By Staff
I actually caught myself saying "good" when I heard the news Wednesday morning, yet I never considered myself one who advocated the death penalty.
Just after midnight, Alan Matheney was executed in the Indiana State Prison.
I was living in Dowagiac when 16 years before he had been let out on an eight-hour pass from a different correction facility.
He had been convicted of battery of his wife, Lisa Bianco, and of taking his two daughters out of state illegally.
Bianco, who had asked to be notified if such a pass was ever issued, didn't have a chance. She never got that notification.
Instead she was beaten in front of her home in Mishawaka, and in front of her two children by her ex-husband, Alan Matheney. He beat her to death with a shotgun.
In the passing years, my daughter would go to the same school as his children and I would meet Lisa's mother, Millie, who now lives in Florida.
She was a strong advocate for making the world aware of the dangers of domestic violence.
If you have ever attended the annual domestic violence vigil held in Cass County, you would realize the impact domestic violence has on our own area.
Standing silently as the names of all the victims are read is an extremely moving experience.
In observance of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, this year's Candlelight Vigil is sponsored by the Cass County Task Force on Family Violence, the Domestic Assault Shelter Coalition, Cass County Prosecutors Office and the Cass County Youth Committee .
The vigil is planned for Tuesday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m. at the Cass County Council on Aging (COA), located 60525 Decatur Road off M-60 in Cassopolis.
The one-hour observance will include brief comments from guest speakers, prayers and songs and remembrance of those who have lost their lives in Southwest Michigan and Northern Indiana.
The theme is especially good, Domestic Violence: Your Neighborhood … Your Business.
Domestic violence touches us all.
Alan Matheney may have actually been mentally ill and many would say it's wrong his life was taken.
I think of a young mother raising her two daughters. Her life was taken forcefully and painfully.
The girls have to live their entire lives with the memory of their father doing that to their mother.
Is it justice? Maybe not, but now maybe the family can move on.