When the Church family gathers around the Thanksgiving Day table, there is a deep sadness that fills their hearts despite their blessings. They try in vain not to think about what happened to them seven years ago this month.
Kevin Church remembers being away at school in November of 1988 when his father called him and told him his brother had been tortured and murdered by two prison parolees.It is a holiday "forever marred" by his older brother's violent death. At a parole hearing for one of the men convicted of killing Gordon Church Nov. 21, 1988, Kevin Church said there is no justice for his family. Church's father is still so distraught about the murder that he didn't attend the parole hearing.
"Not a day passes that we don't think about (the murder)," Kevin Church testified. "We've changed in a very negative way . . . I've had to teach my children far to early in life about death and that there are evil people out there."
He and his brother, Craig, begged state Board of Pardons Chairman Mike Sibbett to keep Lance Wood behind bars for the rest of his life.
"Lance was never made to be accountable for his actions. He will never be rehabilitiated. He's only an expense for those of us who pay taxes," Kevin Church said.
Wood was convicted of first-degree murder in the torture slaying of Gordon Church, a Southern Utah State College student at the time of his death. Wood and Michael A. Archuleta were on parole from the Utah State Prison when they abducted Church, took him to a remote area of Millard County and tortured and killed him.
An autopsy showed Church was brutally beaten, kicked, raped with a tire iron and eventually left to die of his injuries.
Archuleta received the death penalty based on physical evidence that said he delivered most of the injuries that caused Church's death. Wood maintains that he didn't beat Church, he just didn't stop Archuleta.
"I'm no killer," Wood said during a telephonic hearing. He is housed in an Idaho prison. Wood said he remained in the car and at a distance while Archuleta beat Church.
Sibbett asked Wood about Church's hair and blood that were found by investigators on Church's shoes.
"I don't know," he said. "All I can do here today is express my sympathy. . .I want to express how truly sorry I am. I found in the last two years I've come a long way in the way I think, the way I feel and who I am . . . I wasn't the man I am today."
Sibbett, visibly disappointed that Wood refused to admit his part in Church's death, told Wood the evidence contradicted his story.
"The murder of Mr. Gordon Church . . . is one of the most brutal crimes I've had to study," Sibbett said. He said the only mitigating factor for Wood is that he turned himself in and led police to Church's body.
"I have a hard time finding any others," he said. He took Wood's case under advisement but told him he planned to recommend Wood spend the rest of his natural life behind bars.