From his cell on death row, Joe Burrows watched his three children grow up in pictures, saw his wife grow distant and yearned to comfort his dying father.
As Burrows paid for a murder another person now claims to have committed, his wife, Sherri, dreamed of a reunited family, eventually going on welfare and moving in with her parents.Now, released after five years and 10 months behind bars, Burrows finally has a future - albeit an uncertain one. He faces a new trial, and the state plans to appeal his release.
"I never claimed to be a saint," the former burglar said last week, deep blue tattoos standing out against his freshly tanned arms. "But I'm no murderer."
Burrows, who turned 41 Wednesday, was released on Sept. 8 from Menard Correctional Center after a co-defendant said she alone killed William Dulin in 1988.
Circuit Judge John Michela overturned Burrows' conviction, saying it was "cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a man to death under perjurious testimony."
Gayle Potter, a former cocaine addict and drug dealer whose testimony helped put Burrows on death row on Aug. 1, 1989, is the same woman who got him released.
Potter originally testified that she, Burrows and a friend, Ralph Frye, drove to Dulin's farmhouse the night of Nov. 6, 1988, to ask him for a loan. When he refused, Potter said, Burrows and Dulin got into a struggle, and she tried to stop Burrows from shooting him. She was convicted as an accomplice and is serving a 30-year sentence.
There was no physical evidence linking the crime to Burrows, who had been in prison twice before for burglary and was working as a painter at the time of the killing. He says he was never even in the same county.
Potter changed her story this summer. Now she says she killed Dulin by herself because he wouldn't loan her money to buy drugs. State attorneys say she's lying to punish a former prosecutor she claims reneged on a promise of lesser charges in exchange for her testimony.
Because Potter already has been convicted, she cannot be retried or get the death penalty. Frye, who with Potter was given a lighter sentence in exchange for his testimony against Burrows, also has recanted. He said he was forced into making incriminating statements.
The ordeal took its toll on Burrows and his family. They initially visited every two weeks and on holidays. But as the months passed, Sherri Burrows broke off contact with her husband - until he had a heart attack and she realized she couldn't live without him.
"You work a puzzle and you've got one piece missing . . . and you search and you search the floor for it. And you can't find it," she said. "It's a feeling like that, only worse. You know if you could find that one piece, it would be OK . . . and Joe would come home and we would be a family again."
Burrows, a sandy-haired man with a mustache and blue eyes, talks soberly of missing his kids' formative years - his daughters are now 12 and 10 and his son 9 - and not attending his father's funeral.
"They can't give me the last five years my father was alive back," said Burrows, who has joined his wife and children at her parents' house.
His children remember little of their father before prison. "They sometimes call Joe `Grandpa,' " Sherri Burrows said.
Burrows has set up an office in the kitchen to handle the constant phone calls. Burrows has filled a notebook with contacts: biographers, agents, lawyers, reporters, talk show and tabloid television producers. A movie deal is under discussion.
Burrows is sure he'll be vindicated. He expects the sale of his story and money from a planned lawsuit to get his family back on its feet in a new home. He's looking forward to making a living restoring classic cars.
"I've got this feeling about a new lease on life," he said.