Life and death
One morning twenty years ago this month, I opened the front section of the Washington Post and read that my friend Stephen Peter Morin had been executed by the state of Texas for capital murder.
There are two reasons that that sentence, while accurate, felt awkward to write.
First reason: it has been a long time since I thought of Morin as a friend. He was a twisted, manipulative and malevolent person, and if I hate anyone in the world or out of it I hate him.
Second reason: I knew him as Ray Constantine.
But Morin was his real name, and for a number of months in 1981 I spent just about every day with him, generally enjoying his company.
“Ray Constantine” rode up to the front porch of my mother’s house on his bicycle one day to ask whether she knew of apartments he could rent. Her current partner is one of my favorite people in the world, but my mother had phenomenally, staggeringly bad judgment in men in those days: by that evening or the next, it seemed, he had moved in with her. (read more @ Creek Running North)
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Chris Clark, you and your sicko mother Rita Xavier had to know what a disturbed person Morin was. I don’t buy for one minute that you were not aware of this. You seem to be enjoying your celebrity telling Your side of this story. I was one of his victims and don’t buy for one minute that there were not incidents prior to your mother’s trek across the county in which you and she did not notice his violence etc… It is inconprehensible that your selfish and manipulative mother did not Know exactly what he was doing and assist him in every way. You also had to have clues as they made their way through 8 states in a soundproofed van, that something wasn’t right while crimes pile up in each state. The fact that your mother got away with it all and finally turend him in is disgusting. He was so successful with Help from people like you and your mother. I find that disturbing and now you brag about your involvement. Many women would not have been raped or killed if you had dropped a dime on them or your mother had not been helping him all the way. She Knew and I feel should have done jail time for her willing participation and support of Stephen Morin’s killing spree. She will have to answer to God and you should be ashamed for not doing somehting when you knew.