*On Wednesday, January 28, Wade Hayslip intends to witness the execution of Charles Thompson, the man who murdered his mother nearly 30 years ago. As a spiritual advisor and witness during the executions of eleven men, I wrote this letter to Wade…not to tell him how to feel, but to share what I have seen.
Dear Wade Hayslip,
I read your interview with Amanda Lee Myers in USA TODAY, and your words moved me to write this letter. I write to you with the utmost respect for your loss and your journey. As someone who has spent years working as a spiritual advisor to people on death row, I want you to know that my opposition to what will happen on Wednesday is not, and has never been, about diminishing what was taken from you.
What stood out most powerfully in your words is not your thoughts about Charles Thompson or the crime itself, but who your mother was. As you so beautifully shared, Dennise was a woman who worked six days a week at her nail salon to afford private school for you. She was someone who lay down beside you in bed after an argument, choosing compassion over anger. She cried tears of joy when you befriended an outcast at school. She taught you to look out for others, to show grace, to persevere through hardship.
These are the values she gave you. As I sat with your words, I found myself holding those moments…her choosing compassion over anger, her joy at your kindness…and wondering how the life she lived sits beside what the state is now preparing to do. Not as a judgment of you, but as a tension that feels impossible to ignore.
I know you have said that Wednesday will not bring you closure…and you are right. It cannot. No execution can restore the milestones your mom has missed: your wedding, the births of your three sons, all the moments when you wished for her advice and affirmation. Make no mistake, no execution can give you back what Charles Thompson took from you on that April day in 1998.
The Weight Wade Hayslip Has Carried
You have endured not only the loss of your mother but years of additional pain. Charles Thompson’s visibility has often overshadowed her memory. Your wounds have been open for nearly three decades. I understand why you want this chapter to end.
But I worry about what Wednesday will truly cost you.
When the state kills Charles Thompson, it will be acting in your name, in Dennise’s name, in the name of justice. But killing him will not undo the killing he did. It will not heal what was broken. It will add another death to a tragedy that has already claimed too many lives…your mother’s, Darren Cain’s, and in many ways, big chunks of your life (including your childhood).
The compassion your mother showed you…lying beside you when you were angry, celebrating your kindness to others…this is what endures. This is her true legacy. I fear that her memory might become entangled with violence in a way that contradicts everything she taught you about mercy and humanity.
You wrote that Thompson’s life “is the only thing he has left to offer in accountability.” I hear the exhaustion behind those words…the sense that after decades of waiting, after escapes, headlines and cruelty, there must finally be an ending that feels proportionate to what was taken from you. I only want to offer this, gently of course…accountability that comes through death ends his story, but it does not lessen the weight you have carried all these years. What you have already endured…the long waiting, the public exposure, the reopening of wounds…has asked far more of you than any execution ever could of him.
I do not write this to tell you how to feel. Your anger is righteous. Your pain is real. You have every right to want Charles Thompson to face consequences.
What I Have Witnessed
But I write because I have stood in that execution chamber myself. As a spiritual advisor, I have stood next to eleven different men as the state took their lives. I held their hands in their final hours. I prayed with them. I walked with them to that gurney. I have seen the sterile room. I have uttered final words that never seem adequate to the moment. I have watched life drain from a human body in the name of justice. And I have seen the faces of victims’ family members as they witnessed those deaths. Some sought closure and left burdened. Some sought peace and left troubled. The grief they carried into that room was still there when they walked out…most of the time even heavier than it was before, now complicated by having participated in another killing, however indirectly.
The violence of the death penalty does not honor the dead. It compounds the tragedy.
Dennise Hayslip’s Legacy Lives on in Wade Hayslip
I hope this letter doesn’t anger you. I know you may see it as an insult, as someone who hasn’t walked in your shoes trying to tell you what you should want. That is not my intention. I simply cannot stay silent when I see our society preparing to commit another killing and calling it justice.
Your mother raised you to be the first in your family to go to college. She raised you to look out for others, to show compassion even when it’s difficult. She raised a man who has built a life, a family, a future despite unimaginable pain. That is her legacy…not Wednesday’s execution.
As you witness what happens in Texas’ death chamber, I hope you will remember her lying beside you in your bed, choosing love over anger. I hope you will remember her tears of joy at your compassion. I hope you will ask yourself what she would truly want…not as a victim, but as the woman who raised you to be kind and compassionate.
Your mother deserves to be remembered for who she was, not for how she died. Her memory should not be bound to the machinery of death.
The Real Question: What Will Happen to Wade Hayslip?
Honestly, I expect this execution to happen, and I also expect you to walk out of that prison after. But who will you be after Charles Thompson is dead? My suspicion is…a little less of a person than you were before he was executed.
With profound respect for your loss, aware of the phantom of closure and in prayer for you on the difficult road that you face ahead,
Dr. Jeff Hood
+I can be reached at [email protected]
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