“If the death penalty had been Kansas law that day, he would probably be on death row at this very moment.”
It’s a quote from Bob Keller 30 years ago that I included in “Goodbye, Butterfly: Murder, faith and forgiveness in a small Kansas town.” The line is in Chapter 16, “A Nobel Fight,” which chronicles the death penalty and Bob’s friendship with Bill Lucero, arguably the most well-known anti-death penalty individual in Kansas for more than 30 years.
For several years after his daughter’s brutal murder, Bob was an anti-death penalty advocate, speaking before the Kansas Legislature a few times. Unfortunately for him and those opposing the death penalty, one of those heart-wrenching speeches at the State Capitol came moments after then-Gov. Joan Finney argued with a state senator.
Even though Finney opposed capital punishment, she planned to let a death penalty bill pass without vetoing it. The senator, Republican Dick Bond, also anti-death penalty, pushed her to veto the measure.
“Finney got into an immediate argument with Bond,” Lucero says in “Goodbye, Butterfly.” “One they got done, she walked off in a huff, and that was right before Bob testified.”
As chronicled in the book, news reporters covering the issue followed Finney out of the courtroom and did not hear Bob speak.
Bob’s visit to the Statehouse came at a critical juncture in the capital punishment discussion. Just a year earlier, in 1993, the grisly murder of 19-year-old Pittsburg State student Stephanie Schmidt by a co-worker on parole after serving only 10 years for rape, began to sway the state toward reinstituting the death penalty.
In the years leading up that crime, the state’s harshest punishment was a “Hard 40,” or 40 years in prison before parole. At the time, Kansas did not have a life without parole sentence. As such, despite committing one of the most heinous crimes in the state’s history, Jon Mareska Jr. is eligible for parole on Aug. 23, 2031.
That does not mean, however, that he will be released from the Hutchinson Correctional Facility. In fact, Mareska pleaded guilty to four crimes (kidnapping, rape, sodomy and first-degree murder), and the Court ruled that all of those sentences are to be served consecutively and on top of his parole violations on unrelated cases.
“He’s not ever getting out,” he said. “There’s no parole board that would ever release him.”
That likely is true, especially given that there will be numerous people from Dover attending that parole hearing in seven years.
I’ve spoken to Bob numerous times about the death penalty. I think his beliefs have changed over the years. He’s not completely opposed to capital punishment and has referenced the Bible’s passage on a life for a life.
That said, I wonder if the death penalty was a possibility in 1991, if he would have advocated for it. I suspect that he’d think about Brenda and remember what he wrote in 1994:
“What would it be like to know that someday in the near future he would be strapped to a table and killed? This man who destroyed my daughter’s very precious life. To be honest with you, there are times when I find that idea very appealing.
“But then I think of Brenda. Not how she died, but how she lived. The little girl who announced when she was five that she thought maybe God put her in the world to love bugs. And all through her very short time in this world she was dedicated to saving and protecting bugs, and worms and spiders and things that most people would just as soon step on. And I think, no, I know she would be horrified if a man, not a bug, not a snake, not a beast, but a human being, were to be killed in her name.”
One of the Kellers’ defining traits is their grace. If you’re like me, you’ll be moved and humbled by their ability to forgive a man who took their sweet, loving child at the tender age of 12. Their devotion to their faith truly is noble.