Look Where I Am Now

"Jason was a lovely man and that, truly was a consistent image. I couldn't help but care for this person. There was nothing about him that would ever make you feel nervous. Nothing."

It's hard to figure out what motivates people to act as they do. Sometimes they reveal themselves, more than they mean to. Through their recounting of events in their lives and how they reacted to those events, they display a side of themselves they may not themselves understand, or that they interpret in a manner that is comfortable to them. When in fact a skilled observer of human nature may conclude something entirely different about that personality. A behaviour trait that is sublimated may reveal itself.

A young woman who experienced a relationship that was most unusual but perhaps in the final analysis predictable, had she kept her eyes open and her ears attuned to nuances she had her own interpretation of, has written a book recounting that experience. Although she is yet in her early 30s, she has written, of all things, a memoir, Through the Glass, newly published. From an extensive review in the newspaper, the memoir sets out to explain what Shannon Moroney experienced after she met Jason Staples.

At the time of their meeting she was 27 years old, in the teaching profession. In a restaurant she happened to see a tall, dark and handsome young man, speedily discovering that he was single. He was 33 years old, at the time. They lost little time in discovering one another, so to speak. And they did speak, copiously. Their initial conversation did little to convince her that the man she was speaking with was other than kind, giving, bright and witty.

Some conversation that must have been for a young woman to have intuited all of that, finding the young man to whom she was speaking very much to her taste. That was really some conversation; it included the frankly verbose confession from him that he had spent ten years in prison as a convicted murderer. He had beaten another young woman, with whom, at the age of 18, he had been living. In a psychotic rage he had beaten mercilessly to death.

But he had immediately felt responsible for what he had done, regretted it and confessed to police. He was convicted of second-degree murder. When he and Shannon Moroney met, he was reporting to a halfway house in Kingston, Ontario. She was so enamoured of this young man that she spoke with his parole officer, with his friends, his psychologist, all of whom enthused about his character, that though he had done something dreadful, he had atoned for it, and was a different man.

Her friends loved him, she said, her parents loved him. Despite that everyone knew of his past; he hid nothing. He presented as a sensitive person, an artist, an omnivorous reader, someone who loved nature, truly a gentle soul. This is her version, of course. Can anyone really imagine parents, hearing the sordid tale of a 18-year-old man incapable of restraining himself, arguing violently with a woman and bashing her head against a bathroom tile floor until death occurred and not feeling a sense of insecurity and fear for their child?

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They married. They bought a house together, in Peterborough. She would begin teaching, and he began work, at a health food store, although he would far prefer to do drawings for publications. A month after their marriage, she went on a trip to Toronto to attend a conference. There was a night-time knock on her hotel room door. A policeman, informing her that her husband had been arrested, had confessed to abduction and rape.

He had confessed to abducting and raping two women who had walked into the health food store. At the store had he grabbed the women, one after the other, at knifepoint. Taking them into a back room he brutalized them, and then took them home with him, in a rented van. He had also previously mounted a camera, hiding it in the house bathroom so he could spy on his wife or any guests who happened to visit.

He was immediately remorseful, insisted that he deserved punishment. Put away so he could never hurt anyone again. Psychiatrists later diagnosed him as a sexual sadist. He went out of his way to ask the courts for a dangerous offender designation, which would enable him legally to be put away for good. He will indeed be incarcerated for a long time, now.

"How do I think of him now? I think about Jason with hope. I know that all the terrible things about him were true but all the good aspects of him are also true. I just hope that someday he can get treatment." What 'good aspects' can outweigh the reality of a psychopath enjoying himself by terrorizing and traumatizing and horribly assaulting two innocent women who, in entering a health food store could never have imagined what they were about to experience?

How do you really manage to convince yourself that someone who allowed himself to go so completely berserk that he beat a woman's head to a deadly pulp can be a kind and caring person? That marriage took place six years ago. Remember: a month following the marriage the two women were abducted and raped. And his former wife appears to have developed an unhealthy fetish about these events.

She has a filing cabinet filled with letters, photographs, psychiatrist reports, victims' impact statements, book manuscripts, along with a receipt for the rental van her former husband used in the commission of his latest crimes. Some of his artistic renderings have ended up as collages that have been preserved by her behind glass. One of the collages holds a photo of Jason as a young boy, a wedding photo and a newspaper clipping listing criminal charges against him.

Is this a shrine, or a fetish? Does this represent her very own badge of honour in offering salvation to the unsalvageable? It has always seemed strange beyond belief that many women go out of their way to befriend violent criminals behind bars, to befriend them and visit them continually, correspond with them, even marry them. Murderers, sometimes serial murderers, having their own fan clubs; women just like those they murdered.

Ms. Moroney divorced Mr. Staples. She has since remarried. To another man who is warm and loving. This one has no criminal record. "It is six years later, look where I am now."