Well, im happy to introduce our speakers for this evenings program. Our interview with this evening is todd allen. Todd is the Vice President of Diversity Affairs at messiah university. He is a founder of the Common Ground project, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching the history of the civil rights movement. For the past 21 years, in partnership with the pnc foundation, and allen has led the returning to the roots of civil rights bus tour. Hes a frequent lecture on commemorative practices public memory related to the civil rights movement. Of course, our featured author tonight is alex mar alexie. Author is the author of witches of america, which was a New York Times notable book of 2015. Her work has appeared in new york magazine, wired, the New York Times, book review and the guardian, among many other outlets, as well as the best american magazine writing. She was a finalist for the National Magazine award in feature writing in 2018. She is also the director of the feature length documentary american mystic. She lives in the Hudson Valley in new york city. Of course, alex, his new book that we are here for this evening is titled 70 times seven a true story of murder and mercy. Ive got to read just one blurb from author sierra cahn, who writes, quote, 70 times seven is a devastating and essential book, a meticulous deconstruction of the social fears, personal calculations that built and still uphold the Death Penalty in america. A brilliant reporter and empathetic narrator, alex ma, has written the truest kind of crime drama, unafraid of rendering our narratives about justice less comforting and quote. Its an honor to host alex and todd this evening. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming to the stage. Alex mar and todd allen. Thank you so much for being here. I just was talking about what a gorgeous bookstore this is. Theres so much here that i was tempted to sneak away into the stacks before the reading ran out of time. Its also my very first time in harrisburg, and everyones made me feel very welcome. So thats really been something special. Before we start our conversation, i would just like to read a passage from the book to short passages. One question that comes up when you center a story around a violent crime, i think, is this question of when do you introduce the crime itself . Because the moment at which you introduce that act of violence, it really has an impact on how much empathy the reader is willing to have for any of the characters involved. So i instead chose to open the book after the prolog with a moment, a few years back in time. So the crime at the center of this book took place in 1985. 15 year old paula cooper murdered an elderly woman, ruth pelkey, in her home in a sort of robbery gone wrong. She was then sentenced to death for the crime and incredible events took place in the aftermath of that sentence. But instead of 1985, i opened the book in 1979, when paula was actually just nine years old. So this is a scene. Its a moment from her childhood that i think lets the reader know something important about what her childhood was like. One house of the many that make up a city, a pale yellow house an hour after sun up in gary, indiana. A woman lives here on wisconsin street with her two daughters. Rhonda is 12. Her sister, paula is nine. It is 1979. Their mother, her name is gloria, hustles them outside into the Morning Light and then into the dark of the garage and the back seat of her red chevy vega. The girls are very young and they are powerfully tired. They understand what their mother intends to do. She has kept them up all night, softly talking than shouting and then whimpering to them about where theyll be traveling together, about what must happen next. And they are no longer resistant. With her daughters inside, gloria tugs at the garage door until it slides down to meet the concrete. She slips into the drivers side, rolls down the windows, turns the key in the ignition, the engine gives off a deep, thrumming sound. Then she waits for them to close their eyes and fall into that steady rhythm. She can see their faces in the rearview mirror. Small and brown and perfect. All three are still their limbs grown heavy, as if under water. The engine continues running. The minutes accumulate. The air thickens outside the garage. The neighborhood is awakening. Inside the garage, the girls are passing into an unnatural sleep. What rhonda remembers next. She and paula laying side by side on their bottom bunk, not knowing how they got there. They have not exited the world. Gloria is leaning over them, her daughters. They will be all right. She says just before leaving. Rhonda does not know how much time has passed before she is able to move her body. She rises slowly, early. A letter is taped to the door from their mother. She is finishing what she set out to do. Rhonda rushes to the kitchen and calls her aunt, who tells her to run, get their neighbor through the window. She thinks she sees exhaust seeping out from under the garage door into the bright daylight. Mr. Hollis drags gloria out of the garage and lays her on her back on the lawn. He drops to his knees and with elbows locked, hand over, hand pushes hard on her chest again and again. The neighbor across the street, a nurse, rushes over and takes her turn, trying to pump breath into glorias body. The ambulance arrives and the Fire Department and a medic becomes the third person in line to tend to. Gloria by now. Paula is standing outside watching. Rhonda sees her younger sister grow hysterical at the sight of this stranger bearing down on their mothers chest. And gloria not responding. Not responding. Something rhonda will not forget. No one examines them. The girls, the firemen, the medics. No one so much as takes their pulse. When gloria is swept off to the hospital, the sisters go stay with their aunt. When, after a week, their mother checks herself out early. No one asks any questions when she comes to retrieve her daughters. No one stops her. For years, rhonda has said that she does not know what transformed her sister. But now she tells me. As if untangling the question allowed that this was it. This must have been the start of a change in paula. Because you have to understand, we were all supposed to have been dead. Thats what we were expecting. Thats what we were hoping. But they were still alive. And what now . Another day in the yellow house. So the book then goes on to describe. You get a sense of the Larger Community in gary, indiana, and you get a sense of also the life of ruth pelkey, who ultimately loses her her life. Shes the victim in this story. And i describe the crime when paula and three other girls, 14, 15, 16 years old, talk their way into her house and paula killed mrs. Pelkey. We go through some of the sentencing hearings and ultimately paula is sentenced to death. As i mentioned, im going to skip ahead now to a moment that for me really drew me into this story and decided it really made me decide that i wanted to spend years looking into this case. What happened is ruth wilkies grandson, anne, who was a steelworker in his late thirties, just a man who minded his own business, had no particular habit of making political statements or anything of the sort. Decided to publicly forgive paula for killing his grandmother. And this was against the wishes of his family, his friends. I mean, everyone he knew thought he had lost it. So ill just give you a little passage from the night where he made that decision. He was called in for a late shift at the steel mill. He was a crane operator. So picture him in this warehouse where its dark, its empty. Hes the only guy on this shift right now. Hes waiting for instructions from his boss. So hes alone in this crane cab, hovering over this dark space. And he realizes in that moment its been months now since the death sentence was handed down to paula. He realizes that his life is a mess. Hes grieving for his grandmother, his girlfriend has left him, his family and him are having some issues. Hes just declared bankrupt, see . And he has no direction in his life. So in this moment of feeling so lost, he starts to cry. You know, this grown man in his workplace starts to cry. And he pictures paula cooper for the first time in months. And he thinks this is a girl who is someone far more desperate and alone than i will ever be. So that sets off a series of of thoughts. Seeing paula cooper in person that day in the courthouse. Hed been struck by how young she looked, just turned 16, 23 years younger than him. She was a girl. And immediately after her sentence was read, that man, the girls grandfather, the only grown family that had shown up the way he had called out, the way he had lost it, and how a guard had escorted the old man down the aisle right past. Bill still calling out about his grandbaby. Wretched paula was let out next to the front of her prison smock, darkened with tears, head bobbing her eyes darting from side to side, as if looking for the person who might appear at any moment to help her. He starts to think here of an image thats been in the press of his grandmother, ruth pelkey, with a ring of soft, silvery white curls around her head, high cheekbones, a beatific half smile. She wears pink lipstick, catsup, eyeglasses and silver earrings. The size of coat buttons at this moment, the image he holds in his mind begins to transform from his grandmothers eyes begin to shine their sweat and tears begin a steady, clear run off down her cheeks. Her face remains still frozen in that day in the portraits studio. But the photograph is weeping. Ruth pelkey has become like one of the weeping statues of the virgin mary. Those figures discovered in so many countries leaking tears of blood or oil or scented water, receiving thousands of visitors desperate for a demonstration of truth, or else her tears are in the likeness of the son of jesus in bethany, crying over the death of lazarus. Jesus wept. This, too, is a lamentation. The photograph is weeping because here is a woman in pain. Ruth hurts from the memory of her death, from the final 30 minutes of her life. But thats not it. No, it seems to bill, in this moment that ruths feelings are passed to him, that they flood his chest, and he believes he understands. She is crying for that girl. For paula cooper. For the girls grandfather there. She would not have wanted him to suffer the knowledge that his grandchild will be buckled into a chair and her body overwhelmed by electrical current. And she would not want this girl to be killed for killing her, to be killed in her name. Bill thinks of what jesus said when the romans raised him up on the cross. Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. For the first time, he believes it is possible that the girl did not know what she was doing when she killed ruth, that shed been out of her right mind. That a blind anger must have propelled her forward. And now his grandmother is calling on him to forgive her. His grandmother is calling on him. Is this a calling . Almost 30 years since he first dreamt of such a moment. Bill pelkey is being called at first. The revelation is a notion it infuses no part of his body. It changes nothing about his instincts toward the girl. Those remain cool and hard. Bill has decided to forgive her, to have compassion, but he has none to give. And he knows that if he cannot find that store of empathy sunk deep inside of him, then from this point on, whenever he pictures his grandmother, he will feel that he failed her. Eventually, he will shut her image out. Bill begins again to pray the way a desperate person forms words, unable to prevent them slipping from his lips. He prays for god to make him love paula cooper, to flood him with it. And he waits. He waits. And inevitably, this comes to him. If that girl is worth forgiving, if even his grandmother can feel compassion for her, can wish for her protection. Then he must be too. Though he has also, in his own way, things up beyond repair. Bill himself must be worth preserving in the quiet of the mill. Hi. Above the dead machines. Bill considers what he will do. He. He will write. Paula a letter and in that letter he will tell her about his grandmother and about gods forgiveness and how jesus loves her, just as he loves every person who ever walked the earth. And he passes them out. The words he will write. And bill can see a way forward. He can imagine her just maybe writing back and in his head. This becomes a real correspondence and truly he wants to know what she might say to him. Not by way of explanation for what shes done, but as proof of humanness, of consciousness in a concrete box on death row. And bill realized, as he does not want to see this girl died. There it is, compassion. This is enough to forgive. He has forgiven her already. He will tell the story of this night for the next 30 years. But for some with whom he shares it, the story will recall a passage in the gospel of john in which jesus, upon learning of the death of one of his followers, begins to weep. And then he approaches the tomb and asks that it be opened. And he calls for the man to come out. Inside the tomb, the dead man sits up and then stands and then steps outside. His hands and feet are wrapped in linen. His face is covered. Jesus says to the crowd, take off the grave clothes and let him go. To be released from the threat of the death house would make of paula cooper. Another kind of lazarus. And she and bill both they would take off their grave clothes. You can clap for that. Thank you. Alex, welcome to the midtown scholar and to harrisburg. Just before we get underway with my questions, i want to have a moment of full disclosure. Alex and i just met, but in the dedication you say the book is for todd. And then you arrived. Clearly for saw this night. But, you know, after after reading this story and im so glad that you shared those those two excerpts, because there are so many people and whose stories are in this account. And it highlights the ways in which not only are the lives of the victim and the perpetrator intertwined and but the lives of their family and friends are forever transformed. And and interconnected. Now, you just told us kind of why this story. But im curious to know, how did you come to this story . And you say that you were working on this for a long time. What is what is a long time . Oh, five years. Which, you know, occasionally books do take that long when theres a lot of research involved. And and yet you you always think youre the one who do it faster. So but but i will say, i, i was doing some research on a hunch because i also write long form stories for magazines. And im always wondering where the next story will come from. I was doing some research into cases of Violent Crimes committed by women, specifically because its far more rare than Violent Crimes committed by men. And i wanted to understand what kind of patterns we might see. And so in just going through a lot of case summaries, i mean, hundreds and hundreds, i stumbled across the story of ruth welchs murder. And it just stopped me in my tracks. And part of it was paulas age. The fact that she was 15 and that she was then sentenced to death for that crime committed at 15. And then the forgiveness piece, how a few months later, the victims grandson chooses to publicly forgive her and i had never heard of Something Like that. I really thought you know, i think im basically a good person, but i really dont i dont know, you know, what is that moment all about . And so i, i managed to dig up bill pelkey phone number somehow. And i just gave him a call and introduced myself and said, you know, do you have a moment . I really want to ask you what was behind that decision all those years ago . And by the time i got off the phone, i just knew in my gut that id be exploring this for a long time, thinking of the people in this story. I had originally almost said characters. These are not these are people in this story. I cant ask you about everybody i want to ask you about, but i want to ask you about a couple. And i want to actually begin with with ruth. Shes a character, a person that we meet through her testimony, through the testimony of others, through this brutal act. Right. Yet her voice and particularly her christian witness, looms large in this story. You know, as you just shared about that transformative moment for for bill. How did the life and legacy of ruth influence the narrative . You know, i i definitely wanted to. Theres the sense that, you know, paula is is paul and bills relationship is the dynamic kind of heart of this book. But i wanted to make sure that we understood how heinous the crime was and also that there was a real human being who is no longer capable of sharing her story. You know, and so i talked to family members. I actually tracked down the spot where ruth grew up in in rural indiana, the brethren church, where in which she was raised and her her parents were founding members. You know, i just tried to find as many people who had known her. I actually found a woman who was 102 years old in a Senior Center who had been taught bible study by ruth. When, you know, they were growing up together and she remembered a hymn that i mentioned in the book that was a hymn that that ruth taught the young kids. You know, i wanted to make her a full person and whats incredible about her and you get to know her in one of the earlier chapters. And she comes up again. But, you know, i wanted her to have that early impact. You would remember her. But whats great about her, she was just she was so driven to work with kids of all kinds and i discovered and even her grandkids didnt know this when i mentioned it, that as a young person, she had a brother who was a couple of years younger. And since this was earlier in the 1900s, her brother died suddenly and there was no record of what he died of. You know, maybe it was a sudden sickness, but i just imagined, you know what . Maybe she was really close to her younger brother and she lost him. And because she spent the rest of her life around kids who were very young and, you know, so she was important to me. And she was also important as a contrast to bill, because when we first meet bill, he is a hot mess. He was raised with a lot of you know, faith that he then began to question. He loved the ladies. He wanted to have a good time in college. You know, he just he just wasnt sure what, you know, what his direction was going to be in life. But he he kind of returned to his grandmothers values in a way, after her death. You say early on, quote, theres no question of her guilt referring to paula. This is not a story of wrongful conviction. As i prepared to ask you about paula, what would you say then . This is a story about. Well, i wanted to make clear in in the prolog really, that theres no doubt as to who who committed the crime. This is not that kind of story. I think we were conditioned a little bit by true crime to think, you kn