Posted on 04/05/2004 5:41:15 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Pastor of woman who killed sons focuses on importance of faith
TYLER (AP) — In a mighty voice that rang outside the brick church, the pastor of a woman who bludgeoned two of her children to death preached about hope amid despair on Palm Sunday, a day after a jury acquitted the mother by reason of insanity.
"Weeping endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning," pastor Gary Bell quoted the Bible to his congregation of more than 100 people. "God is your refuge. He'll be your song in the night, alleluia."
Deanna Laney, 39, once ministered to youth, sang in the choir and spoke in tongues at the Pentecostal First Assembly of God church, where her sister also sings and her mother plays the piano.
Some of Laney's relatives attended the service and were consoled afterward by church members. They have declined to give media interviews.
Bell, who is also Laney's brother-in-law, said in a fiery, animated sermon that he would continue to stand by Laney and her husband, Keith, and asked church members to pray for the family during their long ordeal.
"You're going to make it. I said you're going to make it. By the grace of God, we're going to make it," he preached.
Later, speaking to reporters, Bell said he believed the jury did the right thing by not convicting Laney of capital murder and serious injury to a child in the deaths of 8-year-old Joshua, 6-year-old Luke and the beating of Aaron, now 2.
"Everyone in this situation is a victim, everyone," he said.
"Our faith is unshaken by this. In fact, if anything, our faith has been fortified," Bell said. "I don't know how people make it through crises like this without their faith, "Bell said.
Joe Jackson, 69, a former deacon of the church and friend of the Laney family, said he's praying for God to give them strength.
"We'll probably never know really why it happened," he said. "I know she's got some time to serve though to pay for the things that she's done, but I think the Lord will be with her and carry her through this. One of these days, we may see her again, but if not, Lord bless her and keep her as long as she lives."
A jury of eight men and four women deliberated for about seven hours Saturday before determining that Laney must have suffered from a severe mental illness that made her incapable of knowing right from wrong during the attacks .
Laney called 911 Mother's Day weekend and calmly told a dispatcher "I just killed my boys."
The older boys were found in the front yard with their skulls smashed, while the youngest was bleeding in his crib. Aaron suffered severe brain injury that has left him visually impaired. And doctors don't expect him ever to live independently.
Since the attacks, Laney has not seen Aaron, who lives with his father in the tiny town of New Chapel Hill, just outside Tyler and about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, said Laney's attorney F.R. "Buck" Files.
"She is concerned on a daily, hourly basis about him," Files said. "Aaron is always on her mind."
All five psychiatrists consulted in the case concluded that a severe mental illness caused Laney to have psychotic delusions in which she thought God was ordering her to kill the boys as a test of faith.
Laney will likely be committed to a maximum security state hospital. Medical evaluations will dictate when she will be released. She remained at the Smith County Jail pending a hearing Tuesday regarding her transfer.
Around Tyler, a town of more than 83,000 where the trial was held, newspaper stands were empty of papers that screamed the jury's verdict.
East Texans eating out after church, shopping or sipping coffee at the only Starbucks had sharply different opinions on the verdict.
"She should get the chair," said Ron Morse, 52, of nearby Lindale, who said prosecutors didn't pick a firm enough jury.
Steaming milk for a customer's coffee, Randall Jackson, 29, said much of his family is upset Laney didn't get the death penalty but he believes Laney was insane.
"We're very split," he said. "They just get their emotions into it. It being children, it's hard to keep an open mind about it when you're not her."
Phillip Swallows, 37, who owns a trucking company in Tyler, said he and his wife followed the case closely and became so emotional about it they had to turn off the news at times.
"I think her mind snapped," he said from his car, his three children wriggling in the backseat. "She had a lot of religious, biblical beliefs and when she snapped, it all just ran together."
Swallows, who belongs to a different branch of the Pentecostal church than Laney, said he's looked at his children throughout the trial and wondered what could bring a parent to kill.
"I've even went and stood over them when they were sleeping and said 'how does this happen?"' he said. Although he agrees with the verdict, he can't say justice has been done.
"There's no justice for that," he said.
"Everyone in this situation is a victim, everyone," he said.Just like in a terrorist bombing, right? There's nobody here but us victims.
Evil.
I guess they fit right in at this pentecostal church ...
Sickness masking as spirituality ...
Wow --- see how fast she's almost cured!! Soon they can let her go home and she can make more babies to kill. And her insane husband actually seems like he'd do it. No reason to keep such a loving mother locked up.
Me, I think I might have preached on the sufficiency of the Word of God, the closed nature of the Canon, and the importance of listening to God's Word in Scripture. My text might have been 2 Timothy 3:15-17, or Hebrews 2:1-4.
And I might have warned against listening for the voice of God outside of Scripture.
But then, I'm not pentecostaloid anymore.
Think this Pastor is on the wrong spiritual rail so to speak. Believe, by his conclusions; he diminishes the virtue embedded in the act of 'forgiveness' and degrades the quality of Justice, by his conclusions.
Also think, he may be, without realizing it, doing what is normal - absolving - separating, himself and his spirtual community from any guilt they might invite.
"Everyone is a victim in this situation, everyone."
But none more painfully, than those three children.
They lives deserved to be honored more than this verdict allows.
Who might that lawyer have been???
Leave it so the Lib media to bring in those they think will be particularly impressive and legally articulate.
'Stoned to death' certainly offered them Conservative passon'.
I would offer only that each Jury member have been made to experience one good, solid - hit on the head with same sized rock as this Mother used on her children.
Who might that lawyer have been???
Leave it so the Lib media to bring in those they think will be particularly impressive and legally articulate.
'Stoned to death' certainly offered them Conservative passon'.
I would offer only that each Jury member have been made to experience one good, solid - hit on the head with same sized rock as this Mother used on her children.
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