JACKSON - On June 21, 1989, people were crying and lighting candles for condemned killer Leo Edwards - and Carolyn Clayton was appalled. Not a single candle was lit for Edwards' victim, Jackson convenience store clerk Linzy Don Dixon.
That night, Clayton made a promise to herself - "to light a candle for the victim."
Clayton will be outside the Parchman gates at 6 p.m. Wednesday to light a candle and say a prayer for State Trooper Bruce Ladner.
Barring any successful last-minute appeals, Tracy Hansen will be executed for killing Ladner in 1987 after the trooper had pulled over Hansen's car on Interstate 10.
It will be Mississippi's first execution in 13 years.
"I'm just going to go remember the victim because sometimes they are lost," said Clayton. "That is why this person is being executed. He murdered someone."
Clayton knows the pain of losing a family member to violence; she started Tupelo-based Survival Inc. to help crime victims after her 18-year-old daughter was raped and stabbed to death in July 1986.
Survival Inc. provides services such as crisis intervention, court advocacy, in-home visits and group support to victims of violent crime in 23 Mississippi counties.
"I don't know the victim's family, but I certainly know the victim's pain in my heart," she said. "It's just something personal for me based on what I saw."
Kirk Ladner, the slain trooper's brother, agreed that family members would never fully recover from their loss.
"My brother was basically No. 1 in my life," Kirk Ladner said. "It's hard to live with anyone being killed in this manner."
While Clayton and a small group hold a vigil for the victim and his family, Sister Donna Gunn and others will light candles and pray for both Ladner and Hansen.
"We don't believe there are any winners here," Gunn said. "This is a travesty. We are committing murder to prove murder is wrong."
Gunn, who directs parish social ministries for the Catholic Diocese of Jackson, said Catholic doctrine respects all human life from conception until natural death.
She has organized two interdenominational vigils - one at Parchman and one near the Governor's Mansion - and has sent a common prayer to churches around the state that she hopes churches will use.
The program includes a moment of silence followed by a tolling of bells when Hansen's sentence is carried out.
"We have not had an execution in this state in 13 years," she said. "I think a lot of people were caught off guard. … What I have heard in this day and age is that people are horrified that they would really go through with one."
Corrections officials say Gunn and Clayton are leading the groups they know are planning to gather at Parchman. The groups will be given two different areas to hold their vigils.
While Gunn realizes the victim's group, which considers the execution justified, will gather nearby, she said "it's too sad a night to get into any kind of ideological debate."
Clayton agreed, saying all she's planning is "a quiet time to remember the victim."
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