Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007

The victim's view

Mary Hilton still grieves for her brother, the man my brother has spent a quarter-century in prison for murdering.

A week hasn't gone by that the death of James Bunch hasn't haunted Hilton, now in her mid-70s. Sometimes the thoughts are unbearable.

"It never goes out of my mind. It ruined my life,'' Hilton said. "Every day I think about it. If I didn't pray, I wouldn't make it.''

She told me this during a 90-minute interview on a Sunday afternoon at Lakeside Cafe in Bonneau Beach.

Just days earlier I had found her phone number and address. I was initially excited to track her down and discover things I've wanted to know for more than two decades.

Then I panicked. How do I introduce myself? As a journalist writing about the effects of crime? Or as the brother of the man who killed her brother?

I ended up telling her both.

She brought her best friend, Lora Winslow, to the cafe.

Hilton watched me with skeptical, inquisitive eyes for the first 30 minutes. Then she relaxed and periodically laughed and joked. I wasn't expecting that.

She told me about her brother, the man my brother killed.

James Bunch was born on Christmas Eve in 1930, one of 10 children. Hilton and Bunch were half of the four youngest siblings. The six others were much older. Only Hilton and two sisters, one in Macedonia, which is near Bonneau, and the other in Florida, are living. Two sisters died within six weeks of each other, three months ago.

They grew up in a shack, actually an old store just off U.S. 52 in Bonneau. They were poor.

Bunch loved animals. They had a family dog named Fannie. "He was just an old dog but he would bite you if you were a stranger,'' Hilton said.

We laughed.

Bunch discontinued his formal education in elementary school, though his childhood friend, Artimus Raymond Brinson, said he was good with mathematics. He worked in a shop owned by an older brother in Charleston for several years before opening his own in Bonneau.

It had a pool table on which my brother, Herbert "Moochie'' Bailey Jr., and many residents, black and white, spent nights playing while listening to music and drinking. Hilton helped her brother stock the store with snacks, beer, candy and other items. He left everything he owned to her.

He never married, never had children of his own. "He said his first love married someone else so he couldn't trust it again,'' Brinson said.

Bunch loved visiting his sister in Florida when he could get away on the weekend. And he loved giving kids free candy and bubble gum, and he baby-sat a neighbor's little boy while the neighbor worked.

For a while he served as a Bonneau councilman during a time of upheaval in the town. The mayor and a councilman had died and things were chaotic. The town's lights were cut off. Bunch worked to get them back on. He kept the town afloat until the special election to fill the council seats.

"He ran the town of Bonneau for six months and never charged them a penny,'' Hilton said.

Cycle of loss, grief

Hilton grieves for more than her brother.

Five years before my brother stabbed her brother to death, Hilton's youngest son was killed during a store robbery. One of his murderers was sent to death row, though his sentence was changed to life in prison.

Twelve years after my brother confessed to killing her brother, Hilton's oldest son was found dead and alone in the woods in Dorchester County. His killer has not been identified.

Hilton can't bring herself to speak about exactly how he was killed. It hurts too much. Thoughts of her sons and brother quickly darken her mood.

"I have to take her shopping to get her out of that mood,'' said Winslow, her neighbor and best friend. "She gets depressed about all that stuff, so I go get her and we go out. And we have lunch and shop. Because she doesn't need to stay in that house and think about it. You can't forget. You can't forget.''

A sign on the front of her brick house reads "This home is equipped with an intrusion alarm.'' She rarely opens her front door for strangers. Winslow had to intervene once when she wouldn't open the door for a furniture delivery man.

While she can't bring herself to speak the details of her sons' murders, she can talk about her brother's.

She said my brother waited in the bushes outside Bunch's shop. Bunch's house was next door. Someone called him out of the house and asked to buy a loaf of bread from his store. As he walked to the store, my brother jumped on him from behind, Hilton said.

She had heard that my brother was from a mean family. "He had to be mean to do something like he did,'' she said.

She said my brother cut off her brother's nose, slashed his throat twice and cut out a lung. There were 18 stab wounds in her brother's back alone. She was called to the hospital.

"He bled to death even before they called EMS,'' Hilton said.

His house was set ablaze, which helped prosecutors decide to bring the early death penalty charge. Hilton doesn't believe my brother set that fire.

She and Brinson, like many of my family members, still have questions about what happened. Brinson said he was shocked that my brother was charged because he knew Moochie had laughed with Bunch, had shaken his hand many times.

Hilton didn't like the way officials handled the scene or the investigation, though she didn't want to elaborate.

"I have to live here,'' she said.

Doubts and questions

My mother wonders how it's possible for one man to stab another in so many places - face, neck, chest, back, legs - all by himself.

Hilton believes my brother killed her brother and that he didn't have any help. That's why she doesn't want to talk to my mother or meet my family. It would bring back too many bad memories.

"But I'm glad I don't hate 'em, because hate would eat you up like cancer,'' Hilton said.

She would not have been in Bonneau when her brother died had her son not been murdered in Savannah, Ga., where she lived with her husband for 26 years. "I couldn't take it,'' she said. "Everywhere I went somebody walked up to hug me, and it was more than I could take.''

Before my brother killed her brother, people in Bonneau, whose population of about 350 hasn't changed much over the years, left their car and house doors unlocked.

They bickered about the police department's handling of the area's primary crime issue: cars speeding down U.S. 52 through the middle of town.

People called and wrote the local weekly paper, the Berkeley Democrat, about how the department wasn't needed because "we don't have crime in Bonneau.'' The angst and a lack of funding led to the shuttering of the police department.

"The chief had to park his car because of it,'' said current Bonneau Town Clerk Liz Wren.

Then Bunch was killed. The slaying unnerved a town not used to violence.

"In my short time as the chief of police for Bonneau, this was exactly the situation I was trying to prevent,'' George Farrey wrote in a letter to the editor in the Berkeley Democrat a week after the murder. "If at the time in question Bonneau still had a professional police department, would Mr. Bunch's assailant still have attempted his plan? Or would he have changed his mind if the Bonneau police car, with that so-much-disliked blue light operating, was writing a traffic summons on U.S. 52?''

My family has spent years following Moochie through the justice system and holds out hope that he will be paroled.

I asked Hilton if she cared if my brother might one day be set free. Her answer surprised me.