‘There's Never Any Closure': 20 Years After Conviction, Victim's Family Waits for Killer's Execution

In 1989, the murder of Tressa Pettibone hit the quiet Panama City neighborhood known as the Cove like a storm. People started locking their doors. Neighbors would call the police when strangers walked down the street until the killer was caught.

“It really turned the community upside down,” former State Attorney Jim Appleman said. “Prior to this, the Cove was a place where people walked around.”

Like a hurricane, the damage spread outward from the center, a kitchen in a house on Hollis Avenue, where an 8-year-old boy sat on the floor wiping up his dead mother’s blood.

“One person’s actions can change an entire community,” said 30-year-old Bart Pettibone, Tressa’s son. “It’s like peripheral or outer damage of a storm, when right there at the heart of it was where the most damage was done.”

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.—George Orwell

The state of Florida has executed 69 prisoners since the United States Supreme Court reversed an earlier ruling and opened the door for states and the federal government to resume capital punishment in 1976. Another 393 prisoners are on death row, filing appeals or waiting for the governor to sign a death warrant.

On Feb. 7, 1990, a jury convicted Geralds of entering the Pettibone residence and beating Tressa Pettibone senseless, binding her hands and stabbing her three times in the neck. Eight of 12 jurors recommended the death penalty, which is what the judge gave him.

Since that day, the Pettibone family has been waiting for justice, through the seemingly endless appeals, worried that some judges somewhere might overturn Geralds’ sentence.

“With this, the appeals keep popping back and reopens the wounds so deep,” said Kevin Pettibone, who was Tressa’s husband. “It’s like you can’t ever get away from it. There’s never any closure.”

In September, the Florida Supreme Court upheld Geralds’ conviction and sentence, setting in motion a clemency investigation. Last month was the deadline for Tressa’s survivors to write letters to the governor’s office before a ruling on clemency. Kevin, Bart and his sister, Blythe, each wrote a letter.

The governor could sign a death warrant, but Geralds still can appeal to the federal government.

Kevin, Blythe and Bart said they want to be there when the end comes for Mark Geralds. They said they know the appeals process is important, but 20 years is too long. The average length of time an inmate spends on death row is less than 13 years.

“I believe it’s time,” said Blythe Carpenter, Bart’s sister. “I think it’s time to give our family the justice we deserve.”

Kevin and Tressa Pettibone had been together half their lives. They were high school sweethearts in Ohio.

It was common for Tressa to go with her husband when he left town on a job, and she begged him to bring her along on this particular trip to Cherry Hills, N.C. He turned her down.

Kevin wrestled with his guilt for about a year before one day he snapped out of it.

“It was like flipping a switch,” he said. He just decided there was nothing he could have done to protect her. Even if he hadn’t been out of town, there was no way he would have been home at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday.

About two years after Tressa’s death, Kevin remarried. He has three other children with his second wife.

But it’s been especially hard on Bart. He was so young, and to find his mother like that has scarred him permanently, Kevin said.

“It’s probably affected him more,” said Blythe Carpenter. “That’s a lot for an 8-year old to take on and I don’t think he’s ever fully gotten past it, not that he ever would have.”

The murder of Tressa Pettibone was particularly brutal. The stab wounds to her neck caused her to drown in her blood, which would have taken about five minutes. She didn’t bleed out. She would have been lucky to bleed out, Bart said.

“It was probably the most brutal case I’ve ever handled,” said Appleman, who was State Attorney for the 14th Judicial Circuit for more than 20 years.

The crime scene left Bart with this impression. “You could tell that the time they spent together was really violent, really beyond the scope of most people getting angry,” he said.

Mark Geralds had worked as a laborer at the Pettibones’ home during a remodel in 1987, so when Tressa, 14-year-old Blythe and Bart saw Geralds at the Panama City mall the week before her death, Tressa gave him a hug and treated him to a cinnamon roll.

Bart went to play games at the arcade, and after awhile Geralds came down to talk to him. He described their conversation as being like an interrogation. Geralds was asking him when he and his sister left for school in the morning and when they got home in the afternoon. Your dad is out of town for several weeks, right? When will he come home?

Bart answered the questions. Geralds learned when Tressa would be home alone and vulnerable. It didn’t seem strange at the time; now Bart is filled with deep regret.

On Feb. 1, 1989, Geralds went went to rob the Pettibones. He was looking for valuables and cash hidden in the house, but he needed someone to show him where they were. Tressa would recognize him. He brought the ties to bind her wrists.

He is waiting to see some anonymous civilian strap Geralds to a table and stick a needle in him, pump him full of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, “like going and putting a pet to sleep,” Bart said.

It’s not how Bart would choose to see Geralds die — he said he would prefer to do it himself in a more savage manner — but it will have to suffice. If the victims were allowed to carry out the punishment personally, the death penalty might actually be an effective deterrent, Bart said. “I would welcome the invitation,” he said. “Then he would know what it means to fear.”

The walls at the Union Correctional Institute in Raiford don’t protect society from Mark Geralds, Bart said. They protect Mark Geralds from Bart Pettibone. “Geralds is hiding in the American judicial system,” Bart said. “This is 20 years you’ve had someone turn the system on itself.”

Many death sentences are overturned on appeal. Six death row inmates have been resentenced to life so far in 2010. Thirteen more were resentenced the previous two years. For Bart, seeing Geralds resentenced to life would be the ultimate tease.

Between the idea and the reality, Between the motion and the act, Falls the Shadow — T.S. Elliot

The 8-year-old boy who found his mother is gone. Bart Pettibone studies prolific killers, looking for answers he never finds. Jack the Ripper, Gacy, Manson, Bundy. He is trying to figure out what allows people to act in such a way. He said he still doesn’t know.

Bart is a man now, he has a family of his own, but the things that boy saw still are with him.

Pettibone groups people into two camps: those who are with him and everyone else. He is fiercely loyal to his Cove boys, but he keeps people at arm’s length. He is slow to trust people.

He avoids talking about his mom’s death with his wife, Tiffany Ann, and their children, but not because he doesn’t trust them. He wants to keep them from his reality, to protect her. They should be allowed to keep their illusions.

At night as he falls asleep, Bart often listens to Bobby Kennedy’s remarks to Cleveland City Club on the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. “Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily…whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven together for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded,” Kennedy said.

“It’s a beautiful idea and a beautiful dream,” Bart said, but it ultimately was unrealistic. Look how things turned out for Bobby.

Bart is fully cognizant of the contradiction. He has seen the horror of a violent death and he knows it is pointless. Violence breeds more violence, he said, and he knows watching Geralds die won’t bring his mother back. But it sure would feel good.

Part of him envies the lawyers who work on these appeals and then move on to the next case.

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn. — C.S. Lewis

The way we see the world is not necessarily the way the world is. The way we see the world is an illusion we allow ourselves to believe in.

We surround ourselves with illusions: that men are civilized, trustworthy, and we are safe. We are not safe, not even in our homes, in our beds at night. Even then we are the mercy of others. At least that is what Bart Pettibone believes.

It was a conclusion Pettibone came to more than 20 years ago when he came home from school and all his illusions were destroyed. Mom was dead on the kitchen floor, blood soaked in her favorite blouse. Time slowed to a crawl but Bart’s thoughts raced through his mind, blinking, flashing.

The 8-year-old boy got a pair of scissors and tried to cut the plastic ties that bound his mother’s lifeless wrists, but the blades kept splitting.

She had been dead for hours, even an 8-year-old could tell that. He tried to move her but he wasn’t strong enough, so he sat with her for an hour or so and he talked to her. Like everything else about that day, Bart remembers what he said to her, but he keeps it to himself.

Last summer, when an article came out about another appeal, I suddenly had very close friends suddenly tiptoeing around me, the same way everyone did right after it happened. I have a dear friend, who still changes the subject every time I bring it up. I have had to tell people, I would prefer they ask me questions and not look at me like I might shatter into a million pieces, right on the spot.

You make a list. Start with yourself. I know two families that were touched by murder. No one ever talks about what kind decent people the victims were. It’s always the gruesome end and the murderers lives. Who cares about them. No really, WHO CARES. I’m tired of seeing THEM talked about, written about, movies made about them.

It doesn’t matter how many years have passed. When I think of Loretta, it’s like I can still hear her voice, see her hair, I remember her laugh. Her family went through hell. Her father witnessed that dirtbag’s execution. 30 plus years. It’s still fresh to me.

They wrote a book. Dead Family Walking. You could talk to them. Find out what you need to do, explain to them what you’re wanting to do, how to go about it.

They are very nice people. The father is Godfrey, mother Goldie. Sisters Emma and Mercedes and a brother David. An oder brother Godfrey.

We lived in a small town. If they can write a book, you can too. Our claim to fame is resident author James Burke. Who doesn’t know James Burke.

If you only do this for you, for your family, do it. If it gets published, okay. It’s going to be done with love so it’s a win win all the way around.

It sounds like you need this. I would love to read a book like this.

Think about it. I’m serious. Talk to family. Get some feedback.

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