Criminology Research Project Inc. » Crime and Religion

Rev. Edward Blackwelder: Ministering to Serial Killers

Blackwelder — Sat, 07 May 2011 23:05:08 +0000

by Brett Buckner
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From his home in Piedmont, Edward Blackwelder runs the nonprofit Criminology Research Project, an academic Web site dedicated to the study of serial, spree and mass murder. He has built a career based on encounters with such murderers as Ted Bundy.

In the summer of 1984, Edward Blackwelder came face to face with a monster.

He was a criminal justice professor at Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, teaching a course on mass murderers and serial killers. But the textbooks were inadequate. Blackwelder wanted to give his students a more visceral experience. So he and a female intern named Janice drove 400 miles to death row at Florida State Prison in Starke.

“When visiting a jail,” Blackwelder said, “you never know for sure that you’re going to get in until that metal door slams behind you.”

They were ushered through a series of gates and metal doors before being greeted by a correctional officer.

“Mr. Bundy has been waiting for you,” the officer said.

Down the hallway and around a corner was a small cage in the middle of a large room. Inside the cage sat Theodore Robert Bundy.

“Just call me Ted,” Bundy said, smiling. “You must be Professor Blackwelder.”

Instinctively, Blackwelder reached through the bars and shook hands with one of the most notorious serial killers in history, hands that had strangled and bludgeoned to death upwards of 30 women, including 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, whom Bundy was convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering before dumping her body in an abandoned hog pen.

With his hands and feet shackled, Bundy was led into a small room . Though a guard stood outside, the only thing separating student and teacher from this cold-blooded killer was a wooden table. From the moment they were alone, Blackwelder wasted no time in getting to the point.

“I’m here to use you,” he said, “because you’re an exquisite specimen.”

Today, from their home in Piedmont, Blackwelder and his wife, Shirley, run the nonprofit Criminology Research Project, an academic Web site dedicated to the study of serial, spree and mass murder. Blackwelder, 63, retired from teaching in 1992, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Through encounters with notorious killers like Bundy, Charles Manson and Jeffery Dahmer, Blackwelder built a career not only of science, but of faith.

On that summer day in 1984, Blackwelder was impressed by Bundy’s cool demeanor.

“Bundy was an average guy,” he remembers. “If I had a daughter, he’d be the kind of guy I’d want her to date, because he seems so normal. But that’s just a mask. Underneath, he’s a diabolical killing machine.”

For more than three hours, they interviewed Bundy, discussing everything from football and abortion to the death penalty.

“Society needs to be protected from people like me,” Bundy said. “And there are others out there just like me.”

That was the first of four interviews that Blackwelder had with Bundy before he was executed in Florida’s electric chair on Jan. 24, 1989. Bundy told Blackwelder that, from his cell in the hours before an execution, he could smell the diesel fuel and hear the generator warming up. Through a nearby window, he could see the hearse waiting outside.

Yet when Blackwelder asked if Bundy was “right with the Lord,” Bundy’s answer was as enigmatic as the killer himself — a once bright and charming law student who savagely preyed on young women.

“I’m not worried about what happened yesterday, and I’m not concerned about what may happen tomorrow,” he said. “I’m cosmic and you’d be better off if you were cosmic too.”

Looking back, Blackwelder still isn’t sure what Bundy meant.

“But I’ve got to believe when that jolt of electricity hit him, he found out what being cosmic is all about.”

‘Among the evil’

He’s befriended the Atlanta Child Murderer and accepted collect calls from The Hillside Strangler. In 1970, he used Christmas money to fly to California to watch the trial of Charles Manson.

He has FBI files and letters from Manson, Ted Bundy and The Unabomber. He’s interviewed Jeffrey Dahmer, calling the serial killer/cannibal “a doll … just as sweet as can be.”

Blackwelder performed the wedding of Heath Stocks, who murdered his entire family with a .45 handgun, and stood less than six feet away when child-killer Ernest Dobbert was executed in Florida’s electric chair.

During every interview, Blackwelder, who’s been an ordained minister since 1990, talks of salvation, serving as a witness — a flawed man of faith — to those whom society would rather throw away.

“That’s where the preacher is supposed to be — among the evil, the wretched, the unforgiven,” he says. “You can’t do any good in church. There comes a time when you’ve gotta say ‘Amen,’ then get up, get out and go do something useful. …

“If we got what we deserved, we’d all go straight to hell,” he says. “It’s only through the saving grace of Jesus Christ that we’re given the choice.”

Growing up in Piedmont, Blackwelder, like most kids in the rural South, regularly attended church. He did and said all the right things — joining Piedmont First Baptist Church when he was 12 — but the cavalier attitude and transgressions of a hard-headed young man ultimately won out.

“Sin was fun,” he says, grinning at memories better left untold. “I tried to be good. I wanted to be good, but I was just too busy living Eddie’s way.”

Then his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In the years to follow, she wouldn’t recognize her husband, waking up frightened by the stranger sharing her bed. Blackwelder, who was working full time, would have to lock his mother in the house so she wouldn’t wander the streets.

“That was probably the first time I ever really thought about God,” he says. “I started praying because I needed help. But even though I’d moved closer to God, I was still living the way I wanted to live.”

Blackwelder’s journey wouldn’t be complete until New Year’s Eve 1985. He was celebrating at the Officer’s Club at Fort McClellan, when around 9:30 he received an emergency phone call. His father had suffered a stroke. The night was so thick with fog, Blackwelder could barely see over the hood of his car driving to the hospital. Not knowing if his father would live or die, he made a promise.

“I said, ‘God, let him live. But if he’s gonna die, let me be there when he does. And if you do that, I’ll live the rest of my life for you.’ “

Blackwelder’s father survived the stroke, but was severely weakened. His mother died in 1989, followed by his father in 1990.

“God will get your attention one way or another,” Blackwelder says. “And he never forgets.”

Hooked on Crime
The first time Blackwelder visited a prison was with his father in 1959, when they toured the old Holman Prison near Wetumpka. He even got a chance to see and touch the electric chair, nicknamed “Yellow Mama” — though he declined to take a seat.

But it was a term paper that spawned Blackwelder’s macabre curiosity. In 1964, while a senior at Piedmont High School, Blackwelder wrote a research paper for political science class on “Crime in America.”

“From that moment I was hooked,” Blackwelder says, grinning. “I read every true crime magazine I could get my hands on, looking for the stuff boys like best — blood and guts.”

After graduating from Jacksonville State University in 1975, Blackwelder pursued criminal justice and sociology, gathering graduate and post-graduate degrees from the University of Alabama, JSU, UAB and Nova-Southeastern University. By the early ’80s, he was teaching criminal justice at Gadsden State and political science at St. Bernard College, before developing the curriculum for the criminal justice program at Wallace State Community College.

His research is meant to gain insight into the minds of serial and mass murderers. It’s a philosophy that Blackwelder maintained with his students, whom he often took to trials and jails to gain firsthand knowledge. But more than the legal side, he also showed his students the devastation that criminals wrought on families, by having victims share their stories.

“I always wanted to give students both sides,” he says. “These were not just stories in a book, names and dates to memorize. These were people’s lives, and some of those lives had been destroyed. I wanted my students to see that.”

Through his access to various jails, Blackwelder began to focus his faith on prisoners. But it wasn’t until 1984, sitting at home watching Jerry Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour, that he found his calling. During the program, Falwell mentioned Liberty Prison Outreach, one of the largest such ministries in the country.

“I didn’t know how to run a prison ministry,” Blackwelder says. “All I knew was that when these guys died, I wanted them to go to heaven.”

Blackwelder called Falwell’s church in Lynchburg, Va., where he spoke with Garry Sims, director of the prison ministry. As soon as Blackwelder learned that Sims was from Weaver, their friendship was immediate — as long as conversations didn’t linger too long on high school football. Blackwelder was invited to Virginia, where he met with Falwell for advice.

“Eddie’s a dedicated — some might say eccentric — and passionate man,” Sims says. “Eddie’s not your typical preacher — not by a long shot. If you go to the Huddle House in Piedmont at 3 a.m., that’s where you’ll find Eddie — that’s when the drunks, the whores and the drug addicts come in. Now you couldn’t put Eddie up in the pulpit at the First Baptist Church, because the people he’s lookin’ to save wouldn’t be there anyway.”

Faith was always a part of Blackwelder’s prison interviews. While the more notorious killers — Bundy and Charles Manson for example — offered little in return, all were respectful about the subject … save for one: John Wayne Gacy, Chicago’s “Killer Clown,” who murdered 33 boys and buried them under his house.

“He wouldn’t even let me get started,” Blackwelder says of their phone interview. “He just said, ‘Look, you son-of-a-bitch, I know what you’re all about, and I don’t wanna hear it.’ That was pretty much the end of it.”

But there have been success stories.

In 1972, Ernest Dobbert was tried and convicted for beating his 9-year-old daughter to death. Later evidence linked him to the death of his 7-year-old son as well as two other children. In the months leading up to Dobbert’s execution in Florida, Blackwelder met with him, for both academic and spiritual purposes.

On Sept. 7, 1985, when Dobbert was electrocuted, it was Blackwelder who led him those final few steps, praying with him along the way. And when the switch was thrown, Blackwelder was standing some six feet away.

“I know that when he died, Ernie went to be with the Lord,” he says. “What he did was awful … killing his own children … but he left that prison a changed man, a better man.”

Collect Call from the Hillside Strangler

While teaching Edward Blackwelder began received a steady stream of letters and phone calls from death row inmates and their family members from across the nation. More and more serial killers began to learn of Blackwelder’s work and began contacting him.

And then, late one night, the phone rang. On the other end was the Hillside Strangler, making a collect call from prison.

“What could this guy want?” Blackwelder thought.

Blackwelder knew Bianchi wanted something. His correspondence with Bianchi had proven as much. Whether it was typewriter ribbon or opinions on his unpublished novel, Bianchi always had ulterior motives.

“He wanted us to help him find his son,” Blackwelder remembers. “It was a long shot, but I said I would try.”

Blackwelder and his wife, Shirley, who is a paralegal and his best research assistant, started digging. Within a few days, a photograph arrived from Bianchi, a worn-out picture of the boy who was an infant when Bianchi was convicted. All he knew what that the boy was living with his maternal grandfather somewhere in California.

After getting the man’s last name, Shirley called every name in the phone book until she found the right one. The boy, who was in his teens, wouldn’t come to the phone. Instead, Shirley spoke to the grandfather.

“He’ll never see that boy again,” he said. “Don’t ever call again.”

Though they failed at the reunion, Blackwelder took the photo Bianchi sent and had it blown up to an 8-by-10, giving him at least something to hold on to.

“And that’s something at least,” Blackwelder says. “Probably more than he deserved.”

“He’ll never see that boy again,” he said. “Don’t ever call again.”

Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono Jr. were dubbed The Hillside Stranglers for their signature method of dumping the bodies of their victims in the hillside surrounding Los Angeles during a four-month period between 1977 and 1978. Buono died in jail of a heart attack, while Bianchi continues to serve a life sentence at Washington State Penitentiary.

Marriage of the Eagle Scout

One by one, as they walked into the house after a basketball game on Jan. 17, 1997, Heath Stocks shot and killed his mother, father and younger sister. Once an Eagle Scout growing up in Lonoke, Ark., Stocks, who was 20 years old at the time of the murder, had been molested for years by his scout master.

Though he doesn’t condone Stocks’ killing spree, Blackwelder has remained close to the young man, offering advice both legal and spiritual.

“I would consider Heath Stocks an exception in that he should eventually be considered for parole. As a general rule, however, I have never be for letting APD offenders out of jail,” he says. Heath Stock, however, is more of a victim than an offender and there is ample evidence to prove that he is.

Blackwelder even agreed to perform Stocks’ wedding to a woman who had seen his case on Court TV, left her husband and moved to Lonoke to be closer to him. Knowing the marriage was doomed, Blackwelder opposed it, but after prayer and counseling the couple, he honored the request.

The wedding was at the prison chapel. The bride wore a white gown with a train, and Blackwelder’s wife served as the maid of honor. After the service, Stocks and his new bride sat in a pew holding hands for 15 minutes before the guards took Stocks back to his cell.

Angry and bitter for having her wedding night ruined by the reality of marrying a convicted killer, the new bride was consoled by Blackwelder and Shirley over dinner at Garfield’s.

“You’ll never be any closer to Heith than you were tonight,” Blackwelder told her. “That’s the kind of marriage you’ve gotten into.”

The couple divorced within a few months. Stocks has since remarried to a loving, caring, dedicated and professional lady who understands the turmoil that Heath tolerated during his early years.

“These guys are incapable of love,” Blackwelder says. “I don’t feel sorry for them, but it’s sad that they have no conscience and no concept of what love is.” Dr. Blackwelder points out that Heath Stocks, only as an adult, is learning the meaning of true love and considers Stocks a rare exception.

Befriending the Atlanta Child Murderer

In 1982 Edward Blackwelder got a phone call from the legal team representing Atlanta Child Murderer Wayne Williams as he stood trial for murder.

During the trial, Blackwelder served as a consultant, splitting his time between sitting at the table with Williams and sitting beside his mother and father, Homer and Faye Williams, in the gallery.

At the time, Homer was already an old man, and Faye had cancer. She wanted someone to help look out for her son.

“We’re all Wayne’s got,” Faye Williams told Blackwelder one afternoon after her son had been sentenced to life in prison. “I want you to promise that you’ll never forsake my son.”

Through countless appeals, DNA testing and requests for a new trial, Blackwelder kept that promise, visiting Williams in prison and writing letters often.

“It hasn’t been easy,” Blackwelder says. “Wayne’s not always the easiest person to get along with.”

Blackwelder’s relationship with Williams lured him to Columbus, Ga. on a muggy, overcast afternoon in August, where in the backyard of a house on Meadow Drive sat a 1970 Chevy station wagon, left to rot among the weeds and fallen tree branches.

The car became infamous in 1981 when around 2 a.m. on May 22, Williams was stopped by police while driving the station wagon, which belonged to his father, after an officer staking out the James Jackson Parkway Bridge heard a splash below in the dark waters of the Chattahoochee River. Though police let Williams go that night, he became a suspect in the Atlanta Child Murders two days later, when the body of 27-year-old Nathaniel Carter was found floating in the same river.

When Williams was convicted of two murders and implicated in 22 others, it was based largely on dog hair and carpet fibers, many of which were related to the Chevy station wagon. After the trial, Homer Williams reclaimed possession of the car, often taking it fishing.

After Homer died in 2005, the car was parked by an old shed, its windows rolled down until the doors had nearly rusted shut.

Blackwelder was given custody of the car by Wayne Williams, and went to Columbus to have it towed back to Piedmont. A camera crew from CNN was there filming a documentary about the Williams case.

“I’m still collecting pieces,” said CNN executive producer Jim Polk, who has interviewed and is working closely with Blackwelder on the documentary. “I don’t even know what the puzzle looks like.”

Blackwelder was simply doing his due diligence for a piece of evidence that could become relevant again. “Not saying that it will, but if this ever got back to trial, it’s better to have it and not need it, than it is to need it and not have it.

After he retired, Edward Blackwelder sought a greater purpose for the research materials and FBI case files he’s collected throughout his long career studying mass murderers and serial killers. Blackwelder makes his research materials available through Criminology Research Project, Inc; all of his files are available online or for the asking to college professors, attorneys, students, law enforcement agencies and those curious to learn more about serial killers. Visit the Criminology Research Project at http://criminologyresearch.org.

Dr. and Mrs. Blackwelder live in Piedmont, Alabama and are members of Bush Arbor Baptist Church in Rome, Georgia. The professor is a frequent lecturer and author. His book, Deadly Little Secret, the detailed story of the Heath Stocks multiple murders of his father, mother and teenaged sister in Lonoke County, Arkansas, is expected to be available soon.

Ministering to Wayne Williams

Blackwelder — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:13:50 +0000

Tonight at 8:00 p.m. EST a two hour docmentary will air on CNN entitled, The Atlanta Child Murders. I have had the distinct privilege of working with the professionals at CNN for the past year in researching the series of murders that took place in the Atlanta, Georgia, metropolitan area that, in 1982, culminated in the arrest, trial, and conviction of an unknown black man—Wayne Bertram Williams.

Since 1982 I have called Wayne Williams “my friend.’ He’s this, not because he may or may not be guilty; that he may or may not be a serial murderer; that he may or may not be, as some call him, “A black monster.” I call Wayne “my friend” because I have come to know him as most never will and have come to see the human side of this particular inmate that very few other have.

This is a brief recap of my ministry to infamous sadistic serial killer Wayne Bertram Williams.

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In 1982 I was a criminology college professor and departmental chairperson at a large Alabama community college. I also directed an academic crime laboratory which presented the opportunity to work with prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys in a variety of criminal cases.

I well remember on late afternoon when my secretary informed me that I had a telephone call from an attorney in Atlanta. What in the world would an Atlanta attorney be calling me, a small time college professor from a small community hardly anyone had ever hear of?

I took this call and my life has never been the same. Here’s why.

The caller was Atlanta attorney Mary Welcome requesting that I travel to her city to review and give an opinion on an undetermined amount of physical evidence that the State of Georgia had against her client—Wayne Williams. This was the first time I had ever heard the name. I had read several newspaper articles concerning the murders of young children in the Atlanta area but William’s name had never been mentioned.

I agreed to drive to Atlanta for a single meeting—one meeting—and left the safety of my academic nest for the Peach State’s capital city. The trip wasn’t remarkable in any way and didn’t actually take as long as I had anticipated.

I arrived, found Mrs. Welcome’s office, parked and went inside. I was met by a young male attorney that introduced himself as being the brother-in-law of a former fraternity brother of mine. I had suddenly had my very first question answered, “How did you get my name?”

I waited for a very few minutes, just long enough to drink a cup of coffee, and was then ushered into Mrs. Welcome’s average looking office. So this is what an Atlanta attorney’s office looks like, I remember thinking.

Mrs. Welcome was most gracious and immediately got to the point of my visit. She had recently be hired by the parents of a young black man that had been arrested by a police task force and accused of having kidnapped and murdered a number of young black children and adults. Here I hear the name for the second time—Wayne Williams.

I reviewed her “Brady” evidence, gave my opinion, was taken to lunch by Mrs. Welcome and her legal crew and then headed back to Alabama never to return.

This was not to be as I soon received a second telephone call asking that I consider becoming a member of William’s defense team. Me, a college professor from a small town in Alabama, becoming a member of the criminal defense team of, at that time, the most highly publicized serial murderer in American history? At the time I didn’t know if this was an opportunity of a lifetime or a curse—I would definitely find out later.

I remember the first time Wayne and I met face-to-face. It was in the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta. He didn’t appear to be a criminal as many think a person accused of a crime is suppose to look. He didn’t have blood dripping from his hands, his eyes didn’t appear as beads, his handshake was strong and firm and he was polite; heck, he wasn’t even foaming at the mouth.

Wayne and I sat down at a small table and began talking. He ask me questions, the usual ones, and I did the same. We learned who each other was and, as best we could, came to an agreement as to who we were, what we would be doing for each other, etc.

For whatever reasons Mrs. Welcome soon stepped aside and a Mississippi Attorney, Al Binder, came to Atlanta to assume the role of lead attorney for Williams. It would be Al Binder that I would sit next to in the courtroom of the Fulton County Courthouse during the nine or so week criminal trial of Wayne Williams.

To say that my “new position” created an opportunity to see a big time trial from the inside is an understatement. You can only imagine what it was like; media from throughout the world, even Switzerland; reporters so thickly standing in front of the courthouse each morning that I was forced to be “delivered” into the courthouse basement by automobile. Walking from the Atlanta Downtown Hilton had become an impossibility just had eating a quite meal. No one would leave me alone…not for a moment.

I’m not going to say whether Wayne Williams is guilty or not…I don’t know. I only know a jury found him to be on February 27, 1982, and he’s presently inmate number 408135 at Hancock State Prison located in Sparta, Georgia.

Daily, throughout the 1982 trial, I met with Wayne to discuss trial strategy and, when we had time, to just “shoot the bull” about common, ordinary things: football, baseball, music, etc. My daily lunch ended up being in the “holding cell” at the Fulton County Courthouse where Wayne and I dined on hamburgers, fries and a Coke or two from a nearby MacDonald’s. The meals were unusual at all, the company, however, certainly was. I was becoming friends with the most infamous serial killer in American history and I was beginning to like him!

Let me stop here to emphasize that I will not say, nor imply, that I think Wayne Williams is innocent. He may well be guilty of the close to thirty dastardly murders of which he is accused. However, I must point out that he was convicted and sentenced for having committed only two of these murders and both of them were of adults not children.

For nine long weeks, seven days per week, I was in Atlanta working with various legal oriented professional who were cast into the role of providing an adequate criminal defense to this infamous sadistic serial murderer merely because he, just as every American, has the constitutional right to such. Remember, in theory at least, everyone is assumed innocent until proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainly.”

At the conclusion of tonight’s CNN two hour documentary you will have the opportunity to cast your vote: guilty, not guilty, or not proven. You have one vote with three choices and I encourage each of you to take a moment to cast your vote.

Let me point out from a criminological point of view that Wayne Williams was arrested, charged, tried and convicted of two murders. But police statistically cleared 22 additional cases, one of which Wayne Williams was not charged. Therefore, police show a clearance rate of 85.8% in these particular murders attributed to Wayne although they made arrests in only 6.9%.

Equally important is the fact that Wayne was jailed in June of 1981, and the authorities stopped counting and adding names to “The List.” The Atlanta police-FBI Uniform Crime Reort tabulations show seven (7) unsolved killings of blacks—ages 15 60 25—in Atlanta’s city limits from July through December of 1981 after Wayne Williams was locked up in jail!

When I made this earlier mentioned first trip to Atlanta I had already been teaching criminal justice and criminology for several years during which time I had visited correctional facilities on a regular basis. My theory is that a student can learn so much from a book but the total learning experience must include a certain amount of “hands on” experience. This theory allowed students to accompany me when I went to visit the likes of Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and many others. The students, no doubt, met Wayne and seemed to like him rather well.

To make a very long story a bit shorter, from 1964 until present I have regularly gone into correctional facilities in a number of states and, at the suggestion of one of my Liberty University minister friends, narrowed my work to death row inmates and serial killers. Today I continue to work more with this group than the broader overall prison population although I do, quite regularly, work with inmates serving lesser sentences.

It wasn’t long into my “prison experiences” that I noticed the large recidivism rate, the percentage of inmates being released only to return to prison. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out that rehabilitation wasn’t working.

By now I had experienced the saving grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and was learning that He, through “regeneration,” lowers this above mentioned recidivism rate. In short, rehabilitation doesn’t work—regenerations does! Here I invite you to read 2 Cor. 5:17 for the answer as to why.

During my many prison visits I began to interject more and more “Jesus” into my interviews. I got to the point that I was preaching more than I was researching which goes to show that, yes, God does work in mysterious ways indeed.

You can call it “funny,” “odd,” “peculiar” or whatever adjective suits your desires but I can only call it “God doing His thing.”

The more I told inmatse about Jesus the more they seemed to become interested. I point out the importance of the word “seemed” as those of us experienced in ministering to our nation’s prison population well know how inmates will make every attempt and exert every effort to “use” the new guy to get what they want. I, for sure, experienced my share of being used and, out of necessity, I soon learned to spot it, stop it, and proceed without it.

This article, however, is not about other infamous inmates, it’s about Wayne Williams. My wife says I’m great at getting “off point” and I think I just did!

Anyway, due to a combination of economics, sociology, psychology , politics and plain hysteria Wayne Williams was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences and was transported to the Georgia Receiving and Diagnostic facility in Jackson, Georgia. This is where I next visited with Wayne.

Football, baseball, etc., were our main Jackson topics but there was one more….Jesus! I was serious about salvation by this time but I wasn’t at all sure that Wayne was. I had to make sure—this is what Christians are supposed to do you know.

I bought Wayne a Bible but wasn’t allowed to give it to him since it came from the “outside,” therefore I secured one from the institutional chaplain and gave it to him.

I remember so well that the first verse we read was, as mentioned earlier, 2 Corinthians 5:17 which talked about regeneration, becoming a new person, staring over, etc.

I liked Wayne—I certainly didn’t agree with what he had been found guilty of having done—but I felt compassion, Christian love and a sense of duty to the guy.

Wayne was receptive to hearing The Word and I diligently “put it to him” in no small doses. I didn’t do anything but God sure did! Wayne, after a rather lengthy theological discourse looked at me and said, “Eddie, you believe all this stuff don’t you? You really believe that I can go to heaven when I die.” Not shocked, but a bit surprised, I answered that I believed it to the point of knowing that a person would go to heaven if certain things took place and that he as much as anyone could gain this assurance to the point of being as sure of heaven as he would be if he were already there.

Time passed, visits continued, our friendship survived several bouts of disagreement, but God continued to work. My friends, God won!

It was midday when Wayne prayed the sinners’ prayer. It was just the three of us; God, Wayne, and me.

The Bible tells us that Christians have differing talents that must be used for His good. It says, also, that every Christian has one common talent—the talent to witness and that we must witness to all people. This is not a suggestion, my friend, it is a commandment directly from God Almighty! For those that just may not understand the word “all,” let me give you Webster’s definition:

ALL: The total entity or extent of; the whole number, amount, or quantity; every; any whatsoever; each and everyone.

Remember as well that God didn’t make any junk—not a single piece. Each one of us was made in the likeness of Him and this includes Wayne Williams. You might as well grow accustomed to the idea, friends, its God telling you this, not me. You may disagree and if you do the only thing I can suggest is that you take it up with The Master, after all He wrote it!

I ask you this…..how long has it been since you ministered to a prison inmate or an inmate family member? The Bible speaks throughout about the necessity of ministering to this particular groups of individuals and I urge you to stop using the Bible as a Sears-Roebuck catalog and read everything in it including the verses that command us to go into the prisons and minister to these incarcerated souls.

I have invited many so-called Christians over the years to accompany me to prison church services—very few have ever gone. Their reasons are: “I’d be scared to death”—“I wouldn’t know what to say,” Would they want to talk about their crime,” etc.

Ministry friends, I have been going into prisons from California to New York and I’ve never been threatened, harassed, or hurt by a single inmate. In fact, just the opposite is true with one exception. These men and women are just like you and me and, believe me, any of us, under circumstances, could find ourselves exactly where these people are. (By the way, the exception was “The Clown Killer,” John Wayne Gacy, who made the single threat upon my life that I have received directly from an inmate).

I must say this about being a prison minister—it’s not easy. The problem isn’t with the inmates or inmate family member; the problem is with what the inmates refer to as the “free world population.” This free world population is you and me—those of us who have never committed a crime or, at least, have never been caught!

Sadly, the free world population does seem to look with distain upon us prison ministers and among these looking with distain, the most vocal are our good Christian brothers and sisters. Yep, you didn’t mis-understand, our church going, singing in the choir, Amen corner, Sunday go to meeting Christians are the last to support a prison ministry, last to say, “Preacher, you’re doing a great job,” last to contribute toward the purchase of a gallon or two of gasoline and, last but not least, the last to forgive!

In closing I must say that practically all of the more infamous inmates I have ministered to are certainly guilty as charged, there’s no doubt about this. Nevertheless, in the scheme of theology and Christian witnessing this does not matter and should be of no concern to your witnessing potential.

Listen people, if we got what we deserve we would all go to hell….every single one of us without exception. It’s only by the grace of God, the death of His Son Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary, that we have a choice between spending eternity in a beautiful place called heaven or an eternity in a literal place of fire called hell.

You have these two choices for your eternal future, I have these choices and, accept it whether you like it or not, every inmate in every prison does as well.

Is Wayne Williams going to heaven when he dies—-yes! Am I sure that he will—absolutely. How do I know? I know because I believe in God, I believe in His Son Jesus Christ, I believe in the death, burial, and resurrection. I believe that every letter of every word of every verse of every book in the Holy Bible is the literal truth and Word of God without exception.

Finally, I encourage you to watch tonight’s CNN presentation, The Atlanta Child Murders, and decide for yourself whether you believe that Wayne Williams is guilty of killing almost thirty black children and young adults or not. Don’t forget to vote at the conclusion of the documentary. I understand you will have an hour following the ending of the broadcast to cast your vote.

Also, the broadcast times have changed a bit due to the oil spill. Here are the new times:

Initial CNN airing: 8:00 p.m. EDT

Re-airing: 10:00 p.m. EDT This documentary

This documentary will be re-broadcast several additional times over the following week and you can get these times by visiting my criminology web-site at: www.criminologyresearch.org

Bible References

Prisons

Judg. 16:21

Ps. 142:7

Matt. 14:10

Acts 5:19

Acts 16:27

1 Kings 22:27

Rev. 18:2

Prisoner

Ps. 102:20

Ps. 146:7

Matt. 27:15

Rom. 7:23

Eph. 3:1

2 Tim. 1:8

Dr. Edward Blackwelder

Executive Director

Criminology Research Project, Inc & Liberty Chaplain Ministries

Crime and Religion: Is There A Connection?

Blackwelder — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:48:11 +0000

Criminology Research Project, Inc makes an attempt to cover the varied areas of criminology. Today, many individuals are studying crime and it’s relationship to a Biblical foundation therefore CRP will offer studies, comparisons, ideas of experts, and opinions based on Scripture as each relates to crime, sociology, ethics, folkways, and mores.

Criminology Research Project, Inc encourages you to visit www.libertychaplainministries.org for additional information and insight into crime, government, and theology.