Three portraits of Jimmy Ryce
02/10/2014
In 2005, I visited the home of Don and Claudine Ryce. It had been ten years since the brutal murder of their child Jimmy. Of the countless people I have interviewed and the countless stories I have written, few have stayed with me as much as this one I wrote for the Palm Beach Post.
After a lengthy interview with Don, he stepped outside to have his picture taken. While chatting with Claudine in the kitchen, I asked her why Don did not have any pictures of Jimmy in his home office.
Claudine smiled and told me to follow her. What happened next is in the story that follows.
By Brian E. Crowley
January 30, 2005
Hand-carved, the large wooden desk dominates the room that is Don Ryce's formal office.
There's an Old World painting on an easel. A replica of an ancient cannon. A statue of Lady Justice, blindfolded and holding twin scales. The office is masculine. Comfortable. Cozy in its own way. Don is particularly fond of the desk.
His wife, Claudine, calls it the "show office." A place for her husband's legal clients to see him at their home.
What visitors usually don't see is in another room. It is past the small dining room and an adjoining living room, a short walk down the hall to a closed door on the left.
It is the real office. Modern, cluttered and heart-wrenching.
Although there are no pictures of their murdered son in his law office, the little boy comes alive here. On one wall, three carefully framed drawings hang side by side, self-portraits Jimmy drew in the second grade, the third grade and the fourth grade.
There is no fifth-grade drawing. About 3:30 p.m. Sept. 11, 1995, a Monday, Jimmy was walking home from school. His school bus dropped off the 9-year-old boy just three blocks from his home in the quiet, rural community know as Redland, southwest of Miami.
As he walked those three blocks, carrying his backpack, Juan Carlos Chavez, a 28-year-old farmhand, pulled up along side Jimmy and, at gunpoint, forced the child into a car.
On Jimmy's 10th birthday, Sept. 26, he was still missing. One of his presents was a new electronic chess set. The gifts were wrapped.
Halloween. Still no Jimmy. Thanksgiving. More pain.
Jimmy was found two weeks before Christmas. The baseball-loving, 70-pound boy with the reddish-brown hair and a big gap-tooth smile had been raped and shot, his body dismembered and buried in cement-filled planters. He had died the day he disappeared.
Two days before New Year's Day, more than 500 mourners attended his funeral.
. . .
Don Ryce apologizes profusely for being late. Wearing a suit jacket, he sits behind his desk and talks about how much he loves living in Vero Beach, a place he and Claudine visited for years before deciding in 2003 to make it their home.
"There are plenty of places for people who want to go and go," Don says. "This is a nice, quiet place."
The Ryces . . . still fight for Jimmy.
And they don't forget the people who have helped them. Even though Don describes himself as a "conservative Republican," he and Claudine came to the aid of Peter Deutsch when the liberal Democratic congressman ran, unsuccessfully, for the U.S. Senate last year. They appeared in a commercial endorsing him.
"Peter was one of the the first people to come to us offering to help," Don says. "It was not a foray into politics for us. It was very personal and deeply felt chance to repay a debt."
They feel the same way about all the neighbors who spent countless hours helping them search for Jimmy and who were there for them after they got the horrific news.
Claudine calls Jimmy their "miracle child." At 43, she didn't expect to have a child. When she was pregnant she first thought she was ill. She was three months along before she realized she was having a baby. She turned 53 two days before Jimmy disappeared.
They had a nice life. Don's labor law practice was thriving. Claudine spent 12 years as an attorney with the Internal Revenue Service.
Jimmy was a child of big smiles and big dreams who wanted to be a major league baseball player and had a huge baseball card collection in his bedroom. On the day he disappeared, his clothes for school the next day were already laid out for him, his lunch money - $1.25 - tucked into the shirt pocket.
Vowing never to let what happened to Jimmy happen again, the Ryces started a crusade to identify sexual predators. In 1996, Florida lawmakers passed the first Jimmy Ryce Act allowing neighborhoods where sexual predators live to be notified.
A year later, Congress established the Jimmy Ryce Law Enforcement Training Center, in Arlington, Va., and directed the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to administer it.
The Ryces also started The Jimmy Ryce Center, which not only advocates for tougher laws but also provides parents and law enforcement with information about how to deal with missing children.
In addition there is the Jimmy Ryce Bloodhound Network that makes the dogs available to police.
And they have a program called Great Escape Maneuvers to teach children to recognize dangerous situations and how to get away.
In 1998, Florida expanded the Jimmy Ryce Act, allowing the courts, in a civil proceeding, to force violent sexual predators to be sent to the Florida Civil Commitment Center where they are locked up until they are cured.
It is a controversial program that critics say forces convicted sexual predators to spend years in confinement even after their criminal sentences have been completed.
Don is unmoved.
"We did not pass the law and fight so hard because of our concern about the poor sexual predator," says Don, his voice rising slightly. "Everyone knows they are going to re-commit."
He says, "I would love nothing more than if people found some treatment so they wouldn't do it again," but he believes it will never happen.
Gone, but don't forget him
Juan Carlos Chavez was convicted in 1998 and is on Death Row for Jimmy's murder. The 5-foot-11, 184-pound Chavez also received two life sentences for kidnapping and sexual battery. He will be 38 in March. Jimmy would be 19 if he were alive today.
"You never get over the pain," says Don, his voice catching.
Do you just learn to cope?
"Yep."
Claudine's eyes, framed by shoulder-length blond hair, glisten as she points to Jimmy's self-portraits. The second-grader is holding a ball. She points to where he wrote a make-believe score: J-28, R-10.
In the third grade he is a happy clown.
The fourth-grade drawing is the largest: a big smiling Jimmy with the sun rising behind his head, a black child in one corner, a girl in the other.
"He loved everybody," she says.
Don says they have talked about doing something special for the 10th anniversary of Jimmy's death. They don't want him to be forgotten. They want his death to have meaning. It is why they endure the questions.
As Claudine closes the door to the private office, she says they occasionally receive letters from prisoners who have offered to do unpleasant things to Chavez if he is ever allowed into the general prison population.
The thought does not displease them.
Instead, they worry more that they may not see the end.
"We've discussed whether we are going to outlive him or he is going to outlive us," says Don, who is 61 and fears that Chavez could remain on Death Row for decades.
His concern is not unfounded. Many of Florida's Death Row inmates have been there for more than 20 years. One, Gary Alvord, has been on Death Row since 1974.
With backgrounds in law, it is not surprising to hear the Ryces say they believe that criminals should get the full protections of the justice system. But they also lament how executions are prevented by a legal system that has turned it "too much into a game."
As long as Chavez lives, Jimmy's parents can't find real peace. Don has one more thing he wants to do.
When they strap Juan Carlos Chavez to a gurney to give him a lethal injection, Don says he plans to be there. "If I'm alive."
Update: Chavez is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday. Claudine died of a heart attack in January 2009. Jimmy's sister, Martha, commited suicide in December 2012.
Don Ryce, 70, plans to witness the execution.
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