Thread: Mom's vigil ends with killer's release

Mom's vigil ends with killer's release
Apr. 19, 2008 12:00 AM

The woman pulls out the slightly battered notebook, the one with page after page of precise notations on the monthly movements of the man who murdered her only son.

For 20 years, Jane Fausel has been keeping track of a life to atone for a death. On Sunday, her son's killer, an illegal immigrant, gets out of prison and she's wondering who will keep track of him now.

"How can we prevent him from re-entering our country?" Jane asked me. "I called. I talked to 11 people in the last two days. Nobody can give me any answers."

That's because there is no answer.

At least no acceptable one as long as our leaders in Washington refuse to do, well, anything. (Jane will have to excuse them as this is an election year and not a convenient time to address that hunk of Swiss cheese we call a border.)

Jane, 67, is herself an immigrant, having come from China the legal way when she was 25. She married and raised a family, then saw her world crumble 20 years ago next Friday, when the phone rang in the dead of night.

Jane already knew that something was terribly wrong. It was after 1 a.m. and her son wasn't home. Billy was 22, but he always called if he was going to be late. He was putting himself through college, studying engineering and hoping to one day start a computer business. Meanwhile, he lived at home to take care of things, things his dying father could no longer do.

Billy had been out that Sunday evening with a 19-year-old woman he met while working at Motorola. He'd eaten dinner with her family, played basketball with her brother, and then he and she left to go play miniature golf.

They had just returned around midnight when 19-year-old José Armondo Rodriguez appeared out of nowhere, opened the car door and attacked. Over and over, he stabbed Billy, who tried to get away but could get no further than the front yard. Thirteen times, he plunged that knife into Billy's lungs, his neck, his stomach. For good measure, he also punched Billy in the face a few times as he lay there on the ground, dying.

Rodriguez blamed it on drugs and jealousy. He'd been briefly married to Billy's date the previous year, but she left when he beat her up.

He was offered 20 years, which is surprising given his lengthy rap sheet and the brutality of the attack. But Jane's husband was dying of cancer and wanted to see his son's killer put away.

Jane would take it from there.

Every month around the time of Billy's death, she called the prisons to make sure Rodriguez was there, that he hadn't escaped or been paroled. For 20 years, she's tracked his every move.

"He plea bargained with the judge and I plea bargained with the Lord," she said. "I said, 'Let me live another 20 years. I want to make sure that SOB stays behind bars for the full 20 years and after 20 years, you can take me.'"

Last summer, Jane was diagnosed with lung cancer. God willing, she won't be held to her end of the bargain. But she knows that Rodriguez has finished his. "He served his term," she said. "It's only fair for him to leave the jail."

But then what, she wonders. What assurances do we have that a convicted killer - a man who's lived here since he was a kid - won't be back?

ICE spokesman Vinnie Picard says Rodriguez will be taken to Nogales Sunday and agents will watch him cross into Mexico.

And that, as they say, will be that.

Will it? The fight over a wall rages on and the virtual fence is a flop and the last of the National Guard at the border will be gone by July.

Jane wanted to see Rodriguez off tomorrow and tell him never to come back, tell him even to turn his life around. Instead, she says she will stay home, say a prayer and hope for the best.

Jane's watch, you see, is over.

The question is, who's watching now?

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic .com or 602-444-8635.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... 0419.html#

The least DHS can do for this poor woman is drop this piece of shit off at the most southern part of Mexico. They owe her that much for that sieve of a border they call a border.

The pain just never goes away ...

America.. are you waiting for your child to be next

how can or could you live with your self for doing nothing

after the fact is too late

What a sad story. This idiot should have been electrocuted, end of story. I'm sure there will be hundreds of thousands of stories just like this one for years to come. We have an entire generation of gang banging, hostile, angry anchor babies to contend with, thanks OBL's.