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Communications
HNP Today newsletter
March 4, 2009 |
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by Andrea Weigl, The Raleigh News & Observer
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George Corrigan writes:
"This article from the front page of The Raleigh News & Observer is about Elias Syriani, a member of the Catholic Community of North Carolina's death row. Elias is one of the men who attend the weekly liturgy and meetings of the Catholics on death row at Central Prison Raleigh. The friars who serve as volunteer Catholic chaplains, such as Mark Reamer, have ministered to Elias for more than 10 years now.
"Elias' date of execution has been set for Nov. 18 at midnight. Elias was convicted of murdering his wife back in 1991. After years of hating their father, the four children came to Raleigh in 2004 to confront their father, find closure and move on in their lives. Instead, they found what they describe as a miracle - forgiveness for their father and his act, and they found a parent.
"The children spoke Oct. 26 at St. Francis in Raleigh to a gathering of 60-80 people asking for the community's support for an appeal for clemency by Governor Michael Easley. They will meet with the governor on Nov. 8.
"The friars and the Catholic Community of St. Francis have supported Elias, and the others on North Carolina's death row by an on-going effort for a moratorium on the death penalty. While we will continue those efforts, we would ask the Franciscan community to pray for the success of the Syriani children's appeal to the governor, as well as for the peace of soul for Elias."
RALEIGH, N.C. - One summer evening 15 years ago, John Syriani tried to save his mother's life.
The 10-year-old boy got between his screwdriver-wielding father and his mother. Despite his efforts, Teresa Syriani suffered 28 stab wounds and lingered weeks before dying.
Now, John Syriani is trying to save his father's life. He hopes to stop prison officials from injecting Elias Syriani, 67, with a lethal poison on Nov. 18 at Raleigh's Central Prison.
All week, John Syriani, now 25, and his sisters - Rose, Sarah and Janet - have been speaking publicly from Charlotte to Raleigh about losing their mother, forgiving their father and their dread of life without their only surviving parent. On Nov. 8, they will return to Raleigh to ask Gov. Mike Easley in person to commute their father's sentence to life in prison.
"We're begging that this does not get carried out," said the family's eldest, Rose Syriani, 28, of Highland, Ind.
Easley has commuted two death row inmates' sentences since he took office in 2000.
Peter Gilchrist III, Mecklenburg County district attorney, said he would not ask the governor to set aside the sentence. "It was a particularly brutal case," he said.
But Gilchrist said that Elias Syriani's children "are wonderful people."
In appearances this week, the Syriani children talked to reporters, friends and strangers about the "miracle" that changed their anger to love.
On Wednesday night, they spoke at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church on Leesville Road in Raleigh to an audience of about 60 people. Their stifled sobs, amplified by microphones, punctuated their story.
But, though they mourn the violent dissolution of their family, they also revel in the happy memories that reconnecting with their father have summoned. At a Chapel Hill church this week, they recounted how their father, once a renowned singer on Jordanian radio, sang to them in Arabic during their visit Sunday.
"I have Dad back," said Janet, 23, a student at Purdue University. "And for that to get ripped away from me in three weeks, I don't know what to do."
In part, what led Janet and her siblings to reconnect with their father was reading an expert witness's report about their father's life in war-torn Israel and later Jordan before he married their mother. It was marred by poverty, instability and little education.
But in 1974, Elias found hope of a better life with an arranged marriage with a daughter of a Jordanian family living in New Jersey. The family wanted their daughter Teresa to marry a fellow member of the Assyrian Christian sect. Elias immigrated to the United States after the wedding. Teresa, who was 12 years younger, chafed under Elias' conservative views on a woman's role in the family.
Their marriage was rocky, and the fighting got worse when the Syrianis moved from the Chicago area to Charlotte in 1985, according to trial testimony and court records. Elias once ripped his wife's blouse during a fight. He dragged her downstairs by her hair. He threatened her with a baseball bat.
After one fight in 1989, Teresa took the children to a battered women's shelter and then to live with relatives in New Jersey. She soon returned when Elias promised to let his wife work outside the home and to buy her a car.
Teresa's new independence only intensified the strife. In June 1990, she filed for divorce and got a court order forcing her husband out of the home.
On July 28, 1990, Elias visited the home at 11 p.m. and found his wife wasn't there. When she arrived, an enraged Elias blocked the path of her car and attacked her as their son watched. Elias stabbed Teresa in the arms, chest and head. She died 26 days later.
The three eldest children testified at Elias's trial about the attack and their father's tyrannical hold over the family.
After their father was sentenced to death for first-degree murder, the children moved outside Chicago to live with their father's sisters.
The siblings pulled together in their grief. They never referred to Elias as their father, only "him."
"He was dead to me," Sarah said.
Even though John was the sole witness to the attack, that trauma didn't stop him from contacting his father, whom he considered his best friend. Within a year of the killing, John was writing to his dad. And in 1998, at the age of 18, he visited his father at the Raleigh prison.
They didn't talk about the killing. His father asked his son to stand up and show him his hands and his feet.
"He wanted to grasp the eight years he hadn't seen me," John said.
The visit helped John, but his sisters were not interested in hearing about their father.
Sisters change
But by 2004, the sisters were each thinking about him. For Sarah, the change came once she started thinking about getting married and having children. One night while driving home from work, she began to wonder about how it felt for him to lose his children.
"I could not take the next step in my life - love my husband, love my children with my whole heart - with this anger coursing through me for so long," Sarah said.
The three sisters lived together in northwest Indiana. After reading an affidavit from that expert witness about their father's childhood, they admitted to each other that they wanted to see him. At dinner a few nights later, they told their brother and agreed to go together.
In August 2004, the siblings traveled to Raleigh. As they took the elevators to the visiting area, they were nervous, afraid to gaze into the eyes of a man who used to control them with just one look.
What they saw was a short white-haired man far diminished from the towering figure of their childhood.
"I always thought of him as a murderer who took my mom," Sarah said. "When I saw him for the first time, waving and smiling like a kid in Disneyland, I saw my dad."
The first question their father had was directed to the eldest. "Smile, Rose. Let me see your teeth. Are you flossing?"
"We have really bad teeth in the family," she explained.
There was no discussion of their mother's killing that day, just smiles and tears. During another visit the next day, their father apologized.
"He had been rehearsing this in his mind for years," Rose said.
With that, they say, they were able to let go of their anger and forgive.
"I call it a miracle," Sarah said. "I don't think anyone can go from hate, absolute hate to love in a split second if it didn't come from someplace else."
She and her siblings say the miracle was a gift from God and their mother. "She was such a forgiving woman," Sarah said.
