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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them, Gasey, Bundy Dahmer, The Night Stalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good Evening, The True American tells the story of Razudin Buyin, the Bangladesh Air Force officer who dreams of immigrating to America and working in technology. After nine to eleven, an avowed American terrorist named Mark Stroman, seeking revenge, walks into the Dallas Mini mart where Bihuen has found temporary work and shoots him, maiming him and nearly killing him. Two other victims at other gas stations aren't so lucky, dying
at once. The True American traces the making of these two men, Stroman and Behuian, and of their faithful encounter. It follows them as they rebuild shattered lives, one striving on death row to become a better man, the other to heal and pull himself up from the lowest rung on the latter of an unfamiliar country. Ten years after the shooting, an Islamic pilgrimage seedes in Behuan. A strange idea If he is ever to be whole, he must
re enter Stroman's life. He longs to confront Stroman and speak to him face to face about the attack that change their lives. Bihuen publicly forgives Stroman in the name of his religion and its notion of mercy. Then he wages is a legal and public relations campaign against the State of Texas and Governor Rick Perry to have his
attack spared. From the death penalty, ranging from Texas juvenile justice system to the swirling crowd of pilgrims at the haj in Mecca, from a biker bar to an immigrant mosque in Dallas, from young military cadets in Bangladesh to elite paratroopers in Israel. From a wealthy household of chicken importers in Karachi, Pakistan, to the sober residences of Brownwood, Texas. The True American is a rich, colorful, profoundly moving exploration
of the American dream in its many dimensions. Ultimately, it tells a story about our love hate relationship with immigrants, about the encounter of Islam and the West, about how or whether we choose what we become. The focus of this program this evening is the True American with my special guest journalist and author anand girid Hadis. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Thank you for having me.
And I apologized for mis pronouncing your name, so if you could just pronounce your last name for us correctly.
The name's annand Gerdardas.
Okay, thank you very much. Now, first off, it's a question I asked many authors, what compelled you? Why did you choose to write this story? What was it about this story? How did you come without giving too much of the story away at all? How did you come to write The True American?
You know, I spent some years actually thinking about the question that I think many of us were thinking about in the kind of in recent past, about the American dream. And there was a lot of talk as the kind of great recession sunk its its teeth into the country, a lot of talk about this American dream and who it was still working for and who had stopped working for, and whether the whole thing was kind of more of a nightmare for many people than kind of a dream anymore.
And so those questions were kind of swirling in my head for a while, and I wanted to find a way into those questions, not you know, to write a kind of high level book with you know, vague substance about the American dream of large, but really to sink into a couple of characters and explore it from the ground.
And I came upon this story once in the newspaper about a Ladieshi immigrant to the United States fighting to save the life of a white supremacist who had tried to kill him, and trying to convince the state of Texas not to execute this man and to forgive him
in the name of Islam. And it was a kind of surreal story at first, and a little bit of research revealed that it really was that story that I'd been looking for, a story about the America that still works and the America that stopped working a long time ago, And that came into a kind of bitter collision in this story of a clash between an immigrant for whom America still actually is a thriving country and a native born American who belonged to an America that stopped thriving a long time ago.
Now there's an incredible amount of empathy and of course understanding, and you invite your audience to do the same. Maybe you could give us a little bit of your background and your religious beliefs if that was a factor in you at at least identifying with the victim, and of course you had to identify with the perpetrator as well. But please give us a little bit of your background to see if there's any way that you came into this identifying with the victim.
No, I have no religious connection with the victim or with really anybody. I don't really have any religious beliefs
in general. So this story really stuck with me because it was a story about a country that you know, my my parents came to this country from India, and they were able to leave behind one place, one set of understandings, family, and able to come here as so many have, and find their own little corner of glory, and the idea that that that is something that continues to happen, that continues to renew the country, but that from time to time it is threatened by the backlash
that that difference can can create.
Now and again, if I mispronounced the name, please correct me. On Rizudin tell us about his life. It's an incredible story. Of course, we alluded to it, and we spoke of it in the book Synopsis of the Description of the show. Description itself tell us about his early life, and tell about his aspirations and his early thoughts and his impressions, and why he chose to come to America and what he thought about the journey itself in terms of its importance.
You know, he was like so many of the people who have emigrated to America over the years and decades and centuries, and he was someone who, you know, was fleeing a perfectly respectable, perfectly decent existence. Many people who ended up in America were fleeing truly terrible conditions or circumstances. But a lot of people who ended up in America were, you fleeing fine circumstances, but had this feeling that there
was something more for them in life. And where a country settled over the generations by this kind of strange birds in a way, who always had this feeling that there was something more for them, and he was one of them. He grew up in an upper middle class family in Taka in Bangladesh. He was in military boarding school and then the Air Force Academy of his country.
Commissioned as an Air Force officer in his country, learned to fly fighter jets, became interested in it, and started training himself in that, and then just had this sense that all of that, that perfectly good life wouldn't be enough for him, and he wanted more, and more for him was America. He came to New York after winning
a visa on his eighth attempt. Came to New York, worked in a gas station, a little bit of French restaurant, a little bit of Xerox shop, a little bit, and one day got a phone call from a former schoolmate of his from Bangladesh who now lived in Texas. And the guy said, why don't you come visit me and my brother and I own a bunch of gas stations and you can come work in one of these stations and it'll be great and you might own your own
station before long. And so he went to go visit his friend in Texas, and in Texas he found that the bathrooms were as big as the bedrooms in New York, and he thought this is quite nice. So he moved, and he thought, maybe he's going to own a business. Maybe he can work and save and take it classes and get married by the end of the year in two thousand and one, and then September eleventh came along, and like so many lives in this country, his life was irradicably changed.
What was his impressions of America before he came and afterwards. I'm very interesting to hear in the book his his ideals, what he really thought he would encounter in America, and then to hear shortly after, in a short period of time, after being at this Minnie Martin in Texas, tell us how what was the difference between his fantasy and the reality that he encountered.
You know, he had always thought America to be a kind of rich, bountiful problem for his own. You know, he saw these movies on TV, as people do around the world. He had grown up with the TV shows. You know, he knew the culture secondhand, the way so much of the world does, and it just seemed this kind of airy, perfect society where anything was possible if
you worked hard and did right. And he arrives and he is in Dallas and kind of eastern Dallas, working at this gas station, and he realizes what a profoundly lonely and isolated country this can be in those parts of the country that aren't working very well. He was not in you know, the thriving precincts of New York City or la or Chicago or San Francisco. He was
in kind of a bad neighborhood in Dallas. And what struck him above all it was a poor neighborhood, and the poverty struck him because he thought America to be this kind of endlessly rich country. But what really struck him above all was the loneliness of these poor people around him, and the fact that in addition to not having money, they seem to also not really have other people.
They kind of ate alone in their restaurants, and they came to this gas station alone, and they always just seemed alone, alone, alone, And that really struck him because where he came from, if you were poor, you at least still had people. And he had come to a country where, in fact, the poorer you are, the less access to community and family you often have.
Right, what was his impression or what did he see in terms of the religiosity of the people around him in the community, and also the sense of family, the difference in terms of the family model from where he had come from and how he was raised and what he was, at least thinking he was seeing.
He was struck by the almost total absence of family as a serious force. I mean, he was struck by the fact that there was a Mother's Day and it was only once a year, where he thought kind of every day was Mother's Day and called his mom once a day and asked what he could do to serve her. He was struck by the fact that kind of family got together at Thanksgiving and Christmas once or twice a year, whereas to his mind, you know, family was kind of like the air you breathe. But of course, he too
is a complicated figure here. He didn't ruse to stay with his family. He chose to leave and come to America and live on his own. But he was very struck by how people lacked for other people in this country, particular level of family.
And.
That that lack was as bad, if not worse, than the lack of resources that was kind of the stuff of poverty.
What was his experience in terms of acceptance of his race prior to nine to eleven.
You know, I don't think it was. I don't think it was an issue, you know, I think it was until the events unleast by September eleventh, I think he was actually welcomed, accepted, trying to figure out how to you know, studying a course to get a degree, move ahead. But things were America was working for him.
He was not naive. I mean, you paint this picture of him being quite naive, and there's a couple examples how naive this guy is. He's got a gun waved in his face and he thinks the guy's trying to sell him the gun. So it's very comedic. But in terms of his what sustained him in terms of I'm talking about how religious was he and what was this sort of his idea of why he could sustain himself in this sort of lonely environment without his family which
he was accustomed to. What really sustained him in terms of that being able to work at this mini mart in Dallas, Texas, in a bad neighborhood.
I think, like so many immigrants, he understood that this was not his total reality, that he was doing this as part of a plan, that the plan was to work hard and toil and push through the stint at the mini marty or whatever else he had to do, and then to transcend it, and that he would He could see this future that was almost more vivid to
him than his own present. And he could see that the gas station would lead to the wedding that winter, which would lead to doing computer courses, and the computer courses would lead to getting this job and that job. And he could see the climb. And he understood, as so many immigrants over the years, that to rise in America,
you must sometimes first fall. He was a he was a big man where he came from, but he understood that he had to to work in this gas station, toil or terrible hours, sleep not enough, but he was confident that it would it would pay off for him.
How important was his religion to him at that time, during that period of time, and how devoted I think he he.
He is a very religious person, always has been raised in a very religious environment, and you know, generally praise five times a day, or sometimes a little bit less if if it's a particularly stressful day. But but his religion in some ways is is kind of undergirding his his support, this kind of support beam of his life.
And he was very deeply motivated by the notion of the prophet Muhammad, in particular who was a shepherd, and the fact that he was a shepherd, which was I guess the kind of you know, mini marked clerk of that era. The fact that he was a shepherd didn't prevent him from being a historical figure of enormous consequence.
And so in some ways Race told himself, if if Prophet Mohammad could be a shepherd and still have such a great and important destiny, surely I can work in this, in this mini mart and and it still leads to some life of great significance.
So that being said, it really was a culture shock for him. America was not really what he had envisioned.
I think it was, and it wasn't, I mean, you know it. He saw this isolation of the part of others. He saw this fragmentation and lack of family, etc. But he came for a reason and that reason was valid, which was he felt where he came from there was a limited opportunity for people to kind of reimagine their lives. You were kind of construct you know, constricted by the family you came from, the class you came from, what
kind of professions people did. It was a relatively stagnant society, and here he now found himself in a society that had a great amount of personal freedom. And it's not just the freedom of the Bill of Rights, it's the freedom to kind of reimagine yourself and decide what kind of life you want to build. And he felt very clearly that this place had that in a way that
the place he came from didn't. And I think he also felt that the dark side of that freedom to become whatever you wanted to do be was this isolation that they were actually two sides of the same coin.
So it's very upbeat and optimistic overall. Now let's segue into a completely different character, and the other, of course, featured character in this tragic story, Mark Stroman. Tell us about his background, and how tell us about his background?
Please?
You know, Mark Stroman grows out of a white working class that you know, in various books and studies we are told is hurting has not done well over the last generation or so and has felt the kind of stagnation of the country and fragmentation of the society most acutely.
And he's a kind of product of that social world you see kind of over the last three generations, and Mark Stroman's family, each generation has done a little bit worse than generation before, this kind of reversal of the great American you know, phenomenon of every generation doing better than the one that came before. Mark Stroman grows out of that world, but also has a lot of his own afflictions. There's terrible nightmares and dreams going well beyond
a normal child's dreams. When he's very young, starts to escalate into kind of a habit of minor brushes with the law, which kind of escalates into medium brushes with the law, which kind of escalates into serious brushes with the law. Boys' homes, juvenile detention, parole, drugs start to play a role in his life. During his third attempt at eighth grade, he impregnates a woman, gets married to
her the next year. Is a product of a kind of chaotic life that used to be used to be a kind of fringe existence in America, but in many ways has become a default existence for a lot of people in a kind of vast, hurting under nation. And by the time nine to eleven came about, Mark Stroman was a guy who'd been in and out of prison,
in and out of drugs, had a mess problem. By all accounts, and was in some ways devoid of a lot of a sense of purpose and seemed to find in nine to eleven a kind of answer to what his life was supposed to be about that had maybe alluded him before.
Now, how organized is he and he's in a biker enthusiast, he's a motorcycle enthusiast, he's a white supremacist, or at least he has these ideas. He's open to these ideas. But how serious is he? Does he join some organization? How serious is he about this new anger in his life?
You know, I spoke to some of the bikers who he claimed to run with, and they said, oh, well, he didn't really run with us. He came to some of our parties and tried to pledge our organization, but we didn't really let him in. And you know, his sister told me Mark called himself a biker, but he never even owned a bike. So it's not even clear
whether he joined anything formal. But I think, you know, he was certainly part of a large and diffuse and diverse population of you know, angry white guys in this country who have a feeling that minorities and immigrants and women are rising up and kind of shafting guys like them. And he felt that acutely, and he had a lot of friends who felt that acutely. And look turn on the TV and there are a lot of people who
feel that acutely. And it's also worth noting that ninety nine percent of people who feel that way don't go commit crimes on the basis of it. But he was further motivated in a way that most folks who just feel aggrieved in that way aren't. And when nine to eleven came around, he said there were other people doing similar things kind of sort of in tandem in Dallas, and certainly there were a bunch of hate crimes around the country, but in many ways he was acting alone.
And he went up to three gas stations alone and shot the clerk in each of these three gas stations in the month after nine to eleven and acted alone.
Now did he speak to in this day of rampage. Let's just go back a little bit to any kind of There was talk of that he had a girlfriend, and so you know, there's again just not to excuse anything, but some kind of rationale somewhat is that he had a girlfriend and previous to this he had caught her having an affair, so again he was angry for other reasons as well, of course that he thought the Muslim religion was a target. So that's what he was looking for.
But tell us about the day, if we can about the information. What happened that faithful day as he went from gas station to gas station? Why gas stations? Why what did he do? Why did he do what he did that day?
You know? He and it wasn't actually one day. It was over the course of three weeks. And so the first one happened, you know, five six days after nine to eleven, he went to a gas station called Mom's Grocery, also in eastern Dallas, and walked in and shot the clerk who was grilling burgers under a reappreciate your business sign Pakistani immigrant and shot him. And the police investigated and couldn't figure out who did it, why they did it,
what the motive was. No money was taken, puzzling crime. Some days later, Mark Stroman drives up to his second gas station, this time finds Race Bouyan there and shoots him. In this shooting and only this one of the three, he was using a double barreled pistol and shot a shot into Mark Stroman. Mark Shruman shot a kind of shot into into Race Bouyan's head, but it was filled with pellets instead of being a conventional bullet, and as a result, it sprayed these pellets into Buyon's head and
blinded his right eye, but he survived. And then some days later, October fourth, Mark Stroman walks into his third gas station and shoots him and named Vasi Dave Patel, also a gas station clerk, uses a conventional gun that he did with the first one, and Patel dies on the spot as well. So within you know, kind of three weeks of nine to eleven, you have these these
three acts. But what sort of strange is you know, Unlike the normal rampages we think about where there's kind of a feverish one hour in Columbine or Sandy Hook or whatever, this is a guy who did this three times over a three week period, with significant time between between these acts, and in none of the cases did he did he take any money.
Well, that sounds like a serial killer profile.
You know, I mean pulling off period. Yeah, I mean,
that's that's an interesting that's an interesting thought. I mean there was some debate about, you know, what wasn't what was the nature of these killings, because it actually had bearing on how they would be able to try him, and the prosecution was very determined to actually argue that he was committing robbery because that was the only way they could foresee getting him capital punishment, because it would be you know, murder while committing another crime, in this
case robbery, and if it had been a hate crime, which you know, to casual observers it seemed some sort of you know, maybe serial killing hate crimes at a spray of hate crimes, they were not necessarily going to be able to get him the death penalty because it was missing that other, that other you know, crime while you're committing murder to the satisfaction of the capital murder statutes.
And so there was an effort to kind of massage this into a broke, deadbeat guy, you know, going around the gas stations and robbing them who happened to kill the clerks, even though that really couldn't be further from from what happened. By Mark Strowman's own admission, he was a you know, a hateful, vengeful guy who wanted to retaliate for nine to eleven and and attempted to do so in this very misguided way.
Well, you're right, though, the prosecution wanted to do robbery just because that was his past record, and so I think that was important that he did prison terms for forms of robbery.
So they did, but the evidence that he was actually gonna rob in this case was slim to none.
Yeah, but I just think, you know, it's just I just imagine maybe even the prosecutor worried about a being somewhat sympathetic after nine to eleven to even though it's absurd that the jury would be would would listen to that excuse, that's somehow it wasn't the perpetrator's fault. And again I'm only speculating, but thinking.
Yeah, that's interesting. It would have become perhaps a very different trial, and a trial about you know, the validity or invalidity of that of that revenge of mission. And you're right, maybe that was a trial they didn't want to have.
Yeah, you can only imagine, But now what is the what is Stroman's what is his behavior like? What is demeanor like after this?
You know, right afterward he is he's arrested, the day after the third shooting, in part because of a random occurrence. He he had an old friend and former employer who knew him obviously and happened to know the third immigrant clerk,
the second one to be killed. And it was actually only because there was this one guy in the world who knew both Mark Stroman and mister Patel, that this person was able to connect the dots because he'd kind of anecdotally heard some things about Mark doing something of this sort from people, and because he knew the gas station clerk who had died and drove by the station and saw the police tape and asked after him, he was able to say, huh, maybe that couldn't possibly be Mark,
could it, And in fact, was Mark's demeanor after that arrest was defiant. He gave an interview to a local TV station which he said, you know, we had to do this. We had to kind of kill them because they're trying to kill us, and I did what every honest American would want to do. That was his claim, and when the trial happened some months later, he continued
to be kind of strong and defiant. His attorney barely made any defense, although that's somewhat typical of you know, the kind of representation people may get in Texas in a case like this. And it was only much later over the years that he came to some sort of reckoning with the kind of man he'd allowed himself to become.
Was that in time? It was that in coincidental time with appeals though? Did he get a different lawyer in appeal? Did he become a tell us a little bit about you say he was defiant and then his lawyer is not going to put up much of defense, And maybe that's kind of typical, but a lawyer really doesn't try to put up much of a defense if you're working against them.
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Sorry, what do you mean working against him?
Well, if you're if you remain to be defiant and are not helping your your lawyer in terms of making statements or maintaining that defiant. I'm a true American. I'm doing what every other American does. I mean, you know, you typically you're not going to get a public defender to take that and and go all the way to and fight.
Yeah, and he and he and he certainly did not get a public offender to do that. I mean, I think what was striking is that the public defender didn't even make an opening statement, didn't call any witnesses, kind of made no made no effort to frame the case in their own way, and you know, there was no case to be made that he didn't do these things.
I think the best that could have been argued was that there was no he was being tried for robbery related murderers and that there was no evidence of robbery. You know, a good lawyer probably could have gotten him a life sentence instead of the death penalty, and that would that would have been it.
Right Now, back to the you know, the really the hero of this story and amazing character in this incredible story. And so tell us about what raise does, what is his rehabilitation, like what after this may and blinding and so how does tell us about his life? And and so during this time that the rest are made and the trial happens, not quickly but shortly after. What is the rehabilitation? What is the is life like for our main character, Rezudent?
You know, he is at first at a very you know, the lowest point and moment of his life. Understandably, he is admitted to a hospital with thirty nine pellets in his face that day, September twenty one, two thousand and one, goes to the hospital, is discharged the next day with his eyes still caked shut with blood, his mouth and jaw barely moving, you know, half of his head kind of swollen to you know, what he described as the size of a watermelon. And he was let go the hospital.
And his first thought was, well, this is America. It's a very rich country. If it's a Christian hospital, so compassionate people. If they're letting me go, it must be for the right reasons. They must know something that I you know that I don't, and my condition must be
you know, better than I thought it was. It took him time to understand that the reason they were letting him go was that he didn't have insurance, and they knew that he wouldn't be good for the money with you know, enormous bills, and so they kind of kicked him out and told him he was stabilized under whatever definition of the law was required to stabilize him, and that they were they were kind of done with him, and he'd have to come back as this mystical thing called an outpatient.
Now was he fortunate because he was living in his boss's home during that time? Wasn't he? And so what was how was his life impacted from not being really able to work again immediately?
You know, he was living in his boss's apartment for
some time. Then he stopped splitting the mortgage with him once he was shot and not working, and his boss started to treat him worse and worse, and started by showing some compassion since he was the one who exposed him to the situation, but over time started to kind of, you know, treat him like a dead horse, as race put it once, and finally snapped and said one day when he was supposed to give him a ride to a doctor's visit, you know, if you need this kind
of care, go get a nurse or something. I can't do all this for you. And so at that point, Race is basically homeless, bounced around some homes of people he knew, and finally was lucky to find through a job he was doing a guy also from Bangladesh who said to him, you know, you've been through a lot. I have extra sofa. You can just sleep on that sofa. You don't don't have to pay me anything. And he ended up staying for about a year in that guy's apartment.
Yeah, and was he receiving any kind of physiotherapy? I mean, I really couldn't afford it. But did he receive any kind of help in terms of and what was the progress in terms of his the eye itself, or any kind of disfigurement as a result of the pellets in the face.
You know, I think if he had gotten better care, if they'd kept him in the hospital that day instead of just stabilizing him, there was a good chance some or all or a good amount of the sight in his right eye could have been saved. Unfortunately, because he was let go and told to come back as an outpatient, there was a lot of delay to wait a few weeks or of appointment, and you come back and you wait a few more weeks, and you wait a few months, and so he was. He did come back as an outpatient.
He did get a very top eye surgeon in Dallas, doctor s who saw him and liked him and agreed to kind of basically forego you know, a lot of the bills, but you know, the doctor, it was too late for the doctor to save more than you know, a very small percentage of his eyesight. So he's able to kind of vaguely perceive light in that right eye
and not much else. And had, you know, clearly had untreated depression or some other mental health problems, but basically was unable to deal with them because he had no money and there was no insurance, and there was no one who would help him with that. And so struggled
with that. And it was only through kind of finally overcoming his fear of the outside world as he hunker down in that apartment and getting back out there first, in fact, to a job at the Olive Garden where he worked as a waiter, that he started to kind of conquer and overcome that fear.
Did he have any what was the extent of his other injuries or disfigurements was what was the extent of that.
So he was, you know, effectively blind in his right eye. And you know, after these after the kind of surgery and treatment and different attempts, settled in and had you know, clearly had untreated depression, and yet was intensely resilient. So even as he was, you know, sitting in his boss's apartment, afraid to leave the house, you know, trying to just heal, he had a sense of like, you know what, I'm wasting time. I need to keep moving forward. I need
to keep improving my prospect. So he ordered for some computer programming textbooks online and with one eye started like training himself to make himself more salable, more marketable, more useful. There was a measure of the kind of strength that he that he brought.
And he still continued being a developed religious person during this period of time as well.
He always was and is and it was in many ways his faith that sustained him and kept telling him that, you know, if there was great hardship in his life, it was because God had some grand design for him that would be revealed later.
Now, during this period of time, of course, we get up to the ten years. But in that ten year period of time. What's the progress with Is there any progress at all in getting Stroman's death penalty sentence commuted to life sentence.
You know, that really happened almost exactly ten years after the shootings in two thousand and one, when Race was running a campaign to Saint Mark Stroman. But before the campaign, Race really had to come to this epiphany about wanting to forgive. And he came to that in a way because of his religious kind of worldview, and in a way because of his secular evolution and journey and the
religious worldview. You know said to him that as he understood his faith of Islam, forgiveness was the highest and the central value of his faith. And so when he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca in two thousand and nine, one of the sacred duties for Muslims, he had this very strong sense that God saved him all those years ago when he thought he was dying on the floor of that gas station, and now he had to repay God, and what better way to repay God than by massive
act of forgiveness. But the other part of his epiphany was a kind of secular one, which is I think his observation as a new American, frankly because he by two thousand and nine also became an American citizen. And he had this realization that he was able to come from the real third world and access this first world America as an immigrant, was shot in the faith and was still able to access this first world America, got better, jobs, got something that the Olive Garden learned it, got jobs
in it, you know, eventually bought a house. But that there was a third world America right beside his first world America, and that even though he had come from very far away and was able to leap problem into that first world America, there were people, many people born in this country trapped in the third world America from which they could never escape. And he resolved to kind of do something about that hurting country within a country.
Not to be crash or anything, but if it was, it is a tenant of his religion. There must have been some evolution in his own mind that it took ten years to come to that, and going on the pilgrimage itself, you know, I think.
I think there was there was a lot of evolution, and there were a lot of things to think about after being shot and A bunch of them were just health related, depression related. How do you get medical samples, how do you get a doctor, how do you find a place to live? What sofa should you be sleeping on? He had a lot of practical concerns. Then when the practical concerns faded away, there was concerns about, Okay, now that I'm kind of stable, how do I rise again?
That's why I came here. I came here to rise, So how do I learn it? What it Skills do I need? What job do I get?
He had a lot of.
Focus had to be on rebuilding his life, and his religion kind of again undergirded him as he did that. But his concerns in some ways were very practical and universal. Is how do I put together a life that someone has taken apart? And it was really only around two thousand and nine when a few things happened. One he became debt free for the first time. I didn't have this hang up of debt in which so many of
us live with in this country. Two he went on this pilgrimage to Mecca, which is a very significant event and is a moment in the life of many of the faithful, where these kind of bigger things that you may put aside in your daily life come back to haunt you and you realize, Okay, I need to actually do this in my life. And it was becoming a citizen.
I think he had a strong sense that before you become a citizen, you're just criticizing from the outside if you have some sort of problem with how things are being done. But once you're a citizen, you have equity and you need to speak out and make help to
make this the best country it can be. And I think it was all of those So in a way, the notion of forginness in his religion was always knew about it, but I don't think it had occurred to him that it was his responsibility to apply it and find some great grand way of doing so until he got to a place in his life where he was stable and whole and could really start thinking big. And it was only really then that he started to think
about the man who had shot him. He'd gone to the trial, but it was not like that man was a big and recurring presence in his life in his mind.
But when he.
Started to think about it, he realized that of all the things he could do to send a good message to his adopted country. Forgiving this man would be the most powerful thing he could do, and did grow out of his deepest understanding of his own faith.
Now what kind of events precipitated him making, you know, deciding to endeavor to do this again gradden gesture, but also to you know, the contacts some people and say this is my this is my decision, this is my wish.
Uh.
Was Stroman already on of course he was on death row, but was his execution looming as his appeals had run out? What was there any event when he announcement to precipitated raised to then say listen, now's my time to do what I've been thinking about.
Well, he you know, the nature of the campaign evolved. So it started with Race deciding he wanted to forgive Mark Uh, and then kind of evolved to saying, well, if I'm going to forgive him, I want to also fight for his life. And so he argued for the sentence to be commuted. Then they found some provisional law which suggested that he had a right under Texas law to mediation with Stroman, to sort of meaningful opportunity to
discuss the crime that changed both of them vibes. So then he sued for the right to exercise that opportunity to sit face to face with Stroman, because even if they wouldn't commute the sentence, maybe he thought they would delay it to give him that opportunity to sit with Stroman and first be prepared each of them and then sit down with each other. But the government denied those requests.
So finally, in the kind of late spring of twenty eleven, almost ten years after the attacks, race file suit against the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, and several others in the establishment of the state, arguing that the state didn't have the right to execute the white supremacist who tried to kill him.
How did Rick Perry, Governor Rick Perry proceed with this and did he make this a political issue? How did he proceed with this publicly?
You know, I don't know that he knowledged or responded to the case publicly in court. Lawyers representing him and the state basically said, you know, nothing doing there's there's there's a law, and this guy's been convicted and this guy needs to be be killed. And they kind of gave almost nothing.
So what was raised's reaction from hitting a stone wall with government in courts?
You know, he tried very hard and he got a hearing. I mean he you know, was bounced around from one court to another, and time was running out, and then finally a judge was willing to hear him, and he made his case, and he sat on the stand and he said, I need to be able to talk to this man and maybe even have a crack at changing him in order to heal my own recovery in my own journey. And that was very moving to to the
judge and to others in the room that day. But Texas is Texas, and there was up against a notion that a guy had committed the worst kind of crime and had to put away. So it was a kind of very upheld battle that he chose to involve himself in.
Did use the argument that because he was only a victim in one of the cases basically then the other two victims were murdered, that he could not have this, He could only forgive that person for that attempted murder, rather than so he was not involved with the other two murders directly.
No, And that was one of the kind of arguments that could be made on the other side, and one of the things he did to blunt that was, you know, he said, there was no way I wanted to fight a campaign to save this guy if the other two families were not comfortable. So he actually went to both families and made sure and kind of one supported him tacitly and the other supported him very explicitly publicly.
And still the courts did not respond to that. That's certainly kind of incredible, really, you know.
I think it was a very powerful moral and political argument he was making, which is, the state may not have the right to kill someone, execute someone if the people they harmed don't want them to be executed. But in some ways it's more powerful as a moral argument or political one than it is as a legal one.
As a legal principle, you know, there was a pretty clear crime and conviction, and I think what Race was trying to do was not necessarily win in the technicalities of the law, But ask a deeper question about why do we execute people in general? What are we trying to get out of it? Are we trying to prevent a certain kind of behavior that we can't change, or are we trying to you know, essentially deter and you know,
make better people through that deterrence. And you know, part of what I think Race wanted to do was raise a question for the country about a larger cycle of revenge as being the kind of engine of so much in American life.
Yes, so basically part of his entire American dream journey is also this again incredible spiritual journey that he has unfortunate luck in this land of opportunity, but then rises from that where again again the land of opportunity allows him and a generous surgeon and other people were supportive friends he met. But he did really evolve into this
mindset that the death penalty. Probably I believe the death penalty was wrong anyway, but having this first hand rushed with law, with this case, with this murderer that tried to take his life and just fortunately didn't, that he could say with all kinds of credibility that the death penalty was wrong. And I think that's where it comes from.
An incredible position where you've see I have seen in court where people have made statements where victims' families, you know, forgive the perpetrator, making a guy like Dennis Rader cry you know, a monster cry in a courtroom, how powerful that was. But rarely, if ever, you get a victim themselves in this particular case, going this far in terms of their and again, it's a very powerful message that this gentleman has undertaken did undertake to try to save this man's life.
Yeah, And I think part of what he argued that last day when he was actually on Race was on the stand at you know, five or six o'clock past six o'clock, right as the execution was supposed to happen, and they paused it and put him on the stand and said, Okay, say what you got to say, and we'll kind of decide based on how convincing you are.
And part of what Race argued that day was that neither Mark Stroman nor he could ever be whole in life, whatever that meant if they never met again, that they actually needed to meet and talk and figure out what had happened together, if either of them was ever to live in kind of full peace.
What was Stroman's reaction to this, to this man's forgiveness and fight for his.
Life, He was astonished and flabb agasted, and you know, said to I think his lawyer that you know, this is the first act of kindness that I've ever known, and was just amazed that someone who he had tried to kill had such a different the feeling about him in turn, and was just was just amazed by it
and full of gratitude. And of course over those ten years he had evolved and changed and become a much better guy, so he was in a position to receive a changed this kind of forgiveness at the time that the forgiveness came.
Yeah, this must have had a very profound effect on you as well, writing this book and going this far and this deep into the psychees of both these people and the people surrounding all these characters in this story. How did it affect you?
You know it did, and I think it did in part because these are two very American figures and American characters, and I really wanted to write a book about the American character today through a couple of American characters. And so you have a kind of striving immigrant, the guy with pluck and vigor who cuts himself off from history and shows up and is willing to work hard and
suppress his instincts and make it. And you have another person who all they have is their kind of little oasis of belonging, and they feel themselves to live in a country that's constantly being given over to others. And both of those, in a way are recurring themes and tendencies in American life, and both the understanding of America is just kind of universalist, open place where anybody can come and renew the country, and the view that America
is threatened by this constant precipitous change. They're all they were all kind of in this story. And then I realized over time that this was a story of almost everything that I would want to explore in modern America. So it was a story that I decided I had to tell.
Yes, the story that tells the story you'd like to tell that needs to be told. Yeah, incredible, was I going to say? In terms of the how the framed how the media framed this? Do you think the media understood how ironic? Did they really get the essence of this story? Did they see the profound nature of this? How did most media kind of frame this story?
Yeah? I mean, I think it's actually been great and delightful, and I've been amazed at how how much people have engaged with it and deeply understood it. And I think there's all kinds of different understandings. So I've had some conversations and events and seen some reviews where people really emphasize the religious and spiritual source of this journey of mercy.
A lot of the conversations I've had have been actually about this notion of the American dream and why it works for an immigrant better than from many native born Americans.
Other conversations have been about the kind of larger political and kind of socioeconomic question of you know, what do we do with masses of children in this country born to dysfunctional parents, as Mark Strowman was, and how do we think about what we owe what we owe people as a society when when they don't have the fortune
of decent parents. So a lot of things have come up, and every event has been almost different, because there's there's so much going on in this in this one yarn, which is of course why I decided it was the yarn for me.
Uh, Well, the question, I'm glad that you've had this great response, and it's there's no question that I'm not surprised by that, And well, but I mean, what I'm curious to know, and I don't really know you really explored that in the book. But what was Dallas, Texas? The media there that reported on this trial and this story overall, did they really get it? Did they get any did they get a small sliver of of the irony of the of the the tragic play that was
that was in front of them. How did they What my question was, how did they portray that story and how much did they really understand in terms of the complexity of the entire thing?
And I think they did. There was there was quite a bit in the Dallas uh, Dallas Press, and it was in many ways the Dallas Morning News where Race
first went to publicize his bit of forgiveness. That first told his story and and and and argued to the city of Dallas and in two or three different articles that this was an important event in the history of this issue of the death penalty, that here was a new way into an old story and someone worth listening to because he's making an argument that the Morning News has made repeatedly in Dallas, which is anti capital punishment, but making it in a new and surprising and and
different way. So I think you know, he got he got quite a hearing and often felt on a on a very sophisticated his his arguments fell on a lot of sophisticated reception. And continue to.
What was Roy Sudin's response to this book.
You know, he has been he has been I think, very happy with it, curious about what it would say because he really didn't know what it would say. I think, relieved and and you know, but he's a he's a he's a tough guy who's been through a lot more than having a book written about him. So you know, I think it's uh, he wasn't wasn't ever, you know, an enormous concern relative to what he's been through and been able to conquer in his life.
What you had to have, as in pretty well was cooperation to be able to write this book. So, I mean, it's not like he would be surprised at sort of the tone of it. But I just thought in terms of it's nice to have the subject of the book to be very very happy with how it was portrayed and how he was portrayed in the book.
Well, I mean, he didn't know the tone in the sense that all he knew was what he had contributed as a well of facts, but it could have been any number of tones. And you know that's something that you know, I as a journalist, that happens all the time. People share a lot of information with you and they're shocked that, you know, what kind of take you have on it. After all this said and done, and I think he and I were both relieved that, you know,
there were no surprises there. And I called it as I saw it, And I've ever written some things that he didn't like, but in general, he you know, he said to me that he was astonished at how the story had been able to capture moments and scenes in his life where it was almost like, you know, I had been in the room with him twenty years ago,
where of go as I was not. But he is one of these people who's such a gift for a writer because he has a great memory and he remembers, you know, what shirt he was wearing when he did that one thing, or or what dish he ate when he got that visa or whatever. And so I was really able to tell a vivid story about his life that that kind of was able to hopefully jump off the page.
Yes, well, you very succeeded, very thought provoking book and an incredible story, and you've captured it very eloquently. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about the True American. If people were interested in contacting you, any questions or do you have a website and you do the Facebook thing, tell us about how people might be able to contact you through so Cline.
Yeah, I have. I have a website which is ond dot l y a n A n d dot l y sort of acting on Twitter, and my Twitter handle is on and write so A n A N d w R I t e s same handle on the rights for Facebook, and I always love to hear from people, so so right away, well, I.
Want to thank you very much and on for coming on and talking about the True American. I hope to hear from you again soon with your and probably another project in down the in the pipeline, I'm sure something that's coming up in the near future. So I hope to hear from you again soon. And thank you very much for this interview tonight.
Thank you, thank you very much for having me. Good night, good night,