Harrowing - that was how he described marriage and prison. "They're both harrowing experiences," were his precise words.
He had been locked up for the past five years for the murder of his wife and daughter.
"I didn't do it."
Odds were he did. DNA cast a large shadow over his assertion of innocence. It was his DNA, afterall, that investigators found all over the crime scene - his home.
He provided an obvious alibi, but one that nonetheless did not hold up in a court of law.
"It's...it was my home, so my DNA is naturally going to be there."
But what about his prints being on the murder weapon - the infamous bloody steak knife buried in his wife's chest - and a bull rope from which sixteen-year old daughter hung from when the authorities arrived, not before, according to investigators, she was strangled while being raped?
He could not answer without being choked up.
"I used that steak knife on many of occasion, only to enjoy a juicy 8 ounce. That bullrope..." he paused. "That bullrope was once my pride and joy. It was a gift from my brother, a true cowboy, after he won the steer competition at the Calgary Stampede, before he passed on in an auto accident."
"But that's not an alibi," I said with unexpected coldness. In the end, it was all hearsay. He said he didn't. The prosecutors said he did; the jury was swayed. And that was the endgame.
"Endgame, he whispered, as if to himself. "Endgame."
A slight quiver in his voice revealed the unspoken incidences of sexual assault that was visited upon him on a daily basis. He was now soft-spoken, lacking the grand, bold, gruff inflection of a cowboy. His downset despondent eyes told of sustained punishment and unparalleled desolation.
"Where have all the cowboys gone?" he asked.
"Heaven I suppose."
A smile lit up his dark face.
"I sure hope you're right son."
That instant told his innocence. He walked back down the hall, escorted by a massive prison guard, wrists and ankles shackled. Before he walked through the threshold, he turned back and looked at me through the plexiglass enclosure.
"Bless you, son," I read his lips. He dropped his head and made way towards his cell.
