And lets none of us shed a tear.

A disclaimer: I am generally anti-death penalty- I understand the whole “I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for that scum to live out his life in prison” argument, but (guilt or innocence aside) since the automatic appeals process costs 21 times just giving him 3-hots-and-a-cot, I typically fall on the ‘let ‘em rot in prison’ side of the fence.

But this guy? He’s a peach. Let’s see what he has to say for himself, eh?

James Magee

Earlier in his conversation with the detectives, he attempted to explain why he had been enraged.

“She wasn’t calling me back, you know, and I know that sounds silly, but that’s the way it is,” he said. “I wanted her to talk with me. She wouldn’t talk with me.”

Magee chased his wife’s car in Tall Timbers, ramming it until she crashed into a tree, according to testimony from various residents who witnessed it.

Magee then walked up to her car. “Oh Jamie, no, no, no!” she screamed, according to Delbert Bryars, a neighbor.

Magee said he and his wife “were fighting over the gun and it went off.”

He shot his wife, point-blank, in the left temple with a 12-gauge shotgun, according to testimony and authorities. The shot blew the back of her head off, St. Tammany Chief Deputy Coroner Michael DeFatta testified Saturday.

“And then I looked at Zach. It was already bad, man, it was already bad,” Magee said. He shot his son twice, once in the back and once in the head, as the boy tried to run away, according to witnesses and DeFatta’s re-creation of the events.

Magee then fired his shotgun into the car where his two daughters were hiding. The shot hit Ashleigh, 8, in the shoulder. Aleisha, 7, likely was spared injury because she was playing dead in the back seat.

Explaining that final shot, Magee said: “I seen what happened to Zach and I just finished.”

Uh, question: if you’re “fighting over” a shotgun,hnow do you get shot point blank in the temple?

Then the coward ran. The cops chased him down in Florida several days later. That means you’ve got several states of good ol’ boys to pass through. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana. Quite frankly, I thought the cops might lose a couple of pieces of ‘im before they got him back here…like, oh, maybe his head. But no. He made it here and through prison for the last two years and all the way to the trial.

Apparently he cried all day long while they deliberated over the death penalty. For himself, of course, and what a horrible life he’s had, and fear for his own skin. His parents argued that putting him to death would leave a hole in his two surviving daughters lives- that one day, they’d want answers and he wouldn’t be around to give them.

Personally, I don’t know if any amount of counseling would ever give me the strength to talk to the man who killed my mother and brother.

She was also my poor Zulu’s original owner, so I feel tangentially attached to this case. The papers hadn’t shown photos of any of these people, and seeing them was a bit of a shock, particularly Mr. Creepy there. And she and her son look sweet and kind.

When I wandered into Birds Unlimited that day, I found out that Adrienne’s mother had custody of the two surviving kids. She’d had a nervous breakdown over it, and the little girl was still in the hospital 3 months later. The mother and son were still in the morgue because the family didn’t have the money to bury them, and no one knew how they were going to pay the hospital bills. They were deep in debt and much deeper in shock, selling off everything they could, including Adrienne’s beloved birds, one of which was Zulu.

Please don’t get me wrong- I am in no way equating what Zulu went through with what the rest of the family dealt with. But I can still hear his little birdy voice booming in a deep baritone “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!” and “BITCH!” and “I said shut UP!” It was a little slice of what went on in that house, and it sent chills up my spine. The terror in that house- human and animal alike- must have been beyond imagining.

It makes me appreciate Zulu’s spirit all the more- how he tried so hard to overcome his fears and trust again. Dr. Rich said that his crazy stress levels were no doubt largely to blame for his early death, and I’ll miss him always.

As for Jamie? I can’t imagine there are going to be many who miss him.

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