parents from you?

Difficult. You don’t feel sorry for him. I get angry.

I’m not gonna lie. I ask for forgiveness every day, but I would like to physically abuse him. I would like to see him have a little bit of pain.

I wouldn’t want him to have a very fast death. I would like to have a slow death. But I was raised an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

And I just don’t think that being incarcerated is good enough for him, truthfully. I don’t necessarily say I believe in the death penalty, but I do believe that he’s had life pretty darn good for what he’s done. And it infuriates me.

So when I see him, I just want to be abusive. And that’s not good, but that’s the way I feel.

And it’s so counter to who my mom is. That’s not my mom. But that hurts me to know that some, like there’s somebody else that had that effect, right?

Because that is me. Like that’s me and my dad all day. Like we are zero to sixty real quick.

But so, yeah.

Deidre, you said you ask for forgiveness every day?

I do.

How do you think about forgiveness?

Well, I ask the Lord every day to watch over everyone and forgive me of my sins and for wanting something bad to happen to Mr. Frazier, because I, as a Christian, shouldn’t want that. But as a human, I do.

And it’s something I really can’t control.

But, you know, I just ask God to forgive me and to help me to be a better person every single day, a better mother, a better wife, a better grandmother, and to do something good for everybody every day or for at least one person every day.

And I know that I’m not always as open as I need to be, because the trust factor has just been yanked right out from under me for so many years that I do have trouble trusting people. And I ask forgiveness for that because I shouldn’t be that way.

This woman, who for decades has kept this story and this pain largely to herself, prays at night for her forgiveness, for her perceived failure over hating the man who murdered her parents.

And that’s what we thought this episode would be about, forgiveness, the absolute anguish of wrestling with that task of letting go, of accepting the unacceptable.

And while we talked with Damon and his mother, that’s what we were getting at, the fact that Damon would be in the same room as his grandparents’ murderer. He would say his piece.

We’d send recording equipment with him to Alabama, and he’d walk out of the courtroom and reflect. Would he find forgiveness? Would he find peace?

There’s never been a closure here, right?

There’s never been any sort of finality. And even this conversation that we’re having now has never happened between my mom and I. And this is huge.

Like, I’ve learned things today that I didn’t know about my grandparents. That alone makes it worth it, right? As the oldest grandson in this side of the family, that there’s a responsibility to my family.

And this is the realization that happened. My dad forwarded me over the email from the Board of Paroles from the state of Alabama.

And when I got that email, it dawned, it just hit me heavy that if my dad doesn’t send me that email, this douchebag could walk. There’s a weight of responsibility that immediately just shifted on my shoulders. I want this dude to know.

I want to sit across from him. On his one day, he’s going to get a little bit of fresh air and see people that aren’t working for institutions. And let him know that, hey, bro, we have not forgotten.

And however long you walk this earth, there will be people ensuring that this story is not forgotten and that you ultimately pay for the crimes that the jury gave you three times. So no, man, you’re not… This pass isn’t going to happen on my watch.

When I hit the pearly gates and if I get a chance to convene, I know he’s just going to put a hand on the shoulder and say, well done, son. That’s it, right? So that’s all like…

That’s it, man. Just trying to make these people proud that I never met. However fucked up that is.

Damon took that weight on his shoulders.

He wrote his letter. He planned his trip to Montgomery to testify at the hearing. He picked his suit, his watch, his shoes.

He wrote and wrote and wrote and rewrote so many words about how he felt.

I remember deleting about a thousand. Because it was just vindictive and mean and angry, right?

And he finally got it exactly where he wanted it. Three hundred and eleven precisely chosen words to say in front of the man who murdered his grandparents.

To the Board of Pardons and Paroles for the State of Alabama, my name is Damon Doty Gokner. I am the son of Deidre Nyland Gokner, formerly Deidre Nyland Doty. My mother was the youngest child and only daughter of Jesse and Irene Doty.

The incarcerated does not know of my existence, I surmise, but I think he should.

For while an entire generation of our family’s lineage was violently torn from our family tree and clipped far too short, an entire branch and generation have sprang forth from those wounds with a pride and a sense of resilience that no 38 caliber

shell will ever tarnish or threaten. I grew up under the cloud of loss with a sense of longing for connection and relationships that were never to be realized.

And those who knew me well wouldn’t know that I’ve always had an affinity for surrounding myself with people much older. Most contributed to a wise soul than a bright young man that had dreams of achievement.

Little knew or will ever know of the unfillable void that existed from one man’s actions.

I wear my middle name with a badge of honor, and I strive to lead a life, to be a man, and to walk a path that would make those I’ve never met proud to call me their own.

And while I am not without fault or mistake, I know the sanctity of human life, know that we almost face consequences for our decisions, both well and poor.

I’ve cried listening to my father recount the moments immediately after the events of how he had to tell his 24-year-old wife of only a few months that her parents and the life if she knew it were both over, that they were dead and they’d been shot

in their home, and that her life would be forever altered. It is without remorse and without regret that I ask and dutifully request that you deny parole for the accused and incarcerated today and for eternity. Damon Dugner.

Welcome to the State Inmate Parole Information System. If you would like information about an inmate, please enter the inmate’s AIS number. Please wait while your request is being processed.

For last hearing results, press 2. On Wednesday, September 21st, 2016, this case was parole granted.

We’re going to take a quick break. When we come back, what happened at that parole hearing? Some careers offer stability.

And we’re back.

Damon didn’t make it to the parole hearing. If you’re like me, you’re thinking, wait, he didn’t? He didn’t make it to this monumental event?

Well, Damon didn’t think it would be monumental. And neither did we, frankly. Every time Richard Frazier, convicted of a double homicide with life in prison, every time he’d been up for parole, he’d been denied.

Why should this time be different? Well, it was. And suddenly, our entire show wasn’t what we thought it would be about.

A man facing his grandparent’s murderer and trying to find forgiveness. I’m glad it’s 90 degrees and I wore three layers of clothing. It was about something else.

And we had to go to Dallas to see Damon and figure out what that something else was.

How are you? Good.

I was like, I’m alarming these guys.

No, you’re good. So this is like my office where I work work. So I have an office in here that we can just do the deal.

So what happened?

Damon had been scheduled to speak at a big marketing conference just after the hearing.

His plan was to fly in, deliver his mic drop of a statement, then jet off to the conference in his fancy suit and watch and shoes, leaving Richard Frazier rotting in prison.

Literally, his plan was to jet off on a friend’s plane, which was grounded by the FAA just before the hearing, when Damon’s car and his wife’s car were in the shop. And domestic flight prices were astronomical. So, the hearing happened without Damon.

He overnighted his letter, which was probably put in a file, along with all the other court documents and all the other letters from every other one of Richard Frazier’s parole hearings.

Damon’s car got out of the shop, and he went to the conference he was supposed to speak at. He even brought his 7-year-old son along to watch dad do his thing.

Damon got off the stage to applause and a phone full of positive tweets and a phone call from his mother, which he declined, like we all do. Sorry, moms. And then he got a call from his wife.

My wife called me and was like, Hey, how you doing?

I was like, I’m good. You’ve got shitty news. What’s up?

Did you talk to my mom? She’s like, I did. I was like, do I have some terrible news there?

She’s like, you do. I was like, awesome. She’s like, so what’s the deal?

She’s like, he’s granted parole. I was like, well, there’s not much else to say, is there?

I hung up the phone and just tried to sit there and not cry in front of my kid, you know, my seven-year-old, who just saw dad like kick ass on stage and like people standing and clapping and lining up to come talk to him.

Man, it felt like, I felt like, um… In a single day, I felt like such a success and such a failure at the same damn time. You know, in that moment, it’s all personal, right?

And in that moment, I failed. And it was like, it’s a terrible, terrible feeling.

I hate that.

I hate that. And I fail all the time. I lose clients, and I say the wrong things, and I apologize to people, and I eat my words in a thousand different ways.

But man, this one stung so fierce. I’m a sales guy, right? I spent all day convincing people to do things that I think they should do, both as an agency owner, as a consultant, as a strategist, as a husband and father.

I couldn’t convince these two people to do what I thought was like so basic and so simple and like a no-brainer. And so, like, reading this letter reeks of failure.

What Damon is feeling is guilt for letting people down. The grandparents he never met, the mother who lost her parents, the child who never knew his grandparents. Richard is out.

What’s done is done. Except not because we are people and we don’t work like that.

Instead, we turn on our busy little minds and get to work sorting through all the what-ifs, trying to find some glimmer of meaning in whatever garbage pile we just found ourselves in.

Really, what it feels like in some sense is like, I worked for this really, really crappy job that I hated, that didn’t pay well, that I couldn’t quit. Absolutely couldn’t quit. It was my God-given responsibility to do this job.

And then one day I woke up, and the job I hated was still there. It still existed, but I didn’t have to do it anymore. And I could make that choice of letting that go, or I could continue to hold on to it.

And really, that was up to me. And I don’t know that I’m like, it always sinks in all the way. A lot of nights I can’t go to bed because I feel like a failure.

Over that?

Yeah, over the, like, I didn’t show up, man.

I didn’t find a way.

It wasn’t just that letter for Damon. For months, Damon had been pouring over court documents late at night. He immersed himself in all the details he could find about the case.

He let this process consume him.

And for all those efforts, all he got was one eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of paper. A parole summary document signed by two of the three members of the Parole Board, granting Richard Frazier his parole. The sheet is cut and dry, drier than dry.

It has a list of conditions for release with check boxes next to each of them. It looks like it took under 30 seconds to fill out. Just three of the 14 boxes ticked and two illegible signatures.

The first box that is ticked is box number four.

The parolee or the individual had positive institutional conduct record, which like, okay, that’s cool, very commendable. He hadn’t gotten in trouble in 39 years of being locked up. Congratulations.

He didn’t get in trouble in detention. Like, so my dog didn’t shit in its crate. Okay, cool.

It went to its crate to sleep and then didn’t shit in there. Well, like, that’s what it’s supposed to not do. You’re in jail because you killed two people, dumbass.

So if you didn’t learn, like, Jesus, I would hope that it’s a very minimal, like, ah.

The second ticked box is number five, which says that the ORUS level is low to medium risk of reoffending.

ORUS stands for Ohio Risk Assessment System, and that is a tool designed to weigh and evaluate multiple factors that might play into an inmate reoffending, including education, family support, and substance use.

It’s a big matrix, I get it, that’s totally cool. Does he have to kill again for it not to be okay?

Like, this isn’t like shoplifting, like, you thought about this, you went to bed on it tonight, you woke up the next morning like, is this still a good decision? And then followed through, like, I don’t even know where to begin.

And that’s like part of the frustration is like, even in Texas, like, buddy, you’d have gotten two strikes in the third one, they’d have been like, no, no, no, come with us, friend.

You got about nine years, we’ll hold you down in Huntsville, it’s hot as hell, enjoy. And the one should just shoot at the higher power.

There’s one more box ticked on the sheet, way down at the bottom, the very last box.

The real kick to the nuts is number 14. The release will not depreciate the seriousness of offense slash promote disrespect for the law.

I don’t know how releasing a three time convicted, double first degree murder, premeditated killing on parole doesn’t depreciate the seriousness of the offense in every possible definition, and absolutely piss and shit on the law, let alone

Damon is 100% entitled to feel this way.

And another parole board might have felt the way Damon feels, that letting a man out of prison after more than 30 years does make the crime of murder more acceptable.

But Damon, or that other fictional board, or you, or me, none of us have the job of deciding if Richard Frazier stays in prison or gets out.

There are only three people in the world whose opinions matter on this specific case and that specific point, legally.

And I don’t know that Eddie Whoever and Skrigley Skrigley McGee could say shit to ever explain themselves.

So, if you read my letter and thought that this will not depreciate, entire generational limbs being ripped off my tree and my 24 year old mother, cool man, cool. I don’t know that I’ll ever understand this document.

But Damon wants to understand, like all of us want to understand the bad things in life. Like we all want to be able to point to a moment, an action, a person, and say this, this is why, this is the reason.

Damon’s internal conflict is not internal. It spills from him constantly. It’s an external monologue, a turning over of this experience again and again, trying to find a reconciliation.

On the one side, the man who murdered Damon’s grandparents, who maimed his family structure, was just granted parole. On the other, Damon is a Christian. He believes in forgiveness and redemption.

Or, like most of us, Christian or not, he tries to. He wants to be the bigger person.

If my God says this man is supposed to walk, then I’ll let him deal with him, right? We’re big in our family about the responsibility of privilege.

So not that I’m a 37-year-old white male, and so I have this inherent privilege, systemic privilege, that I’m just really honestly in the last year opening eyes to because of the reality of the situation.

But just that I think there’s redeeming parts to every person I really do. I think I’m convinced that there’s literally greatness inside of every human being. And I challenge my kids with this, and I challenge myself with this.

And so, like, when I put on my philosophical whiskey cap and got out of my, like, hate-filled, you know, little boy cap, then I look at this guy and I feel, like, super sorry for him, right?

And I envision myself in this room as all the things in his life that he probably hoped he had at one point now doesn’t even, will never get. So, how do you like them apples, too, like, you know what I mean? Like, I have really amazing clients.

They’re older than me and they’re more successful and they own their own businesses, so they’re very much mentors in a lot of ways. I sent one one, I was like, yeah, I’m just dealing with a lot of stuff right now.

It’s just sometimes more than I feel like in a candle. He just sent me back a thing. He’s like, you know, it’s funny in life.

We oftentimes spill out what we fill ourselves up with. I don’t want to be an angry troll, man. I don’t want to be running around holding it against everybody else.

And now I’m pissed off and I’m angry to my kids. And I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to spill out anger, you know?

None of us do.

We want to be our best selves. We want to make Oprah proud. But it’s hard because our best selves aren’t always best friends with our regular everyday selves.

I’m super competitive.

I hate losing. So I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose this deal. Like, we’re going to win.

And winning means being happy. And winning means loving. Cool.

I’m going to be the happiest, damn loviest person you’ve met. And we’re going to win. You know what I mean?

And I’m not going to let that guy win. And I think I’m such a confident, narcissistic asshole that I know in my mind that if I had showed up, his ass wouldn’t have walked. That I would have stood there and filibustered.

I would have spoke until everybody literally was like, fine. No. And then I’d have been like, thank you, I’ll see you again in five years, because that’s who I am.

So to not even show up, there’s just so many layers of disappointment.

And that disappointment is real. It’s that emotional part of Damon rearing up, wanting everything to be in his control for there to be a reason. But…

I know it’s not.

You know, I know this was so many other things besides me, and that this wasn’t personal. And at least at this point, it wasn’t a conspiracy, and there was nothing hidden, and there was no, like, weirdness to it.

But that doesn’t make it suck any less.

Understanding something doesn’t make it happen. And Damon knows that there are so many factors that could have played into Richard Frazier’s release.

The medium-security state prison that Richard Frazier was being held in was at 173% capacity when he was released. Was he granted parole to reduce overcrowding?

Richard Frazier had been in the system for nearly 40 years, which meant that his file had been increasing with each passing parole hearing. Was it an accumulation of evidence over time?

In Alabama, nearly 50% of the prisoners that came up for parole in fiscal year 16 were granted it. Was it just his turn?

The three-person parole board sometimes looks at nearly 100 cases a day, spending minutes deciding the fates of the offenders and their victims. Was he pushed through an overburden system? Or was it Damon’s fault?

If he’d been there and sat in that chair, would that have done more? More than his letter alone? More than the letters from every other hearing?

More than Richard Frazier’s clean conduct record? More than the overcrowding and the parole rate? How is any of this quantified?

The fact is, Damon will never know why they granted Richard Frazier his parole. Parole documents, transcripts, and records are all sealed. The only thing the public can see is that sheet with all the check marks.

The one that says Richard Frazier’s release poses no disrespect to the law. So Damon has to live with that. He has to live with that gray area, trying every day to maintain a grip on his perspective.

I’ve said before that closure is a myth. There’s no closure to these situations, these feelings, and acceptance is slippery. Damon is struggling with that too, acceptance.

For two hours, I watch him grasp for it, like a child reaching for the string of a helium balloon.

You spend all this time hating somebody, like literally physically hating their being, like wishing they did not exist. Like there was a satisfaction perceived by being the guy that ended it. I can’t do anything.

The responsibility is gone. I can’t do anything legally within my power. I can’t control this situation anymore, which is frustrating at its core, super frustrating.

It’s bitter, pissed off anger, wrapped in like logical fallacies, I feel like. Like all these band-aids of logic that I keep applying and sometimes this brings a leak and so we just go apply it somewhere else.

And the anger is always going to be there.

And so you just have to learn to deal with it and to figure out why and then to figure out, okay, cool, how do we spend that as something positive so that we don’t continue to fill ourselves up and let this anger spill out?

How do we let love fill out, right? Well, maybe we take a different approach to him, right? Maybe we start to ask ourselves like, where is he at now?

What is he going through? And then I think about like, what do I want my kids to think about me? And what do I want my wife to think about me?

And how do I want those relationships to manifest? And then that forces me to start to reexamine how I look at this situation.

Do you ever lay in bed at night, going through completely imaginary scenarios that may or may not ever take place?

A hard conversation with your boss, a breakup, a Facebook argument with a friend of a friend of a cousin who’s a total idiot and keeps commenting on your stuff? Me neither. Damon has been doing this with his grandparents’ murderer for years.

Part of this grasping are these conversations that he has with Richard Frazier. Not with Richard, but with himself as Richard Frazier.

I sat and watched Damon do this again and again in the interview, build up these scenarios where he tries to establish some sort of control, imagining the perfect scenario and how it would go.

And there’s only a few potential outcomes. One, it’s a good conversation, and we actually get to healing.

And he says, the first thing he says is, I’m sorry, and I made a mistake, and I want to talk to you and figure out how we can just move forward and how we can heal.

And that would be a godsend, and I would open arm that, and we’d create a scholarship or a 5K, or we’d do a heroin addiction program.

My greatest concern, the worst case scenario, would he’d sit down and be like, yep, pulled that trigger, walking today. They’re not blind rage.

And that’s when I’d probably get really nasty and be like, oh, cool, man, those 38 years, those were totally worth it, huh? Because I’ve been doing this amazing stuff, and that’s just not what I want.

In those types of situations, I’m probably not going to converse for long, so it’s not like we’re going to sit there and talk.

So if I sat down and he was like, yeah, so da-da-da, I’d be like, good luck to you, man, I’ll pray for you, and then stand up and walk out and try to keep it there before, because ultimately, like, he’s not, I’m not going to let you win, man.

We really wanted to help Damon find a why.

And the only person who can do that is Richard Frazier. We tried to get in touch with him, but he’s vanished into Mobile County on work release. He has no Facebook, no address, and no phone number.

Talking to his parole officer, it was unclear how even he was going to get in touch with Richard Frazier, so despite many attempts, we didn’t reach him. Maybe one day Damon will. Maybe Richard will somehow learn what a podcast is and hear this.

Or he’ll get a permanent address and Damon will look for it and find it. And maybe have one of those imaginary conversations in real life. For all his bravado, all his anger, Damon’s best self seems to have won.

Damon emailed us weeks after Richard Frazier was released and let us know that if we did find Richard, he’d want to talk to him.

But until that happens, Damon has to live with not knowing any answers, without absolution, wondering how much responsibility is his. All he has is himself, his family, some old court documents, and one very unsatisfying parole sheet.

That’s not a lot to work with, but those ingredients have helped him to create small servings of compassion, understanding, and a little bit of peace in all of this grief and anger.

I wish we’d have talked about it more before.

So, like, if there’s any lesson I learned from this, it’s like, I’m going to hide this situation from my son around death, but not any other, and wanted him to know that dad is not eternal, and that I’m extinguishable.

Scoreboard’s taken down now, bud. It’s not taken up. It’s just a weird place, because I would encourage anybody else to talk, which sounds so hard.

We don’t want to, but you need to, because this has been huge for me, and I’m a better person today than I was three months ago, and not because of him, but because of the choices I’ve made in reaction to the choice he made.

You know, I’m a dad, and I’m a business owner, I’m a husband, and I’m all these roles of strength.

And these are the types of situations where you actually need to, like, almost put your strength to the side and really embrace the weakness and the parts that hurt, and that are messy and sticky, and that don’t feel good.

But we don’t teach that as a society, you know? So then where does that go? It all gets shoved away, and then it comes back, and it’s just…

It’s just weird.

A reminder that this season on TTFA Anthologies, we will be exploring the kinds of grief you don’t find in the sympathy card aisle.

Stories like what it feels like to grieve someone whose life you took accidentally, the grief of helping your father die on his own terms, mourning the loss of a childhood you didn’t have, the grief of things going as planned, the grief of a father

who couldn’t show up for you, the loss of a best friend, and being widowed by a man you were divorcing, and more. The first three episodes of the new season of TTFA Anthologies are out right now. You can search TTFA Anthologies in your podcast app.

And if you want them all, ad free right now. We will link to those. They are available ad free for paid Thanks For Asking subscribers.

And we’ll see you back here again next week.