Eileen Foley: Speaking out for the right to
protect home and family
August 11, 2000
Let me introduce you to Doug, a straight-talking quality assurance manager in
the food industry, his wife Judy, a medical transcriptionist, and their children:
Amber, Ben, Kira, and Greg. Law-abiding, middle-class people who are the
soul of this country.
Five years ago people were telling Doug he was paranoid. He knew better. For
15 years his wife's former boyfriend had been stalking them, parking outside
their home, leaving things on their doorstep even after they'd moved.
And for 15 years Doug Stanton, a quiet man, took every opportunity to get
himself prepared. He met with police and Vietnam vets to learn training and
combat techniques. He practiced shooting. He read about self-defense,
watched videotapes, took karate and jujitsu lessons. And for most of that time
he scheduled regular family drills on what to do if an intruder entered their
home.
"He had threatened me years before," Doug said of the former swain, whom
he'd known as a child. "At one point his bishop and his psychologist warned
that he was intent on killing me. I armed myself." For two years he risked arrest
by carrying a handgun.
Paranoid? Even his wife, from whom he'd kept the threats, thought so, he says.
Attitudes changed in November, 1995, when Jerry Hessler of Westerville, O,
who'd lost his bank job the year before, turned vengeful and murderous.
Wearing a trench coat, combat boots, and bullet-proof vest, armed, carrying
ammo, 20 gallons of gas, money, and travel plans to Mexico, he began work on
an eight-name hit list. It didn't include the Stantons. It didn't have to.
In Columbus Hessler wounded a woman in the knee. She alerted police. "I
should have executed Ruth," he'd tell Thomson News Service later. Then it was
to the home of two co-workers. He killed them and their five-month-old
daughter. He missed their son who hid under a table, Doug says.
His third stop was in suburban Worthington, where he killed the father of a
woman he had dated.
A police all-points-bulletin went out. An officer friend heard it. She and her
brother later decided the Stantons, who lived 75 miles away, were at risk. An
alert went out.
But as Judy and the children, then aged 5 to 13, headed out the back door,
there was Hessler.
They hit the kitchen floor, as they'd done in the drills. Hessler fired 12 shots into
their home, some passing within three inches of Amber, the oldest. She was
virtually staring down the barrel of his gun, according to her father.
Doug let go with his two handguns, a .45 pistol and a Walther PPK .380. His
bullets made contact, but the vest saved their attacker's life. He was knocked
off his feet and persuaded to get into his car and leave. Police stopped him
nearby.
The Stantons, the good guys here, left their home, hands over their heads,
police weapons pointing at them. It is a moment their youngest son Greg can't
forget, says his father, who was taken into custody temporarily.
Hessler is on Ohio's Death Row in Mansfield, not far from where the Stantons
live. What kind of a guy is he? Writings on Hessler's jail cell wall made available
to Stanton peg him: "Not a bad day's work . . . if they execute me it will still be
4-1. . . . Am I sorry? Yeah, sorry I didn't get them all."
The aftermath for this family has been as complex as it has been low-key. There
are still nightmares and flashbacks. They've seen psychologists and counselors.
They live warily. Some, who can't imagine themselves in their place, have been
boorish.
An officer of a firm Doug once worked for launched into an anti-handgun
diatribe in his presence. When Doug noted that without handguns, he and his
family would be dead, he said the man replied, "And your point is?"
Right now Doug's point is to change Ohio law to permit law-abiding citizens,
especially women, to carry weapons to defend themselves and families.
"My wife and I have been under wraps for four years," Doug said in a phone
conversation. "We need to come out of the woodwork now."
They want to tell the story of how guns save lives. They want to speak out for
the right of self-defense. They want middle class people like themselves to
know that they aren't immune and that preparedness counts. And they want to
dispute alleged facts spewing out of the anti-gun lobby.
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, said if you tell a lie, tell it big enough,
and tell it often enough, people will believe it, Doug notes. By telling their story,
he and Judy have become a truth squad. They have a lot to say to people who
think handguns are yukky.
Eileen Foley is a Blade associate editor. E-mail her at
efoley@theblade.com.
protect home and family
August 11, 2000
Let me introduce you to Doug, a straight-talking quality assurance manager in
the food industry, his wife Judy, a medical transcriptionist, and their children:
Amber, Ben, Kira, and Greg. Law-abiding, middle-class people who are the
soul of this country.
Five years ago people were telling Doug he was paranoid. He knew better. For
15 years his wife's former boyfriend had been stalking them, parking outside
their home, leaving things on their doorstep even after they'd moved.
And for 15 years Doug Stanton, a quiet man, took every opportunity to get
himself prepared. He met with police and Vietnam vets to learn training and
combat techniques. He practiced shooting. He read about self-defense,
watched videotapes, took karate and jujitsu lessons. And for most of that time
he scheduled regular family drills on what to do if an intruder entered their
home.
"He had threatened me years before," Doug said of the former swain, whom
he'd known as a child. "At one point his bishop and his psychologist warned
that he was intent on killing me. I armed myself." For two years he risked arrest
by carrying a handgun.
Paranoid? Even his wife, from whom he'd kept the threats, thought so, he says.
Attitudes changed in November, 1995, when Jerry Hessler of Westerville, O,
who'd lost his bank job the year before, turned vengeful and murderous.
Wearing a trench coat, combat boots, and bullet-proof vest, armed, carrying
ammo, 20 gallons of gas, money, and travel plans to Mexico, he began work on
an eight-name hit list. It didn't include the Stantons. It didn't have to.
In Columbus Hessler wounded a woman in the knee. She alerted police. "I
should have executed Ruth," he'd tell Thomson News Service later. Then it was
to the home of two co-workers. He killed them and their five-month-old
daughter. He missed their son who hid under a table, Doug says.
His third stop was in suburban Worthington, where he killed the father of a
woman he had dated.
A police all-points-bulletin went out. An officer friend heard it. She and her
brother later decided the Stantons, who lived 75 miles away, were at risk. An
alert went out.
But as Judy and the children, then aged 5 to 13, headed out the back door,
there was Hessler.
They hit the kitchen floor, as they'd done in the drills. Hessler fired 12 shots into
their home, some passing within three inches of Amber, the oldest. She was
virtually staring down the barrel of his gun, according to her father.
Doug let go with his two handguns, a .45 pistol and a Walther PPK .380. His
bullets made contact, but the vest saved their attacker's life. He was knocked
off his feet and persuaded to get into his car and leave. Police stopped him
nearby.
The Stantons, the good guys here, left their home, hands over their heads,
police weapons pointing at them. It is a moment their youngest son Greg can't
forget, says his father, who was taken into custody temporarily.
Hessler is on Ohio's Death Row in Mansfield, not far from where the Stantons
live. What kind of a guy is he? Writings on Hessler's jail cell wall made available
to Stanton peg him: "Not a bad day's work . . . if they execute me it will still be
4-1. . . . Am I sorry? Yeah, sorry I didn't get them all."
The aftermath for this family has been as complex as it has been low-key. There
are still nightmares and flashbacks. They've seen psychologists and counselors.
They live warily. Some, who can't imagine themselves in their place, have been
boorish.
An officer of a firm Doug once worked for launched into an anti-handgun
diatribe in his presence. When Doug noted that without handguns, he and his
family would be dead, he said the man replied, "And your point is?"
Right now Doug's point is to change Ohio law to permit law-abiding citizens,
especially women, to carry weapons to defend themselves and families.
"My wife and I have been under wraps for four years," Doug said in a phone
conversation. "We need to come out of the woodwork now."
They want to tell the story of how guns save lives. They want to speak out for
the right of self-defense. They want middle class people like themselves to
know that they aren't immune and that preparedness counts. And they want to
dispute alleged facts spewing out of the anti-gun lobby.
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, said if you tell a lie, tell it big enough,
and tell it often enough, people will believe it, Doug notes. By telling their story,
he and Judy have become a truth squad. They have a lot to say to people who
think handguns are yukky.
Eileen Foley is a Blade associate editor. E-mail her at
efoley@theblade.com.