Murder victim's mom speaks out against the death penalty

Marietta Jaeger-Lane said she ‘wrestled with God' after her 7-year-old daughter Susie was kidnapped and eventually found slain. NOT BLADE PHOTO Enlarge

When a kidnapper cut a slit in the Jaeger family's canvas tent in the middle of the night and stole off with 7-year-old Susie, the girl's mother was thrust into a whirlwind of emotions.

Her initial feelings of fear, frustration, and dread that dark summer night in 1973 in Montana eventually gave way to rage - a feeling that Marietta Jaeger-Lane had always suppressed.

"I had been raised in a home where we were never allowed to show anger. We were told it was a sin. If we wanted God to love us, especially as females, we should never be angry," said Mrs. Jaeger-Lane, who will speak Sunday at St. Rose Catholic Church in Perrysburg. "So I became very adept at repressing my feelings or expressions of anger."

But after two weeks without any sign of Susie, the youngest of her four children, and just one brief, confusing phone call from the kidnapper, her anger was too strong to keep bottled up.

"My rage just came roiling up through all the inhibitions I had placed on it," Mrs. Jaeger-Lane said in an interview this week.

She desperately needed God, but at the same time was afraid her anger was sinful.

"I thought, 'Am I offending God?' Then I felt, 'Phooey, I don't care. This is an innocent, defenseless little girl. I'm her mother. I have every right to be furious.'•"

It was then, Mrs. Jaeger-Lane said, that the rage took over.

"I would have been happy to kill the guy with my bare hands and a smile on my face. I just didn't know who he was," she said. "That's a normal, valid human response. But if you stay there, you end up giving the killer another victim. Hatred is not healthy."

Mrs. Jaeger-Lane, a Roman Catholic, said her Christian faith helped her move "from fury to forgiveness."

"I began a major wrestling match with God … and when you wrestle with God, you know who wins," she said with a laugh. "What I came to understand was that killing somebody in Susie's name would profane her name and violate the sweetness and beauty of what she was."

Mrs. Jaeger-Lane, 71, a Detroit-area native now living in Three Forks, Mont., travels around the world, sharing her story and calling for compassion instead of capital punishment.

"I'm only a country bumpkin with a high school education, but I have had opportunities to testify to the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights and to speak in Japan, Korea, India, Central and South America, and throughout the United States," she said.

"The bottom line is: Do we really honor the victims by taking on the same mindset of resolving our problems that the murderer did?"

Last year, Mrs. Jaeger-Lane received the prestigious Jeannette Rankin Peace Award, given by the Institute for Peace Studies at Rocky Mountain College.

Her daughter's kidnapper had eluded authorities until Mrs. Jaeger-Lane helped the FBI track him down after he called her on the one-year anniversary of Susie's disappearance.

The phone rang at 2 a.m., the precise moment of the kidnapping one year earlier.

"Instinctively I just knew who it was," Mrs. Jaeger-Lane said. "It was clear he was calling to taunt me. He was being smug and nasty."

But her journey "from fury to forgiveness came to fruition at the sound of his voice," she said. "Forgiveness was not something I just knew I should do or was choosing to do, but it had become a reality."

Her compassion soon caused the kidnapper to break down, she said. "He sobbed and sobbed and let his guard down, revealing enough information about himself that the FBI was able to identify him."

She soon learned that Susie had been killed within a week after her disappearance. The kidnapper, David Meirhoffer, confessed to three other murders before hanging himself in jail. He was 25 years old.

Mrs. Jaeger-Lane said that was not what she had wanted for the killer. "I had hoped to see this very sick man restored."

Marietta Jaeger-Lane will speak at 7 p.m. tomorrow at St. Rose Catholic Church, 215 East Front St., Perrysburg. There is no admission charge but an offering will be taken.

Contact David Yonke at:

dyonke@theblade.com

or 419-724-6154.