Transcripts For CNNW The Redemption Project 20190520 : vimar

CNNW The Redemption Project May 20, 2019

Justice system, and ive seen lives devastated by violence. We like to imagine that after the verdict, the story is over, the victim and the offender are never meant to meet again. But for some, the only way to move forward is to come face to face with the person who shattered their lives. Im here in alaska, and theyve got so much just untouched, unspoiled, beauty. But they also have a really ugly problem up here with a drug epidemic. Theres a real cycle of addiction, crime, incarceration, release, still addicted, back to crime, back to jail. Its just an endless cycle, and 66 who get out of prison are returning back to prison within three years. So im up here to meet a woman named Terria Walters whose son, christopher, died in a drugrelated incident, and she wants to talk with the guy responsible for her sons death. State of alaska doesnt actually have a former victim offender dialogue program, so going to be the first ever and its kind of a big deal that youve got them to let her do it. Hi. Good to meet you finally. Nice to meet you, too. I am glad to finally get a chance to sit down and talk with you. Yes. I id love to know more about your son. Id love to hear more about christopher. What kind of little kid was christopher . Funny. And he would do anything that he possibly could to make he laugh and aggravate me, but it would be a funny aggravation, like, id tell him, stop doing that. Hed just make fun of me while im trying to be serious. Chris. People called him the gentle giant and was always that guy that people could go to to talk about their problems and he would listen and comfort them. Your pants. He was voted prom king. School was really important to christopher. He wanted to make sure that he his grades were good because he wanted to go to college. Hes the first to graduate high school in my whole family. My son has helped me become the person that i am today. I grew up in a home that was extremely chaotic. Definitely not love in the home. Im in a space where i am today because of him. You managed to have this amazing kid. Yes. What happened . Christopher wanted to join the navy straight out of high school, but he ended up being denied because of his diabetes, which created some depression in him, which led to his downward spiral. He was not in his right mind and he was unpredictable, and he started using heroin. So i confronted him and then wed fight and argue and id beg and plead and say, please, just stop, you know, youre hurting me and you know where this could end up, and, of course, i tried my best to help him. On june 22nd, 2015, he was going to go to a job and he said, bye, mom, i love you. He got in his car and he left. I worked nights, and i got home after 11 00 and was looking for my sons car because generally i ill see it in the driveway, and it wasnt there. The next morning, he still wasnt there, so the whole day i texted him and tried calling and nothing. He never responded. I went to the Palmer Police department and reported my son missing and i did tell them he is an addict, and about 4 00 in the morning, my phone started vibrating. It was an Alaska State Trooper outside my door, and he said, well, i just want to let you know that we did find christophers car. And my heart sank. It was like slow motion. Did you find christopher . Yes. Is he deceased . Yes. I was just beside myself. I couldnt wrap my head around that my son was dead and that i am the parent of a murdered child, so my whole sons life, everything since he was a child on up was just running through my mind to the point of losing him and that i would never see him again. As youre learning more about how things actually happen, i mean, who did it, what happened, how did he wind up in that situation . I found out that joshua beebe was the person that killed my son. I didnt even know who joshua beebe was. My son never mentioned him. What was told to me by the state trooper was that my son pulled up to the fireworks stand. He met josh to sell him some heroin. Its assumed that my son turned around and walked away from josh and thats when josh shut my son in the back of the head. Handle broke on this. My sons body was dragged and he was stuffed in the back seat. While people were telling me and asking me why do you want to pclean it out, i its just m grieving process. I have thoughts in my mind of what happened to him. I relive it in my head. He was alone. He was stuffed in the back seat of his car and he bled to death in the back seat of his own car. Did he feel alone . Was he scared . And if he knew he was dying and remembered me. And if hes thinking to himself, my mom was right, or i should have listened to my mom, or my mom is going to be devastated. I believe that josh intended to rob my son. I was told that five days prior to that that he did the same thing to somebody else but they ended up living. He was officially arraigned august 17th, 2015, for seconddegree murder and robbery and that was on my sons birthday. He would have been 24. This is the first victim offender dialogue ever in alaska for adults behind bars. Why was this so important for you to push forward and be the first one to do this . Ive been really aggressive with this issue. I basically have gone in and said, look, ive experienced horrible tragedy in my life. An individual caused that tragedy. Now i want to have this conversation because theres things i wanted to say to him that i didnt get to say. When i went to the sentencing, he was not fully accountable. He said, miss walters, im really sorry for what happened to your son. 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So im just outside cerill, alaska, going to the spring creek correctional center. Im going to meet joshua beebe, hes the guy whos responsible for death of christopher. Joshuas been in and out of prison his whole life, and right now hes serving a 60year sentence. And im here to know why he would even agree to meet with terria, given the fact its not going to get him any shorter sentences. Hes going to be there for a long time, regardless. Whats up, man . How you doing, sir . Good to meet you. Good to meet you, sir. Thanks for making time. Appreciate it. Tell me about growing up. I bet your dad didnt have any face tattoos. No. No. Tell me about your dad. My dad is a good man. Hes an sbraentrepreneur. He gave us a lot of opportunities. Had a great upbringing. I have no complaints at all. I was born in prescott, maine. When we went to wisconsin, i was about 5 or 6. And my dad had a couple dairy farms. We lived in an amish community. We drove horse and buggy. Gave us a chance to live off the land. I drove horses. Plowed with them. It was different, but it was cool. When my father asked us to come to alaska, started building houses. I was about 18 years old. I got married because i had a son. It was a good environment. We lived well. Im trying to figure out is how did you even get in this situation . Because you werent raised in too much of a negative environment. No. No. I wasnt. You know, i bought a car from my father. A fast car. It wasnt supposed to be on the street. I was driving basically a drags car on the road. So i eluded police and when i did that, i came to jail. That was my First Experience in jail. I got a felony eluding. I got three years for it. Your initial underlying crime was driving away from the cops. Yeah. Just driving fast. Yeah. Just driving fast. Thats all. Then you wind up getting sent here, then what happened . Hows it going . Its going right now. Going perfectly. When you come into an environment like this, its flightorfight mode. Youre not going to run from anybody. You cant. That will make you a victim. So you do what you have to do. You adapt to your environment. And thats where my life started going downhill. When i got out of spring creek in 2008, after the eluding, right when i got out, i caught a theft charge. Stolen credit cards. Got out, 2013. Going to go hit the workout or what . What are we doing . No. I came back to jail 2013 and didnt get out until 2015. Just a revolving door really. My life was in a big spiral downhill. I knew it. How did you meet christopher . First time we met, shook hands, kind of talked was in 2015 when i got out. Yeah, me and chris were in the same circle so he came to my place a couple times and we hung out and got high. We did heroin. We sold to each other here and there, when we needed, one of us was out, wed help each other out. Help me understand, what happened with christopher, how he wound up dead, how you ended up here. We said wed meet that day, so i called chris that morning and said, hey, im here, and we met. Prior to meeting him, you know, some friends of mine told me that they wanted to meet him, too, but they werent going there to buy anything. Yeah, i did set him up to be robbed. I did do that. I remember being in wasilla. I seen that poster with chris faces on it, what happened to him. I just, i remember turning white and i knew right then, this is this is what my life became, you know . One day i woke up to about 30 cops in my face with guns and went to jail. Its like a flash bang going off where youre stuck in a motion, everything is slow motion and you see your life passing by you and your family leaving you and all you see is a cell door in front of you, you know, and you wake up and youre like, is this real, tell me im dreaming, you know . So when you say you set him up to be robbed uhhuh. All i know is that i told somebody where hed be. This is the outcome of it. I was only in the area for less than nine minutes. Then tragedy happens and youre stuck with it. You cant take it back. Im not going to do anything like that. Sorry for what happened. Sorry that it happened. Sometimes people hear it differently, say im sorry for what happened, im sorry for what i did. Is this a difference in your mind . No. I think its the same thing. Im sorry for the loss of her son, the loss of his life. When she asks me why, i dont know, how do i explain that, you know what i mean . How do i tell you your son had to die . Why . I dont know. At mercedesbenz, we make every vehicle to be eyecatchingly beautiful. We make them to be exhilaratingly agile. We make them to be meticulously engineered. And for the cla, we also made it for this. The 2019 cla. Lease the cla 250 coupe for just 299 a month at your local mercedesbenz dealer. Mercedesbenz. The best or nothing. [music] bonvoy. Bonvoy. 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I can see whos online. Im gonna sweep the sofa fort. Well, look what i found. Take control of your wifi with xfinity xfi. Lets roll now thats simple, easy, awesome. Xfinity xfi gives you the speed, coverage and control you need. Manage your wifi network from anywhere when you download the xfi app today. Im the founder and president of fallen up ministries, and i founded this organization because of my own personal life experience. My son, christopher seaman, was murdered over a bag of heroin. Hey. I need to do your intake and get you prepared for whats going to happen tomorrow. How ive chosen to cope with my sons death is through advocacy for individuals that have addiction issues. When was your last use . 7 00 a. M. Okay. And what did you use . Heroin. Heroin. Outside my regular job to pay for my bills, thats what i do for work. Okay. So this is whats going to go on your ear. Like that. This does not take away cra cravings, so be accountable, delete all your contacts. You have no idea how much this means to me. Yeah, i do, because i wish this was around whenever i needed to get clean and sober. I grew up in a home that was full of addiction, abuse, chaos, dysfuncti dysfunction, and so i became a product of that environment and i ended up not knowing anything different. When i was 4, i remember smoking marijuana for the first time. I was even being paid to baby sit by being given joints, and im talking, like, 7, 8 years old. I ended up going into foster care and i kept running away. I didnt want to stay in placement. And then i got involved with meth. I was 18 when christopher was born. I didnt really know how to be a mother because i had been raised in such a chaotic environment and raised by the state that i just kind of winged it. There was times that my son would confront me on my drug use. He would cry. He would beg me. He would ask me to stop. And even though in my heart i wanted to stop, i didnt my will was weak. In 2004, i learned how to cook meth, and my son was 13 at the time, and i did allow him to use drugs. He got involved with marijuana and drinking and eventually smoking meth, too. How could a mother do drugs with her son . I was ashamed of myself. And my son was in the situation that he was in, and i was in the situation that i was in because of my choices. Within eight months, i was arrested for manufacturing. And i remember specifically in one conversation where he was, like, im glad youre in jail because im hoping that youll change your life and get your life together. And i never forgot him saying that to me. And so because of that, ive been sober for 13 1 2 years. Even though i finally got sober and i changed my life and i became the mother that i was supposed to be for him, it didnt save him from relapses and continuing to do the things that i had taught him. And that that was devastating to me. We cant expect somebody to get their life together when when were not teaching them how to. People in longterm recovery with lived experience can help other individuals in the same situation. We had a couple guys come back in, man, and i know that they violated because of these drugs, you know what im saying . And its like they get a habit when they come here, they get out, the habit is worse, and it brings them right back. That first drug that ive done was heroin. It was here at spring creek correctional center. You know, after about a year off and on doing it, i got out. I was like, okay, well, enough of that. So i started working again. Just out of the blue one day, i dont know, i just had a craving. I lost my job and lost everything, really. Had you not gone to prison, do you think you would have wound up being addicted to something, anyway, at some point in your life . Honestly, no. Before i came to prison, i didnt even know what heroin was. Were going to go into the hobby shop and Wander Around for a little bit. Whats the point of hobby shop . You know, try and give them some skills that maybe they can take outside of here and find some employment. I want to talk to you about what kind of prison were in right now. Were in the state of alaskas only maximum custody prison, this is where the state of alaska sends the worst of the worst. You dont do things the way most wardens do things. Why this that . I started recognizing early on policies and procedures were following are built on peoples perceptions from 30 and 40 years ago. Theyre not working. We need to build a better person. They came here broken. They shouldnt leave here broken. This is the department of corrections. Its not warehousing. All of this that you see in here was bought and paid for by them. For an offender to get in here making 40 or 50 cents an hour, for him to be able to save up to buy the tools might take years. This is a 500 piece of machinery here. Hes turning out crafts like this. Thats sterling silver. Its too bad he didnt know how to do that before he came to prison. Yeah. Because he probably wouldnt be here. A crime brought you here, but what you do here matters because thats whats going to keep you out of here. I try to remember that every day when i come to owork. Its what im going to do with them now. The scidivism rate in alaska can what youre doing make that . Were sending people back to environments that were shattered before they came to prison. They havent gotten any better because they left, and is what im doing enforcing Public Safety, is this making a better person to return to the public, which enforces Public Safety . Theres a lot of networking going on between me and other superintendents around the state about whats working for them, what might work for me. You start having conversations about victim offender dialogues. So youve known joshua for a while. So i knew him when he first came here. He was a young kid that liked to raise hell in jail. I think from the beginning, i think he was just doomed to go down this path that wasnt going to lead anywhere positive. And its unfortunate that this was the answer that the state had for, you know, his earl i incarceration. Why would you bet on

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