Billy the kid

Nabbed: Burchfield in 1975, Arnold in 2016

“EVERYBODY can change,” Bill insists; “everybody has the ability to turn their life around and do something good with it.” His own experience, after a youthful spell behind bars, vindicates that optimism: in many ways he is a heartening model of rehabilitation. In jail he realised that “I need to do better than this”; at liberty, he has “done everything I could to do the right thing.” Those who know him best think he has succeeded. He is “a very giving, caring person,” says his pastor, Charles Shelton, who recalls Bill taking in strangers who had broken down on the road. “Just a good man,” Mr Shelton attests. The only wrinkle is the way he gained his freedom.

That, and his crime, were a secret he guarded for 37 years until, on the evening of June 15th, two local detectives visited his home on the outskirts of London, a small town in Laurel County, Kentucky, in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. Bill recognised the men and wasn’t alarmed by their appearance on his doorstep: “I didn’t think nothing about it,” he says, “until they told me what...Continue reading

Source: United States http://ift.tt/29czhhv

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