Speaker 1: With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 2: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today.
Speaker 3: Has anyone seen the bride and broom?
Speaker 4: Sorry?
Speaker 5: Sorry, we're here.
Speaker 6: We were getting lucky in the limo when we lost.
Speaker 3: Track of time.
Speaker 6: No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up
Speaker 6: quicker than a guess registered.
Speaker 3: In that case, I pronounce you lucky.
Speaker 1: Play for free at Lucky Landslots dot com. Daily bonuses
Speaker 1: are waiting. No purchase necessary board. We're prohibited by lock
Speaker 1: eight team plus terms and conditions. Applack see website for details.
Speaker 6: Okay, round two, name something that's not boring.
Speaker 7: Laundry, a book club, computer solitaire.
Speaker 6: Huh oh, sorry, we were looking for Chumbuck Casino to chum.
Speaker 6: That's right, Chumbuckcasino dot com as over one hundred casino
Speaker 6: style games joined today and play for free for your
Speaker 6: chance to redeem some serious prizes. Chump Chumbucasino dot com.
Speaker 6: Nocess relieved by lock eighty plus storms editions plus see
Speaker 6: what retails Hell.
Speaker 1: With the Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just
Speaker 1: about anywhere.
Speaker 3: It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 3: weather's fine. But we're just gonna circle up here a
Speaker 3: while and get lucky. No, no, nothing like that. It's
Speaker 3: just these cash prizes add up quick, so I suggest
Speaker 3: you sit back, keep your trade table up right, and
Speaker 3: start getting lucky.
Speaker 1: Play for free at Lucky landslops dot com. Are you
Speaker 1: feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void. We're prohibited by law
Speaker 1: eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details.
Speaker 8: Hello, it is Ryan, and we could all use an
Speaker 8: extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we just to
Speaker 8: make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes,
Speaker 8: counting or steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That
Speaker 8: is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino.
Speaker 8: Chumbuck Casino has all your favorite social casino style games
Speaker 8: you can play for free anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses.
Speaker 8: That's your brighten your day low actually a lot, So
Speaker 8: sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot com. That's Chumbuck
Speaker 8: Casino dot com.
Speaker 1: Bill Prettimary by Lost Arm Conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 2: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 2: written about them, Gasey, Bundy Dahmer, The Night Stalker BTK.
Speaker 2: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 2: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 2: your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening, The True American tells the story of Razudin Buyin,
Speaker 5: the Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to
Speaker 5: America and working in technology. After nine to eleven, an
Speaker 5: avowed American terrorist named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into
Speaker 5: the Dallas Mini mart where Bihuen has found temporary work
Speaker 5: and shoots him, maiming him and nearly killing him. Two
Speaker 5: other victims at other gas stations aren't so lucky, dying
Speaker 5: at once. The True American traces the making of these
Speaker 5: two men, Stroman and Behuian, and of their faithful encounter.
Speaker 5: It follows them as they rebuild shattered lives, one striving
Speaker 5: on death row to become a better man, the other
Speaker 5: to heal and pull himself up from the lowest rung
Speaker 5: on the latter of an unfamiliar country. Ten years after
Speaker 5: the shooting, an Islamic pilgrimage seedes in Behuan. A strange
Speaker 5: idea If he is ever to be whole, he must
Speaker 5: re enter Stroman's life. He longs to confront Stroman and
Speaker 5: speak to him face to face about the attack that
Speaker 5: change their lives. Bihuen publicly forgives Stroman in the name
Speaker 5: of his religion and its notion of mercy. Then he
Speaker 5: wages is a legal and public relations campaign against the
Speaker 5: State of Texas and Governor Rick Perry to have his
Speaker 5: attack spared. From the death penalty, ranging from Texas juvenile
Speaker 5: justice system to the swirling crowd of pilgrims at the
Speaker 5: haj in Mecca, from a biker bar to an immigrant
Speaker 5: mosque in Dallas, from young military cadets in Bangladesh to
Speaker 5: elite paratroopers in Israel. From a wealthy household of chicken
Speaker 5: importers in Karachi, Pakistan, to the sober residences of Brownwood, Texas.
Speaker 5: The True American is a rich, colorful, profoundly moving exploration
Speaker 5: of the American dream in its many dimensions. Ultimately, it
Speaker 5: tells a story about our love hate relationship with immigrants,
Speaker 5: about the encounter of Islam and the West, about how
Speaker 5: or whether we choose what we become. The focus of
Speaker 5: this program this evening is the True American with my
Speaker 5: special guest journalist and author anand girid Hadis. Welcome to
Speaker 5: the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: And I apologized for mis pronouncing your name, so if
Speaker 5: you could just pronounce your last name for us correctly.
Speaker 4: The name's annand Gerdardas.
Speaker 5: Okay, thank you very much. Now, first off, it's a
Speaker 5: question I asked many authors, what compelled you? Why did
Speaker 5: you choose to write this story? What was it about
Speaker 5: this story? How did you come without giving too much
Speaker 5: of the story away at all? How did you come
Speaker 5: to write The True American?
Speaker 4: You know, I spent some years actually thinking about the
Speaker 4: question that I think many of us were thinking about
Speaker 4: in the kind of in recent past, about the American dream.
Speaker 4: And there was a lot of talk as the kind
Speaker 4: of great recession sunk its its teeth into the country,
Speaker 4: a lot of talk about this American dream and who
Speaker 4: it was still working for and who had stopped working for,
Speaker 4: and whether the whole thing was kind of more of
Speaker 4: a nightmare for many people than kind of a dream anymore.
Speaker 4: And so those questions were kind of swirling in my
Speaker 4: head for a while, and I wanted to find a
Speaker 4: way into those questions, not you know, to write a
Speaker 4: kind of high level book with you know, vague substance
Speaker 4: about the American dream of large, but really to sink
Speaker 4: into a couple of characters and explore it from the ground.
Speaker 4: And I came upon this story once in the newspaper
Speaker 4: about a Ladieshi immigrant to the United States fighting to
Speaker 4: save the life of a white supremacist who had tried
Speaker 4: to kill him, and trying to convince the state of
Speaker 4: Texas not to execute this man and to forgive him
Speaker 4: in the name of Islam. And it was a kind
Speaker 4: of surreal story at first, and a little bit of
Speaker 4: research revealed that it really was that story that I'd
Speaker 4: been looking for, a story about the America that still
Speaker 4: works and the America that stopped working a long time ago,
Speaker 4: And that came into a kind of bitter collision in
Speaker 4: this story of a clash between an immigrant for whom
Speaker 4: America still actually is a thriving country and a native
Speaker 4: born American who belonged to an America that stopped thriving
Speaker 4: a long time ago.
Speaker 5: Now there's an incredible amount of empathy and of course understanding,
Speaker 5: and you invite your audience to do the same. Maybe
Speaker 5: you could give us a little bit of your background
Speaker 5: and your religious beliefs if that was a factor in
Speaker 5: you at at least identifying with the victim, and of
Speaker 5: course you had to identify with the perpetrator as well.
Speaker 5: But please give us a little bit of your background
Speaker 5: to see if there's any way that you came into
Speaker 5: this identifying with the victim.
Speaker 4: No, I have no religious connection with the victim or
Speaker 4: with really anybody. I don't really have any religious beliefs
Speaker 4: in general. So this story really stuck with me because
Speaker 4: it was a story about a country that you know,
Speaker 4: my my parents came to this country from India, and
Speaker 4: they were able to leave behind one place, one set
Speaker 4: of understandings, family, and able to come here as so
Speaker 4: many have, and find their own little corner of glory,
Speaker 4: and the idea that that that is something that continues
Speaker 4: to happen, that continues to renew the country, but that
Speaker 4: from time to time it is threatened by the backlash
Speaker 4: that that difference can can create.
Speaker 5: Now and again, if I mispronounced the name, please correct me.
Speaker 5: On Rizudin tell us about his life. It's an incredible story.
Speaker 5: Of course, we alluded to it, and we spoke of
Speaker 5: it in the book Synopsis of the Description of the show.
Speaker 5: Description itself tell us about his early life, and tell
Speaker 5: about his aspirations and his early thoughts and his impressions,
Speaker 5: and why he chose to come to America and what
Speaker 5: he thought about the journey itself in terms of its importance.
Speaker 4: You know, he was like so many of the people
Speaker 4: who have emigrated to America over the years and decades
Speaker 4: and centuries, and he was someone who, you know, was
Speaker 4: fleeing a perfectly respectable, perfectly decent existence. Many people who
Speaker 4: ended up in America were fleeing truly terrible conditions or circumstances.
Speaker 4: But a lot of people who ended up in America were,
Speaker 4: you fleeing fine circumstances, but had this feeling that there
Speaker 4: was something more for them in life. And where a
Speaker 4: country settled over the generations by this kind of strange
Speaker 4: birds in a way, who always had this feeling that
Speaker 4: there was something more for them, and he was one
Speaker 4: of them. He grew up in an upper middle class
Speaker 4: family in Taka in Bangladesh. He was in military boarding
Speaker 4: school and then the Air Force Academy of his country.
Speaker 4: Commissioned as an Air Force officer in his country, learned
Speaker 4: to fly fighter jets, became interested in it, and started
Speaker 4: training himself in that, and then just had this sense
Speaker 4: that all of that, that perfectly good life wouldn't be
Speaker 4: enough for him, and he wanted more, and more for
Speaker 4: him was America. He came to New York after winning
Speaker 4: a visa on his eighth attempt. Came to New York,
Speaker 4: worked in a gas station, a little bit of French restaurant,
Speaker 4: a little bit of Xerox shop, a little bit, and
Speaker 4: one day got a phone call from a former schoolmate
Speaker 4: of his from Bangladesh who now lived in Texas. And
Speaker 4: the guy said, why don't you come visit me and
Speaker 4: my brother and I own a bunch of gas stations
Speaker 4: and you can come work in one of these stations
Speaker 4: and it'll be great and you might own your own
Speaker 4: station before long. And so he went to go visit
Speaker 4: his friend in Texas, and in Texas he found that
Speaker 4: the bathrooms were as big as the bedrooms in New York,
Speaker 4: and he thought this is quite nice. So he moved,
Speaker 4: and he thought, maybe he's going to own a business.
Speaker 4: Maybe he can work and save and take it classes
Speaker 4: and get married by the end of the year in
Speaker 4: two thousand and one, and then September eleventh came along,
Speaker 4: and like so many lives in this country, his life
Speaker 4: was irradicably changed.
Speaker 5: What was his impressions of America before he came and afterwards.
Speaker 5: I'm very interesting to hear in the book his his ideals,
Speaker 5: what he really thought he would encounter in America, and
Speaker 5: then to hear shortly after, in a short period of time,
Speaker 5: after being at this Minnie Martin in Texas, tell us
Speaker 5: how what was the difference between his fantasy and the
Speaker 5: reality that he encountered.
Speaker 4: You know, he had always thought America to be a
Speaker 4: kind of rich, bountiful problem for his own. You know,
Speaker 4: he saw these movies on TV, as people do around
Speaker 4: the world. He had grown up with the TV shows.
Speaker 4: You know, he knew the culture secondhand, the way so
Speaker 4: much of the world does, and it just seemed this
Speaker 4: kind of airy, perfect society where anything was possible if
Speaker 4: you worked hard and did right. And he arrives and
Speaker 4: he is in Dallas and kind of eastern Dallas, working
Speaker 4: at this gas station, and he realizes what a profoundly
Speaker 4: lonely and isolated country this can be in those parts
Speaker 4: of the country that aren't working very well. He was
Speaker 4: not in you know, the thriving precincts of New York
Speaker 4: City or la or Chicago or San Francisco. He was
Speaker 4: in kind of a bad neighborhood in Dallas. And what
Speaker 4: struck him above all it was a poor neighborhood, and
Speaker 4: the poverty struck him because he thought America to be
Speaker 4: this kind of endlessly rich country. But what really struck
Speaker 4: him above all was the loneliness of these poor people
Speaker 4: around him, and the fact that in addition to not
Speaker 4: having money, they seem to also not really have other people.
Speaker 4: They kind of ate alone in their restaurants, and they
Speaker 4: came to this gas station alone, and they always just
Speaker 4: seemed alone, alone, alone, And that really struck him because
Speaker 4: where he came from, if you were poor, you at
Speaker 4: least still had people. And he had come to a
Speaker 4: country where, in fact, the poorer you are, the less
Speaker 4: access to community and family you often have.
Speaker 5: Right, what was his impression or what did he see
Speaker 5: in terms of the religiosity of the people around him
Speaker 5: in the community, and also the sense of family, the
Speaker 5: difference in terms of the family model from where he
Speaker 5: had come from and how he was raised and what
Speaker 5: he was, at least thinking he was seeing.
Speaker 4: He was struck by the almost total absence of family
Speaker 4: as a serious force. I mean, he was struck by
Speaker 4: the fact that there was a Mother's Day and it
Speaker 4: was only once a year, where he thought kind of
Speaker 4: every day was Mother's Day and called his mom once
Speaker 4: a day and asked what he could do to serve her.
Speaker 4: He was struck by the fact that kind of family
Speaker 4: got together at Thanksgiving and Christmas once or twice a year,
Speaker 4: whereas to his mind, you know, family was kind of
Speaker 4: like the air you breathe. But of course, he too
Speaker 4: is a complicated figure here. He didn't ruse to stay
Speaker 4: with his family. He chose to leave and come to
Speaker 4: America and live on his own. But he was very
Speaker 4: struck by how people lacked for other people in this country,
Speaker 4: particular level of family.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 4: That that lack was as bad, if not worse, than
Speaker 4: the lack of resources that was kind of the stuff
Speaker 4: of poverty.
Speaker 5: What was his experience in terms of acceptance of his
Speaker 5: race prior to nine to eleven.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't think it was. I don't think
Speaker 4: it was an issue, you know, I think it was
Speaker 4: until the events unleast by September eleventh, I think he
Speaker 4: was actually welcomed, accepted, trying to figure out how to
Speaker 4: you know, studying a course to get a degree, move ahead.
Speaker 4: But things were America was working for him.
Speaker 5: He was not naive. I mean, you paint this picture
Speaker 5: of him being quite naive, and there's a couple examples
Speaker 5: how naive this guy is. He's got a gun waved
Speaker 5: in his face and he thinks the guy's trying to
Speaker 5: sell him the gun. So it's very comedic. But in
Speaker 5: terms of his what sustained him in terms of I'm
Speaker 5: talking about how religious was he and what was this
Speaker 5: sort of his idea of why he could sustain himself
Speaker 5: in this sort of lonely environment without his family which
Speaker 5: he was accustomed to. What really sustained him in terms
Speaker 5: of that being able to work at this mini mart
Speaker 5: in Dallas, Texas, in a bad neighborhood.
Speaker 4: I think, like so many immigrants, he understood that this
Speaker 4: was not his total reality, that he was doing this
Speaker 4: as part of a plan, that the plan was to
Speaker 4: work hard and toil and push through the stint at
Speaker 4: the mini marty or whatever else he had to do,
Speaker 4: and then to transcend it, and that he would He
Speaker 4: could see this future that was almost more vivid to
Speaker 4: him than his own present. And he could see that
Speaker 4: the gas station would lead to the wedding that winter,
Speaker 4: which would lead to doing computer courses, and the computer
Speaker 4: courses would lead to getting this job and that job.
Speaker 4: And he could see the climb. And he understood, as
Speaker 4: so many immigrants over the years, that to rise in America,
Speaker 4: you must sometimes first fall. He was a he was
Speaker 4: a big man where he came from, but he understood
Speaker 4: that he had to to work in this gas station,
Speaker 4: toil or terrible hours, sleep not enough, but he was
Speaker 4: confident that it would it would pay off for him.
Speaker 5: How important was his religion to him at that time,
Speaker 5: during that period of time, and how devoted I think
Speaker 5: he he.
Speaker 4: He is a very religious person, always has been raised
Speaker 4: in a very religious environment, and you know, generally praise
Speaker 4: five times a day, or sometimes a little bit less
Speaker 4: if if it's a particularly stressful day. But but his
Speaker 4: religion in some ways is is kind of undergirding his
Speaker 4: his support, this kind of support beam of his life.
Speaker 4: And he was very deeply motivated by the notion of
Speaker 4: the prophet Muhammad, in particular who was a shepherd, and
Speaker 4: the fact that he was a shepherd, which was I
Speaker 4: guess the kind of you know, mini marked clerk of
Speaker 4: that era. The fact that he was a shepherd didn't
Speaker 4: prevent him from being a historical figure of enormous consequence.
Speaker 4: And so in some ways Race told himself, if if
Speaker 4: Prophet Mohammad could be a shepherd and still have such
Speaker 4: a great and important destiny, surely I can work in this,
Speaker 4: in this mini mart and and it still leads to
Speaker 4: some life of great significance.
Speaker 5: So that being said, it really was a culture shock
Speaker 5: for him. America was not really what he had envisioned.
Speaker 4: I think it was, and it wasn't, I mean, you
Speaker 4: know it. He saw this isolation of the part of others.
Speaker 4: He saw this fragmentation and lack of family, etc. But
Speaker 4: he came for a reason and that reason was valid,
Speaker 4: which was he felt where he came from there was
Speaker 4: a limited opportunity for people to kind of reimagine their lives.
Speaker 4: You were kind of construct you know, constricted by the
Speaker 4: family you came from, the class you came from, what
Speaker 4: kind of professions people did. It was a relatively stagnant society,
Speaker 4: and here he now found himself in a society that
Speaker 4: had a great amount of personal freedom. And it's not
Speaker 4: just the freedom of the Bill of Rights, it's the
Speaker 4: freedom to kind of reimagine yourself and decide what kind
Speaker 4: of life you want to build. And he felt very
Speaker 4: clearly that this place had that in a way that
Speaker 4: the place he came from didn't. And I think he
Speaker 4: also felt that the dark side of that freedom to
Speaker 4: become whatever you wanted to do be was this isolation
Speaker 4: that they were actually two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 5: So it's very upbeat and optimistic overall. Now let's segue
Speaker 5: into a completely different character, and the other, of course,
Speaker 5: featured character in this tragic story, Mark Stroman. Tell us
Speaker 5: about his background, and how tell us about his background?
Speaker 6: Please?
Speaker 4: You know, Mark Stroman grows out of a white working
Speaker 4: class that you know, in various books and studies we
Speaker 4: are told is hurting has not done well over the
Speaker 4: last generation or so and has felt the kind of
Speaker 4: stagnation of the country and fragmentation of the society most acutely.
Speaker 4: And he's a kind of product of that social world
Speaker 4: you see kind of over the last three generations, and
Speaker 4: Mark Stroman's family, each generation has done a little bit
Speaker 4: worse than generation before, this kind of reversal of the
Speaker 4: great American you know, phenomenon of every generation doing better
Speaker 4: than the one that came before. Mark Stroman grows out
Speaker 4: of that world, but also has a lot of his
Speaker 4: own afflictions. There's terrible nightmares and dreams going well beyond
Speaker 4: a normal child's dreams. When he's very young, starts to
Speaker 4: escalate into kind of a habit of minor brushes with
Speaker 4: the law, which kind of escalates into medium brushes with
Speaker 4: the law, which kind of escalates into serious brushes with
Speaker 4: the law. Boys' homes, juvenile detention, parole, drugs start to
Speaker 4: play a role in his life. During his third attempt
Speaker 4: at eighth grade, he impregnates a woman, gets married to
Speaker 4: her the next year. Is a product of a kind
Speaker 4: of chaotic life that used to be used to be
Speaker 4: a kind of fringe existence in America, but in many
Speaker 4: ways has become a default existence for a lot of
Speaker 4: people in a kind of vast, hurting under nation. And
Speaker 4: by the time nine to eleven came about, Mark Stroman
Speaker 4: was a guy who'd been in and out of prison,
Speaker 4: in and out of drugs, had a mess problem. By
Speaker 4: all accounts, and was in some ways devoid of a
Speaker 4: lot of a sense of purpose and seemed to find
Speaker 4: in nine to eleven a kind of answer to what
Speaker 4: his life was supposed to be about that had maybe
Speaker 4: alluded him before.
Speaker 5: Now, how organized is he and he's in a biker enthusiast,
Speaker 5: he's a motorcycle enthusiast, he's a white supremacist, or at
Speaker 5: least he has these ideas. He's open to these ideas.
Speaker 5: But how serious is he? Does he join some organization?
Speaker 5: How serious is he about this new anger in his life?
Speaker 4: You know, I spoke to some of the bikers who
Speaker 4: he claimed to run with, and they said, oh, well,
Speaker 4: he didn't really run with us. He came to some
Speaker 4: of our parties and tried to pledge our organization, but
Speaker 4: we didn't really let him in. And you know, his
Speaker 4: sister told me Mark called himself a biker, but he
Speaker 4: never even owned a bike. So it's not even clear
Speaker 4: whether he joined anything formal. But I think, you know,
Speaker 4: he was certainly part of a large and diffuse and
Speaker 4: diverse population of you know, angry white guys in this
Speaker 4: country who have a feeling that minorities and immigrants and
Speaker 4: women are rising up and kind of shafting guys like them.
Speaker 4: And he felt that acutely, and he had a lot
Speaker 4: of friends who felt that acutely. And look turn on
Speaker 4: the TV and there are a lot of people who
Speaker 4: feel that acutely. And it's also worth noting that ninety
Speaker 4: nine percent of people who feel that way don't go
Speaker 4: commit crimes on the basis of it. But he was
Speaker 4: further motivated in a way that most folks who just
Speaker 4: feel aggrieved in that way aren't. And when nine to
Speaker 4: eleven came around, he said there were other people doing
Speaker 4: similar things kind of sort of in tandem in Dallas,
Speaker 4: and certainly there were a bunch of hate crimes around
Speaker 4: the country, but in many ways he was acting alone.
Speaker 4: And he went up to three gas stations alone and
Speaker 4: shot the clerk in each of these three gas stations
Speaker 4: in the month after nine to eleven and acted alone.
Speaker 5: Now did he speak to in this day of rampage.
Speaker 5: Let's just go back a little bit to any kind
Speaker 5: of There was talk of that he had a girlfriend,
Speaker 5: and so you know, there's again just not to excuse anything,
Speaker 5: but some kind of rationale somewhat is that he had
Speaker 5: a girlfriend and previous to this he had caught her
Speaker 5: having an affair, so again he was angry for other
Speaker 5: reasons as well, of course that he thought the Muslim
Speaker 5: religion was a target. So that's what he was looking for.
Speaker 5: But tell us about the day, if we can about
Speaker 5: the information. What happened that faithful day as he went
Speaker 5: from gas station to gas station? Why gas stations? Why
Speaker 5: what did he do? Why did he do what he
Speaker 5: did that day?
Speaker 4: You know? He and it wasn't actually one day. It
Speaker 4: was over the course of three weeks. And so the
Speaker 4: first one happened, you know, five six days after nine
Speaker 4: to eleven, he went to a gas station called Mom's Grocery,
Speaker 4: also in eastern Dallas, and walked in and shot the
Speaker 4: clerk who was grilling burgers under a reappreciate your business
Speaker 4: sign Pakistani immigrant and shot him. And the police investigated
Speaker 4: and couldn't figure out who did it, why they did it,
Speaker 4: what the motive was. No money was taken, puzzling crime.
Speaker 4: Some days later, Mark Stroman drives up to his second
Speaker 4: gas station, this time finds Race Bouyan there and shoots him.
Speaker 4: In this shooting and only this one of the three,
Speaker 4: he was using a double barreled pistol and shot a
Speaker 4: shot into Mark Stroman. Mark Shruman shot a kind of
Speaker 4: shot into into Race Bouyan's head, but it was filled
Speaker 4: with pellets instead of being a conventional bullet, and as
Speaker 4: a result, it sprayed these pellets into Buyon's head and
Speaker 4: blinded his right eye, but he survived. And then some
Speaker 4: days later, October fourth, Mark Stroman walks into his third
Speaker 4: gas station and shoots him and named Vasi Dave Patel,
Speaker 4: also a gas station clerk, uses a conventional gun that
Speaker 4: he did with the first one, and Patel dies on
Speaker 4: the spot as well. So within you know, kind of
Speaker 4: three weeks of nine to eleven, you have these these
Speaker 4: three acts. But what sort of strange is you know,
Speaker 4: Unlike the normal rampages we think about where there's kind
Speaker 4: of a feverish one hour in Columbine or Sandy Hook
Speaker 4: or whatever, this is a guy who did this three
Speaker 4: times over a three week period, with significant time between
Speaker 4: between these acts, and in none of the cases did
Speaker 4: he did he take any money.
Speaker 5: Well, that sounds like a serial killer profile.
Speaker 4: You know, I mean pulling off period. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 4: that's that's an interesting that's an interesting thought. I mean
Speaker 4: there was some debate about, you know, what wasn't what
Speaker 4: was the nature of these killings, because it actually had
Speaker 4: bearing on how they would be able to try him,
Speaker 4: and the prosecution was very determined to actually argue that
Speaker 4: he was committing robbery because that was the only way
Speaker 4: they could foresee getting him capital punishment, because it would
Speaker 4: be you know, murder while committing another crime, in this
Speaker 4: case robbery, and if it had been a hate crime,
Speaker 4: which you know, to casual observers it seemed some sort
Speaker 4: of you know, maybe serial killing hate crimes at a
Speaker 4: spray of hate crimes, they were not necessarily going to
Speaker 4: be able to get him the death penalty because it
Speaker 4: was missing that other, that other you know, crime while
Speaker 4: you're committing murder to the satisfaction of the capital murder statutes.
Speaker 4: And so there was an effort to kind of massage
Speaker 4: this into a broke, deadbeat guy, you know, going around
Speaker 4: the gas stations and robbing them who happened to kill
Speaker 4: the clerks, even though that really couldn't be further from
Speaker 4: from what happened. By Mark Strowman's own admission, he was
Speaker 4: a you know, a hateful, vengeful guy who wanted to
Speaker 4: retaliate for nine to eleven and and attempted to do
Speaker 4: so in this very misguided way.
Speaker 5: Well, you're right, though, the prosecution wanted to do robbery
Speaker 5: just because that was his past record, and so I
Speaker 5: think that was important that he did prison terms for
Speaker 5: forms of robbery.
Speaker 4: So they did, but the evidence that he was actually
Speaker 4: gonna rob in this case was slim to none.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I just think, you know, it's just I
Speaker 5: just imagine maybe even the prosecutor worried about a being
Speaker 5: somewhat sympathetic after nine to eleven to even though it's
Speaker 5: absurd that the jury would be would would listen to
Speaker 5: that excuse, that's somehow it wasn't the perpetrator's fault. And
Speaker 5: again I'm only speculating, but thinking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's interesting. It would have become perhaps a very
Speaker 4: different trial, and a trial about you know, the validity
Speaker 4: or invalidity of that of that revenge of mission. And
Speaker 4: you're right, maybe that was a trial they didn't want
Speaker 4: to have.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can only imagine, But now what is the
Speaker 5: what is Stroman's what is his behavior like? What is
Speaker 5: demeanor like after this?
Speaker 4: You know, right afterward he is he's arrested, the day
Speaker 4: after the third shooting, in part because of a random occurrence.
Speaker 4: He he had an old friend and former employer who
Speaker 4: knew him obviously and happened to know the third immigrant clerk,
Speaker 4: the second one to be killed. And it was actually
Speaker 4: only because there was this one guy in the world
Speaker 4: who knew both Mark Stroman and mister Patel, that this
Speaker 4: person was able to connect the dots because he'd kind
Speaker 4: of anecdotally heard some things about Mark doing something of
Speaker 4: this sort from people, and because he knew the gas
Speaker 4: station clerk who had died and drove by the station
Speaker 4: and saw the police tape and asked after him, he
Speaker 4: was able to say, huh, maybe that couldn't possibly be Mark,
Speaker 4: could it, And in fact, was Mark's demeanor after that
Speaker 4: arrest was defiant. He gave an interview to a local
Speaker 4: TV station which he said, you know, we had to
Speaker 4: do this. We had to kind of kill them because
Speaker 4: they're trying to kill us, and I did what every
Speaker 4: honest American would want to do. That was his claim,
Speaker 4: and when the trial happened some months later, he continued
Speaker 4: to be kind of strong and defiant. His attorney barely
Speaker 4: made any defense, although that's somewhat typical of you know,
Speaker 4: the kind of representation people may get in Texas in
Speaker 4: a case like this. And it was only much later
Speaker 4: over the years that he came to some sort of
Speaker 4: reckoning with the kind of man he'd allowed himself to become.
Speaker 5: Was that in time? It was that in coincidental time
Speaker 5: with appeals though? Did he get a different lawyer in appeal?
Speaker 5: Did he become a tell us a little bit about
Speaker 5: you say he was defiant and then his lawyer is
Speaker 5: not going to put up much of defense, And maybe
Speaker 5: that's kind of typical, but a lawyer really doesn't try
Speaker 5: to put up much of a defense if you're working
Speaker 5: against them.
Speaker 7: You're dedicated to building a bright financial future. Grow your
Speaker 7: investments with Millibank's high Yield Savings account.
Speaker 2: Earn a highly competitive.
Speaker 7: Annual percentage yield with no fees or minimums. Getting started
Speaker 7: is simple to download the app, link your account and
Speaker 7: start growing your money. Welcome to a new way to
Speaker 7: save more for the things that matter most. Welcome to Millibank.
Speaker 7: Visit Milli dot bank or download the Milli app today.
Speaker 4: Sorry, what do you mean working against him?
Speaker 5: Well, if you're if you remain to be defiant and
Speaker 5: are not helping your your lawyer in terms of making
Speaker 5: statements or maintaining that defiant. I'm a true American. I'm
Speaker 5: doing what every other American does. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: you typically you're not going to get a public defender
Speaker 5: to take that and and go all the way to
Speaker 5: and fight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he and he and he certainly did not
Speaker 4: get a public offender to do that. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think what was striking is that the public defender didn't
Speaker 4: even make an opening statement, didn't call any witnesses, kind
Speaker 4: of made no made no effort to frame the case
Speaker 4: in their own way, and you know, there was no
Speaker 4: case to be made that he didn't do these things.
Speaker 4: I think the best that could have been argued was
Speaker 4: that there was no he was being tried for robbery
Speaker 4: related murderers and that there was no evidence of robbery.
Speaker 4: You know, a good lawyer probably could have gotten him
Speaker 4: a life sentence instead of the death penalty, and that
Speaker 4: would that would have been it.
Speaker 5: Right Now, back to the you know, the really the
Speaker 5: hero of this story and amazing character in this incredible story.
Speaker 5: And so tell us about what raise does, what is
Speaker 5: his rehabilitation, like what after this may and blinding and
Speaker 5: so how does tell us about his life? And and
Speaker 5: so during this time that the rest are made and
Speaker 5: the trial happens, not quickly but shortly after. What is
Speaker 5: the rehabilitation? What is the is life like for our
Speaker 5: main character, Rezudent?
Speaker 4: You know, he is at first at a very you know,
Speaker 4: the lowest point and moment of his life. Understandably, he
Speaker 4: is admitted to a hospital with thirty nine pellets in
Speaker 4: his face that day, September twenty one, two thousand and one,
Speaker 4: goes to the hospital, is discharged the next day with
Speaker 4: his eyes still caked shut with blood, his mouth and
Speaker 4: jaw barely moving, you know, half of his head kind
Speaker 4: of swollen to you know, what he described as the
Speaker 4: size of a watermelon. And he was let go the hospital.
Speaker 4: And his first thought was, well, this is America. It's
Speaker 4: a very rich country. If it's a Christian hospital, so
Speaker 4: compassionate people. If they're letting me go, it must be
Speaker 4: for the right reasons. They must know something that I
Speaker 4: you know that I don't, and my condition must be
Speaker 4: you know, better than I thought it was. It took
Speaker 4: him time to understand that the reason they were letting
Speaker 4: him go was that he didn't have insurance, and they
Speaker 4: knew that he wouldn't be good for the money with
Speaker 4: you know, enormous bills, and so they kind of kicked
Speaker 4: him out and told him he was stabilized under whatever
Speaker 4: definition of the law was required to stabilize him, and
Speaker 4: that they were they were kind of done with him,
Speaker 4: and he'd have to come back as this mystical thing
Speaker 4: called an outpatient.
Speaker 5: Now was he fortunate because he was living in his
Speaker 5: boss's home during that time? Wasn't he? And so what
Speaker 5: was how was his life impacted from not being really
Speaker 5: able to work again immediately?
Speaker 4: You know, he was living in his boss's apartment for
Speaker 4: some time. Then he stopped splitting the mortgage with him
Speaker 4: once he was shot and not working, and his boss
Speaker 4: started to treat him worse and worse, and started by
Speaker 4: showing some compassion since he was the one who exposed
Speaker 4: him to the situation, but over time started to kind of,
Speaker 4: you know, treat him like a dead horse, as race
Speaker 4: put it once, and finally snapped and said one day
Speaker 4: when he was supposed to give him a ride to
Speaker 4: a doctor's visit, you know, if you need this kind
Speaker 4: of care, go get a nurse or something. I can't
Speaker 4: do all this for you. And so at that point,
Speaker 4: Race is basically homeless, bounced around some homes of people
Speaker 4: he knew, and finally was lucky to find through a
Speaker 4: job he was doing a guy also from Bangladesh who
Speaker 4: said to him, you know, you've been through a lot.
Speaker 4: I have extra sofa. You can just sleep on that sofa.
Speaker 4: You don't don't have to pay me anything. And he
Speaker 4: ended up staying for about a year in that guy's apartment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and was he receiving any kind of physiotherapy? I mean,
Speaker 5: I really couldn't afford it. But did he receive any
Speaker 5: kind of help in terms of and what was the
Speaker 5: progress in terms of his the eye itself, or any
Speaker 5: kind of disfigurement as a result of the pellets in
Speaker 5: the face.
Speaker 4: You know, I think if he had gotten better care,
Speaker 4: if they'd kept him in the hospital that day instead
Speaker 4: of just stabilizing him, there was a good chance some
Speaker 4: or all or a good amount of the sight in
Speaker 4: his right eye could have been saved. Unfortunately, because he
Speaker 4: was let go and told to come back as an outpatient,
Speaker 4: there was a lot of delay to wait a few
Speaker 4: weeks or of appointment, and you come back and you
Speaker 4: wait a few more weeks, and you wait a few months,
Speaker 4: and so he was. He did come back as an outpatient.
Speaker 4: He did get a very top eye surgeon in Dallas,
Speaker 4: doctor s who saw him and liked him and agreed
Speaker 4: to kind of basically forego you know, a lot of
Speaker 4: the bills, but you know, the doctor, it was too
Speaker 4: late for the doctor to save more than you know,
Speaker 4: a very small percentage of his eyesight. So he's able
Speaker 4: to kind of vaguely perceive light in that right eye
Speaker 4: and not much else. And had, you know, clearly had
Speaker 4: untreated depression or some other mental health problems, but basically
Speaker 4: was unable to deal with them because he had no
Speaker 4: money and there was no insurance, and there was no
Speaker 4: one who would help him with that. And so struggled
Speaker 4: with that. And it was only through kind of finally
Speaker 4: overcoming his fear of the outside world as he hunker
Speaker 4: down in that apartment and getting back out there first,
Speaker 4: in fact, to a job at the Olive Garden where
Speaker 4: he worked as a waiter, that he started to kind
Speaker 4: of conquer and overcome that fear.
Speaker 5: Did he have any what was the extent of his
Speaker 5: other injuries or disfigurements was what was the extent of that.
Speaker 4: So he was, you know, effectively blind in his right eye.
Speaker 4: And you know, after these after the kind of surgery
Speaker 4: and treatment and different attempts, settled in and had you know,
Speaker 4: clearly had untreated depression, and yet was intensely resilient. So
Speaker 4: even as he was, you know, sitting in his boss's apartment,
Speaker 4: afraid to leave the house, you know, trying to just heal,
Speaker 4: he had a sense of like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 4: wasting time. I need to keep moving forward. I need
Speaker 4: to keep improving my prospect. So he ordered for some
Speaker 4: computer programming textbooks online and with one eye started like
Speaker 4: training himself to make himself more salable, more marketable, more useful.
Speaker 4: There was a measure of the kind of strength that
Speaker 4: he that he brought.
Speaker 5: And he still continued being a developed religious person during
Speaker 5: this period of time as well.
Speaker 4: He always was and is and it was in many
Speaker 4: ways his faith that sustained him and kept telling him that,
Speaker 4: you know, if there was great hardship in his life,
Speaker 4: it was because God had some grand design for him
Speaker 4: that would be revealed later.
Speaker 5: Now, during this period of time, of course, we get
Speaker 5: up to the ten years. But in that ten year
Speaker 5: period of time. What's the progress with Is there any
Speaker 5: progress at all in getting Stroman's death penalty sentence commuted
Speaker 5: to life sentence.
Speaker 4: You know, that really happened almost exactly ten years after
Speaker 4: the shootings in two thousand and one, when Race was
Speaker 4: running a campaign to Saint Mark Stroman. But before the campaign,
Speaker 4: Race really had to come to this epiphany about wanting
Speaker 4: to forgive. And he came to that in a way
Speaker 4: because of his religious kind of worldview, and in a
Speaker 4: way because of his secular evolution and journey and the
Speaker 4: religious worldview. You know said to him that as he
Speaker 4: understood his faith of Islam, forgiveness was the highest and
Speaker 4: the central value of his faith. And so when he
Speaker 4: went on a pilgrimage to Mecca in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 4: one of the sacred duties for Muslims, he had this
Speaker 4: very strong sense that God saved him all those years
Speaker 4: ago when he thought he was dying on the floor
Speaker 4: of that gas station, and now he had to repay God,
Speaker 4: and what better way to repay God than by massive
Speaker 4: act of forgiveness. But the other part of his epiphany
Speaker 4: was a kind of secular one, which is I think
Speaker 4: his observation as a new American, frankly because he by
Speaker 4: two thousand and nine also became an American citizen. And
Speaker 4: he had this realization that he was able to come
Speaker 4: from the real third world and access this first world
Speaker 4: America as an immigrant, was shot in the faith and
Speaker 4: was still able to access this first world America, got better, jobs,
Speaker 4: got something that the Olive Garden learned it, got jobs
Speaker 4: in it, you know, eventually bought a house. But that
Speaker 4: there was a third world America right beside his first
Speaker 4: world America, and that even though he had come from
Speaker 4: very far away and was able to leap problem into
Speaker 4: that first world America, there were people, many people born
Speaker 4: in this country trapped in the third world America from
Speaker 4: which they could never escape. And he resolved to kind
Speaker 4: of do something about that hurting country within a country.
Speaker 5: Not to be crash or anything, but if it was,
Speaker 5: it is a tenant of his religion. There must have
Speaker 5: been some evolution in his own mind that it took
Speaker 5: ten years to come to that, and going on the
Speaker 5: pilgrimage itself, you know, I think.
Speaker 4: I think there was there was a lot of evolution,
Speaker 4: and there were a lot of things to think about
Speaker 4: after being shot and A bunch of them were just
Speaker 4: health related, depression related. How do you get medical samples,
Speaker 4: how do you get a doctor, how do you find
Speaker 4: a place to live? What sofa should you be sleeping on?
Speaker 4: He had a lot of practical concerns. Then when the
Speaker 4: practical concerns faded away, there was concerns about, Okay, now
Speaker 4: that I'm kind of stable, how do I rise again?
Speaker 4: That's why I came here. I came here to rise,
Speaker 4: So how do I learn it? What it Skills do
Speaker 4: I need? What job do I get?
Speaker 5: He had a lot of.
Speaker 4: Focus had to be on rebuilding his life, and his
Speaker 4: religion kind of again undergirded him as he did that.
Speaker 4: But his concerns in some ways were very practical and universal.
Speaker 4: Is how do I put together a life that someone
Speaker 4: has taken apart? And it was really only around two
Speaker 4: thousand and nine when a few things happened. One he
Speaker 4: became debt free for the first time. I didn't have
Speaker 4: this hang up of debt in which so many of
Speaker 4: us live with in this country. Two he went on
Speaker 4: this pilgrimage to Mecca, which is a very significant event
Speaker 4: and is a moment in the life of many of
Speaker 4: the faithful, where these kind of bigger things that you
Speaker 4: may put aside in your daily life come back to
Speaker 4: haunt you and you realize, Okay, I need to actually
Speaker 4: do this in my life. And it was becoming a citizen.
Speaker 4: I think he had a strong sense that before you
Speaker 4: become a citizen, you're just criticizing from the outside if
Speaker 4: you have some sort of problem with how things are
Speaker 4: being done. But once you're a citizen, you have equity
Speaker 4: and you need to speak out and make help to
Speaker 4: make this the best country it can be. And I
Speaker 4: think it was all of those So in a way,
Speaker 4: the notion of forginness in his religion was always knew
Speaker 4: about it, but I don't think it had occurred to
Speaker 4: him that it was his responsibility to apply it and
Speaker 4: find some great grand way of doing so until he
Speaker 4: got to a place in his life where he was
Speaker 4: stable and whole and could really start thinking big. And
Speaker 4: it was only really then that he started to think
Speaker 4: about the man who had shot him. He'd gone to
Speaker 4: the trial, but it was not like that man was
Speaker 4: a big and recurring presence in his life in his mind.
Speaker 2: But when he.
Speaker 4: Started to think about it, he realized that of all
Speaker 4: the things he could do to send a good message
Speaker 4: to his adopted country. Forgiving this man would be the
Speaker 4: most powerful thing he could do, and did grow out
Speaker 4: of his deepest understanding of his own faith.
Speaker 5: Now what kind of events precipitated him making, you know,
Speaker 5: deciding to endeavor to do this again gradden gesture, but
Speaker 5: also to you know, the contacts some people and say
Speaker 5: this is my this is my decision, this is my wish.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 5: Was Stroman already on of course he was on death row,
Speaker 5: but was his execution looming as his appeals had run out?
Speaker 5: What was there any event when he announcement to precipitated
Speaker 5: raised to then say listen, now's my time to do
Speaker 5: what I've been thinking about.
Speaker 4: Well, he you know, the nature of the campaign evolved.
Speaker 4: So it started with Race deciding he wanted to forgive
Speaker 4: Mark Uh, and then kind of evolved to saying, well,
Speaker 4: if I'm going to forgive him, I want to also
Speaker 4: fight for his life. And so he argued for the
Speaker 4: sentence to be commuted. Then they found some provisional law
Speaker 4: which suggested that he had a right under Texas law
Speaker 4: to mediation with Stroman, to sort of meaningful opportunity to
Speaker 4: discuss the crime that changed both of them vibes. So
Speaker 4: then he sued for the right to exercise that opportunity
Speaker 4: to sit face to face with Stroman, because even if
Speaker 4: they wouldn't commute the sentence, maybe he thought they would
Speaker 4: delay it to give him that opportunity to sit with
Speaker 4: Stroman and first be prepared each of them and then
Speaker 4: sit down with each other. But the government denied those requests.
Speaker 4: So finally, in the kind of late spring of twenty eleven,
Speaker 4: almost ten years after the attacks, race file suit against
Speaker 4: the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, and several others in
Speaker 4: the establishment of the state, arguing that the state didn't
Speaker 4: have the right to execute the white supremacist who tried
Speaker 4: to kill him.
Speaker 5: How did Rick Perry, Governor Rick Perry proceed with this
Speaker 5: and did he make this a political issue? How did
Speaker 5: he proceed with this publicly?
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know that he knowledged or responded
Speaker 4: to the case publicly in court. Lawyers representing him and
Speaker 4: the state basically said, you know, nothing doing there's there's
Speaker 4: there's a law, and this guy's been convicted and this
Speaker 4: guy needs to be be killed. And they kind of
Speaker 4: gave almost nothing.
Speaker 5: So what was raised's reaction from hitting a stone wall
Speaker 5: with government in courts?
Speaker 4: You know, he tried very hard and he got a hearing.
Speaker 4: I mean he you know, was bounced around from one
Speaker 4: court to another, and time was running out, and then
Speaker 4: finally a judge was willing to hear him, and he
Speaker 4: made his case, and he sat on the stand and
Speaker 4: he said, I need to be able to talk to
Speaker 4: this man and maybe even have a crack at changing
Speaker 4: him in order to heal my own recovery in my
Speaker 4: own journey. And that was very moving to to the
Speaker 4: judge and to others in the room that day. But
Speaker 4: Texas is Texas, and there was up against a notion
Speaker 4: that a guy had committed the worst kind of crime
Speaker 4: and had to put away. So it was a kind
Speaker 4: of very upheld battle that he chose to involve himself in.
Speaker 5: Did use the argument that because he was only a
Speaker 5: victim in one of the cases basically then the other
Speaker 5: two victims were murdered, that he could not have this,
Speaker 5: He could only forgive that person for that attempted murder,
Speaker 5: rather than so he was not involved with the other
Speaker 5: two murders directly.
Speaker 4: No, And that was one of the kind of arguments
Speaker 4: that could be made on the other side, and one
Speaker 4: of the things he did to blunt that was, you know,
Speaker 4: he said, there was no way I wanted to fight
Speaker 4: a campaign to save this guy if the other two
Speaker 4: families were not comfortable. So he actually went to both
Speaker 4: families and made sure and kind of one supported him
Speaker 4: tacitly and the other supported him very explicitly publicly.
Speaker 5: And still the courts did not respond to that. That's
Speaker 5: certainly kind of incredible, really, you know.
Speaker 4: I think it was a very powerful moral and political
Speaker 4: argument he was making, which is, the state may not
Speaker 4: have the right to kill someone, execute someone if the
Speaker 4: people they harmed don't want them to be executed. But
Speaker 4: in some ways it's more powerful as a moral argument
Speaker 4: or political one than it is as a legal one.
Speaker 4: As a legal principle, you know, there was a pretty
Speaker 4: clear crime and conviction, and I think what Race was
Speaker 4: trying to do was not necessarily win in the technicalities
Speaker 4: of the law, But ask a deeper question about why
Speaker 4: do we execute people in general? What are we trying
Speaker 4: to get out of it? Are we trying to prevent
Speaker 4: a certain kind of behavior that we can't change, or
Speaker 4: are we trying to you know, essentially deter and you know,
Speaker 4: make better people through that deterrence. And you know, part
Speaker 4: of what I think Race wanted to do was raise
Speaker 4: a question for the country about a larger cycle of
Speaker 4: revenge as being the kind of engine of so much
Speaker 4: in American life.
Speaker 5: Yes, so basically part of his entire American dream journey
Speaker 5: is also this again incredible spiritual journey that he has
Speaker 5: unfortunate luck in this land of opportunity, but then rises
Speaker 5: from that where again again the land of opportunity allows
Speaker 5: him and a generous surgeon and other people were supportive
Speaker 5: friends he met. But he did really evolve into this
Speaker 5: mindset that the death penalty. Probably I believe the death
Speaker 5: penalty was wrong anyway, but having this first hand rushed
Speaker 5: with law, with this case, with this murderer that tried
Speaker 5: to take his life and just fortunately didn't, that he
Speaker 5: could say with all kinds of credibility that the death
Speaker 5: penalty was wrong. And I think that's where it comes from.
Speaker 5: An incredible position where you've see I have seen in
Speaker 5: court where people have made statements where victims' families, you know,
Speaker 5: forgive the perpetrator, making a guy like Dennis Rader cry
Speaker 5: you know, a monster cry in a courtroom, how powerful
Speaker 5: that was. But rarely, if ever, you get a victim
Speaker 5: themselves in this particular case, going this far in terms
Speaker 5: of their and again, it's a very powerful message that
Speaker 5: this gentleman has undertaken did undertake to try to save
Speaker 5: this man's life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think part of what he argued that
Speaker 4: last day when he was actually on Race was on
Speaker 4: the stand at you know, five or six o'clock past
Speaker 4: six o'clock, right as the execution was supposed to happen,
Speaker 4: and they paused it and put him on the stand
Speaker 4: and said, Okay, say what you got to say, and
Speaker 4: we'll kind of decide based on how convincing you are.
Speaker 4: And part of what Race argued that day was that
Speaker 4: neither Mark Stroman nor he could ever be whole in life,
Speaker 4: whatever that meant if they never met again, that they
Speaker 4: actually needed to meet and talk and figure out what
Speaker 4: had happened together, if either of them was ever to
Speaker 4: live in kind of full peace.
Speaker 5: What was Stroman's reaction to this, to this man's forgiveness
Speaker 5: and fight for his.
Speaker 4: Life, He was astonished and flabb agasted, and you know,
Speaker 4: said to I think his lawyer that you know, this
Speaker 4: is the first act of kindness that I've ever known,
Speaker 4: and was just amazed that someone who he had tried
Speaker 4: to kill had such a different the feeling about him
Speaker 4: in turn, and was just was just amazed by it
Speaker 4: and full of gratitude. And of course over those ten
Speaker 4: years he had evolved and changed and become a much
Speaker 4: better guy, so he was in a position to receive
Speaker 4: a changed this kind of forgiveness at the time that
Speaker 4: the forgiveness came.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this must have had a very profound effect on
Speaker 5: you as well, writing this book and going this far
Speaker 5: and this deep into the psychees of both these people
Speaker 5: and the people surrounding all these characters in this story.
Speaker 5: How did it affect you?
Speaker 4: You know it did, and I think it did in
Speaker 4: part because these are two very American figures and American characters,
Speaker 4: and I really wanted to write a book about the
Speaker 4: American character today through a couple of American characters. And
Speaker 4: so you have a kind of striving immigrant, the guy
Speaker 4: with pluck and vigor who cuts himself off from history
Speaker 4: and shows up and is willing to work hard and
Speaker 4: suppress his instincts and make it. And you have another
Speaker 4: person who all they have is their kind of little
Speaker 4: oasis of belonging, and they feel themselves to live in
Speaker 4: a country that's constantly being given over to others. And
Speaker 4: both of those, in a way are recurring themes and
Speaker 4: tendencies in American life, and both the understanding of America
Speaker 4: is just kind of universalist, open place where anybody can
Speaker 4: come and renew the country, and the view that America
Speaker 4: is threatened by this constant precipitous change. They're all they
Speaker 4: were all kind of in this story. And then I
Speaker 4: realized over time that this was a story of almost
Speaker 4: everything that I would want to explore in modern America.
Speaker 4: So it was a story that I decided I had
Speaker 4: to tell.
Speaker 5: Yes, the story that tells the story you'd like to
Speaker 5: tell that needs to be told. Yeah, incredible, was I
Speaker 5: going to say? In terms of the how the framed
Speaker 5: how the media framed this? Do you think the media
Speaker 5: understood how ironic? Did they really get the essence of
Speaker 5: this story? Did they see the profound nature of this?
Speaker 5: How did most media kind of frame this story?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean, I think it's actually been great and delightful,
Speaker 4: and I've been amazed at how how much people have
Speaker 4: engaged with it and deeply understood it. And I think
Speaker 4: there's all kinds of different understandings. So I've had some
Speaker 4: conversations and events and seen some reviews where people really
Speaker 4: emphasize the religious and spiritual source of this journey of mercy.
Speaker 4: A lot of the conversations I've had have been actually
Speaker 4: about this notion of the American dream and why it
Speaker 4: works for an immigrant better than from many native born Americans.
Speaker 4: Other conversations have been about the kind of larger political
Speaker 4: and kind of socioeconomic question of you know, what do
Speaker 4: we do with masses of children in this country born
Speaker 4: to dysfunctional parents, as Mark Strowman was, and how do
Speaker 4: we think about what we owe what we owe people
Speaker 4: as a society when when they don't have the fortune
Speaker 4: of decent parents. So a lot of things have come up,
Speaker 4: and every event has been almost different, because there's there's
Speaker 4: so much going on in this in this one yarn,
Speaker 4: which is of course why I decided it was the
Speaker 4: yarn for me.
Speaker 5: Uh, Well, the question, I'm glad that you've had this
Speaker 5: great response, and it's there's no question that I'm not
Speaker 5: surprised by that, And well, but I mean, what I'm
Speaker 5: curious to know, and I don't really know you really
Speaker 5: explored that in the book. But what was Dallas, Texas?
Speaker 5: The media there that reported on this trial and this
Speaker 5: story overall, did they really get it? Did they get
Speaker 5: any did they get a small sliver of of the
Speaker 5: irony of the of the the tragic play that was
Speaker 5: that was in front of them. How did they What
Speaker 5: my question was, how did they portray that story and
Speaker 5: how much did they really understand in terms of the
Speaker 5: complexity of the entire thing?
Speaker 4: And I think they did. There was there was quite
Speaker 4: a bit in the Dallas uh, Dallas Press, and it
Speaker 4: was in many ways the Dallas Morning News where Race
Speaker 4: first went to publicize his bit of forgiveness. That first
Speaker 4: told his story and and and and argued to the
Speaker 4: city of Dallas and in two or three different articles
Speaker 4: that this was an important event in the history of
Speaker 4: this issue of the death penalty, that here was a
Speaker 4: new way into an old story and someone worth listening
Speaker 4: to because he's making an argument that the Morning News
Speaker 4: has made repeatedly in Dallas, which is anti capital punishment,
Speaker 4: but making it in a new and surprising and and
Speaker 4: different way. So I think you know, he got he
Speaker 4: got quite a hearing and often felt on a on
Speaker 4: a very sophisticated his his arguments fell on a lot
Speaker 4: of sophisticated reception. And continue to.
Speaker 5: What was Roy Sudin's response to this book.
Speaker 4: You know, he has been he has been I think,
Speaker 4: very happy with it, curious about what it would say
Speaker 4: because he really didn't know what it would say. I think,
Speaker 4: relieved and and you know, but he's a he's a
Speaker 4: he's a tough guy who's been through a lot more
Speaker 4: than having a book written about him. So you know,
Speaker 4: I think it's uh, he wasn't wasn't ever, you know,
Speaker 4: an enormous concern relative to what he's been through and
Speaker 4: been able to conquer in his life.
Speaker 5: What you had to have, as in pretty well was
Speaker 5: cooperation to be able to write this book. So, I mean,
Speaker 5: it's not like he would be surprised at sort of
Speaker 5: the tone of it. But I just thought in terms
Speaker 5: of it's nice to have the subject of the book
Speaker 5: to be very very happy with how it was portrayed
Speaker 5: and how he was portrayed in the book.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, he didn't know the tone in the
Speaker 4: sense that all he knew was what he had contributed
Speaker 4: as a well of facts, but it could have been
Speaker 4: any number of tones. And you know that's something that
Speaker 4: you know, I as a journalist, that happens all the time.
Speaker 4: People share a lot of information with you and they're
Speaker 4: shocked that, you know, what kind of take you have
Speaker 4: on it. After all this said and done, and I
Speaker 4: think he and I were both relieved that, you know,
Speaker 4: there were no surprises there. And I called it as
Speaker 4: I saw it, And I've ever written some things that
Speaker 4: he didn't like, but in general, he you know, he
Speaker 4: said to me that he was astonished at how the
Speaker 4: story had been able to capture moments and scenes in
Speaker 4: his life where it was almost like, you know, I
Speaker 4: had been in the room with him twenty years ago,
Speaker 4: where of go as I was not. But he is
Speaker 4: one of these people who's such a gift for a
Speaker 4: writer because he has a great memory and he remembers,
Speaker 4: you know, what shirt he was wearing when he did
Speaker 4: that one thing, or or what dish he ate when
Speaker 4: he got that visa or whatever. And so I was
Speaker 4: really able to tell a vivid story about his life
Speaker 4: that that kind of was able to hopefully jump off
Speaker 4: the page.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, you very succeeded, very thought provoking book and
Speaker 5: an incredible story, and you've captured it very eloquently. I
Speaker 5: want to thank you very much for coming on and
Speaker 5: talking about the True American. If people were interested in
Speaker 5: contacting you, any questions or do you have a website
Speaker 5: and you do the Facebook thing, tell us about how
Speaker 5: people might be able to contact you through so Cline.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have. I have a website which is ond
Speaker 4: dot l y a n A n d dot l
Speaker 4: y sort of acting on Twitter, and my Twitter handle
Speaker 4: is on and write so A n A N d
Speaker 4: w R I t e s same handle on the
Speaker 4: rights for Facebook, and I always love to hear from people,
Speaker 4: so so right away, well, I.
Speaker 5: Want to thank you very much and on for coming
Speaker 5: on and talking about the True American. I hope to
Speaker 5: hear from you again soon with your and probably another
Speaker 5: project in down the in the pipeline, I'm sure something
Speaker 5: that's coming up in the near future. So I hope
Speaker 5: to hear from you again soon. And thank you very
Speaker 5: much for this interview tonight.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you very much for having me. Good night,
Speaker 4: good night,