Marietta JAEGER-LANE

Marietta‘s 7-year-old daughter Susie was kidnapped from the family’s tent during a camping vacation. For a year, the family knew nothing of Susie’s whereabouts. On the first anniversary of Susie’s disappearance, the kidnapper telephoned Marietta and inadvertently revealed sufficient information to enable the FBI to identify and then arrest him.

Marietta asked that the mentally ill man be given the alternative allowed in capital cases: a mandatory life sentence instead of the death penalty. Only then was the kidnapper willing to confess to Susie’s  murder, as well as to the deaths of three other young persons in the same county. He committed suicide just hours later.

Marietta speaks about the death penalty in numerous venues throughout the United States – most recently at a Montana Senate hearing on an abolition bill. She participates in the Journey of Hope‘s annual speaking tour, and has given two interviews to Vatican Radio, testified before the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, and spoken for  Amnesty International’s Worldwide Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty in Japan and South Korea.

“Loved ones, wrenched from our lives by violent crimes, deserve more beautiful, noble and honorable memorials than premeditated, state-sanctioned killings.”