Wounded Victim of Racist Serial Killer Recounts Nightmare as Execution Nears | Hatewatch

Wounded Victim of Racist Serial Killer Recounts Nightmare as Execution Nears | Hatewatch: Before Joseph Paul Franklin, the prolific racist serial killer, is executed, Terry Jackson-Mitchell wants to look the condemned man in the eye and tell him she forgives him for the nightmares and flashbacks that crashed into her life on a summer night in Utah 33 years ago.

That’s when Franklin wounded Jackson-Mitchell, then 15, and shot and killed her two black friends, jogging a few feet from her in a Salt Lake City park.

“I believe in the old saying, forgiveness is a gift you give yourself,” Jackson-Mitchell, now 49, told Hatewatch in a telephone interview Sunday evening. “I forgive him based on what I’ve read about his horrific childhood. And I forgive him because I refuse to allow that night to define me.”