Victim's Families

It's easy enough to think about just the condemned man when you haven't spoken to the family. This afternoon I interviewed Gene Langley - John Fenton Langley's brother. And John's son, Michael.

The last time Gene saw his brother was on Easter 2000. That's the last photo Gene has of him - taken at the dinner table with his niece Tracy around playing around with her father. Tracy's holding her fingers behind her father's head in the timeless "bunny ears" gesture. John is trying to eat.

Michael remembers his last conversation with his father.

"My wife and I had convinced him to fly up to Nashville," Michael said. "I was graduating from college (Auto and Diesel Mechanic School) and he had never flown before. I bought him a ticket to come up here. He never got to use it. I used it to fly down for his funeral," he said.

Michael misses the father/son relationship. He hates it that his daughter, now three, never got to meet her grandfather. Most of all Michael hates it that his father died without being a Christian.

They went to church back in the day he says. But they'd also gone drinking the night before. Just being in church and believing in God doesn't make you a christian, he explains. It's more than that. It's obeying God and living for him. Michael has forgiven Emmett for murdering his father, but he still believes that the death penalty is biblical and that Emmett must pay the consequences for his crime.

He and his wife have tried to visit Emmett in prison and want him to know they've forgiven him.

"I want him to get right with God," Michael said of Emmett. Michael believes his father is "burning in hell," because he didn't get right with God.

"But there's still time for Emmett," he said. "He's got right up til the end to make a sincere confession of his sins and he can be celebrating in heaven."