I'll Be Watching You. M. William Phelps

      His friends, he ended the letter, would back [him] up on this point.

      The words of an admitted killer. A man whom society didn’t have to worry about for at least a decade or more. In fact, the only way Ned would see freedom again inside a decade was if he complied with every single standard that the system had set in place for rehabilitation. If Ned met every single recommendation, he could be a free man by the year 1999—and not a day before.

      IV

      What about that woman Ned had murdered in Middlesex County—the one he had squeezed the life from, then stabbed repeatedly in the chest and face as she, he explained in his letter to the court, “sputtered” back to life after his efforts to choke her to death failed? After she expired, he had posed her so he could sexually gratify himself. That beautiful woman, whom he had met and dated at Rutgers, had a family and friends. There were people who loved her and adored the way she had dedicated her short life in many respects to the welfare of animals. Anyone who knew her could never forget her smile, or the way she had of making everyone around her feel comfortable and cared for.

      Indeed, that woman Ned had killed, well, she had a name.