This story is absolutely haunting.  It’s the kind of story that creates goosebumps on my arms, and it should do the same to everyone who reads it.

The background
A young girl awakes one April morning in 1977 with a bad feeling.  Her mother is missing.  After feeding her toddler sister, the sheriff takes the girls to the police station and starts looking for their mother.  She is found dead in a creek from an overdose of ether.  The crime scene was made to look like an accident.  The woman’s husband - William Clumm was arrested and convicted of murdering her because she was preparing to leave him.  He got life in prison.

The Situation
Life sentences don’t really mean life.  Clumm has been a “model prisoner” (two words I have NEVER understood when they are put together), and the Ohio Parole Board wants to let him go.

The children left to fend for themselves did alright for themselves - one followed in the footsteps of the mother she barely remembers and the other is a corporate attorney.  They are united in their opposition to Clumm’s release.  They have lived with the reality that this man killed their mother in cold blood, and the only comfort to their nightmares has been that he is in prison.  With that fact threatened, they are uniting to oppose his release and the Parole Board has agreed to hear their appeal.

What You Can Do
The half-sisters have created a website lifemeanslife.org and have a petition for people to sign up asking the parole board to do what’s right in this case - keep Clumm in jail.

These women have grown up without a mother in their life to share in their important milestones, but more importantly they live in fear of the man who took their mother away.  As one of the sisters asks - is she going to have to look over her shoulder the rest of her life?  Her rights, as she suggests, should trump the convicted murderer and the Parole Board should carry out the sentence established by the court.