Forgiveness rescinded
Ex-Jehovah's Witness tells of the murder of his two children and how he tried to make his peace with the man who killed them
By Leslie Scrivener
Toronto Star Faith And Ethics Reporter
THEIR mother, Kim, was the first to die. She was shot in the face.
Her estranged husband, Jeff Anderson, ejected the empty shell and turned the shotgun on her two children - first killing Lindsay, who was 8, and then Juri, 10.
Juri held his sister in his arms, as if to shield her from what was to come.
Then, Anderson pointed the gun at Kim and shot her once more.
When he'd come to her apartment in Burnaby, B.C., an hour or so earlier, Kim had tried to calm him.
He said he had tried to follow ``Jehovah's way'' and to live up to her standards as a Jehovah's Witness woman.
Why had she spurned him?
Kim said she had failed at marriage twice and was ready to give up on it all together. He asked her for a hug. She refused and he pulled the trigger.
RON BULL/TORONTO STAR
JAMES KOSTELNIUK: ``I function, but in me there is a big darkness,'' says Winnipeg author of Wolves Among Sheep, which documents the last moments of his children's lives and the betrayal he felt after trying to forgive their murderer.
Anderson left a suicide note, but he feared he was too weak to kill himself. He was.
He placed the gun on the kitchen table, walked out the door and was met by the police who had surrounded the building. He fell to his knees.
``I don't deserve to live any more,'' he said.
In an interview with police, he blamed the Jehovah's Witness church and low blood sugar, but most of all Kim, for his depression and misery.
Later that day, Aug. 29, 1985, an RCMP officer knocked on Jim Kostelniuk's door in Winnipeg and asked if he was the father of Juri and Lindsay Kostelniuk.
His ex-wife and both children were dead, Kostelniuk was told. Their killer was in custody.
Anderson was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving three concurrent 25-year sentences, currently at William Head medium-security prison near Victoria, B.C.
``Inmates can look at the ocean and watch the killer whales. I have to ask: Is this punishment?'' says Kostelniuk, 54. For 15 years, he has been haunted by his children's murder. He obsessively sought answers to questions that tormented him:
How did Juri and Lindsay die? What would bring a man to kill children? Where is God in the death of a child? Did he have to forgive their killer to find peace himself?
The answer to the last question - clear as a pealing bell - is ``no.''
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As if purging the demons pursuing him, Kostelniuk has written a deeply moving book, Wolves Among Sheep (HarperCollins), describing his years in the Jehovah's Witness fold, his life with and without his children, the last moments of their lives and the years in which he corresponded with their killer.
It is also a chilling story of betrayal, how a heart-broken man, driven by the best intentions, was misled and manipulated by a calculating criminal.
``I function, but in me there is a big darkness. At times, I'm desperate,'' says Kostelniuk, who has been working as a bus driver in Winnipeg and plans to retire soon to Mexico.
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Kostelniuk was about to turn 15 when he officially became a Jehovah's Witness in July, 1961. With his gentle, pleasant manner, he was successful in the door-to-door evangelizing that the church requires.
As the years passed, though, he was feeling overwhelmed by the demands of the church and, after marrying Kim in 1973, by the rifts it caused in his marriage.
He became increasingly critical of Witness teaching - especially after the end-of-the-world predictions for 1975 failed to materialize - and left the church in 1978.
In turn, he was ``disfellowshipped'' by the church and he and Kim separated.
Anyone who disagrees openly with church teaching is disfellowshipped, as are ``fornicators, adulterers, drunkards and persons guilty of other immoral practices,'' writes James Penton in his book, Apocalypse Delayed, The Story Of Jehovah's Witnesses (University of Toronto Press).
``It's a terrible threat, because you lose all hope of everlasting life,'' Penton explains.
``You are eternally damned.''
A professor-emeritus of history and religious studies at the University of Lethbridge, he was a fourth-generation Jehovah's Witness who left the church in 1981, taking 80 others with him.
Kostelniuk says his disfellowshipping led his ex-wife to deny him visiting rights with Juri and Lindsay. When they split in 1978, Kim told him that she and the children faced being shunned by associating with him.
``Let your family go, Jim,'' she'd said. ``It will be easier for everyone concerned if you don't struggle against Jehovah's will.''
Dennis Charland, director of public affairs for Jehovah's Witnesses of Canada, says that in the process of disfellowship, ``which some refer to as shunning, the spiritual ties are severed, but in no way are family ties severed.''
Charland adds that, for obvious reasons, a parent may try to limit children's contact with a family member who has been disfellowshipped.
But he stresses that ``this is not church doctrine, but a personal decision.''
Two days after the murders, Kostelniuk and his second wife, Marge, flew to a Witness memorial ceremony for Kim and the children at the Kingdom Hall in Burnaby.
And it was there that he felt the full force of his disfellowship.
He calls his reception by church members callous and inhumane. He was ignored by former friends and relatives.
``Witness after Witness refused to meet my gaze or return my greeting,'' he writes.
Kostelniuk's name was not included among the list of surviving relatives.
Later, in Winnipeg, he dug his children's graves.
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Kim was 18 when they'd married. Her father had offered to send her to veterinary college, but she'd turned down his offer, choosing instead to become a full-time pioneer evangelist.
It created a terrible tension in her life, Kostelniuk says. She was an intelligent young woman who wanted to please Jehovah by being a submissive wife, yet she rebelled against the authority of male elders whom she saw as intellectually beneath her.
``There is a terrible austerity, a constant imposition on your personal life,'' Penton says.
``If you were questioned by the elders, you could be constantly monitored and spied on. If you had a university education or an outstanding talent, you were picked at. The only thing you were supposed to be good at was knocking on doors and proselytizing.''
Penton and Kostelniuk have become friends.
``Jim had a real love of life and questioned authority and their teaching that the world would end in 1975,'' says Penton.
``He thought it was silly. This set his wife off . . . .''
After their divorce, Kostelniuk and Kim both remarried in 1981. He was lucky to find abiding love in his second wife. Kim, who was looking for a dedicated Jehovah's Witness role model for her children, made a disastrous choice in Anderson, a Texan whom she met on vacation in Hawaii.
He'd never held a job for more than a few months, lied about his financial situation and had a history of petty thievery, depression and suicide attempts.
The marriage was brief. They sought counselling from Witness elders, who urged Kim to be less headstrong and more of an obedient Witness wife, despite her descriptions of Anderson's physical abuse.
After a series of separations, Anderson bought a gun, which a caretaker found in his apartment and reported to Witness elders. They confiscated the gun and turned it over to the RCMP.
Anderson bought another gun, a semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun, which he sawed off and used to kill Kim and the children.
``The church just made a bad situation worse,'' says Kostelniuk. ``They were way out of their depth with Jeff Anderson. They didn't know anything about the criminal mind. They were buffaloed.''
In April, 1987, Kostelniuk received his first letter from Anderson. It was the beginning of a five-year correspondence that included details of the murders and Anderson's upbringing. For a time, Kostelniuk was receiving a letter every two weeks from Anderson, who begged forgiveness.
It was a tantalizing concept for Kostelniuk, who was tormented by guilt, feeling he hadn't done enough to protect his children, and consumed by the need to know the details of their last moments.
There was more: ``Anderson's request for forgiveness raised another hope. The meaninglessness of my children's murders had cast me adrift, spiritually, and I longed to believe in goodness again, to have a concept of God in my life.''
But over the years, something changed. Kostelniuk found Anderson talking less of remorse and more of his excitement over his comfortable new prison accommodations. He complained that it was difficult to relate to the other prisoners because they had a criminal mentality.
In 1989, a federal parole officer suggested to Kostelniuk that perhaps he was being used by Anderson to gain more privileges or earn early release.
Kostelniuk felt betrayed, believing that their letters had been a truthful and open exchange.
Just as disturbing was Anderson's suggestion that a future meeting between the two be recorded by the media.
That meeting, without media, ended with a bizarre comment from Anderson: ``You know, as for victims, I've got the best.''
By now, Anderson's opinions were being broadcast widely. He was now talking about prisoners' rights and saying there was no point in keeping someone like him in jail for a full 25 years.
Kostelniuk's correspondence - and his faith in the value of forgiveness - ended when he learned that Anderson had sexually molested his daughter.
``My forgiveness has been rescinded,'' says Kostelniuk. ``Forgiveness is the wrong thing for him. He would feel less guilty. He needs to feel more guilty.''
Kostelniuk remembers the joyful feeling he'd had - that he was doing the right thing - in his early correspondence with Anderson.
``We were going down this wonderful Christian path to get away from feelings of anger. The wish to kill this man was a terrible way to feel.''
In 1996, Kostelniuk wrote to the federal justice minister, arguing against the ``faint hope'' clause of the Criminal Code that allows murderers to apply for early parole after serving 15 years.
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Not surprisingly, Kostelniuk heard from the killer again. Why was he being so negative, Anderson asked, instead of focusing on the progress he had made and the good works he had done?
Most inmates are deceptive and manipulative and don't care about their victims, Anderson added.
Shortly after, Kostelniuk asked the authorities at William Head to ensure that Anderson not be allowed to communicate with him again.
``Now, I feel I'm doing the right thing,'' he says. ``It's not destructive, it's constructive.
``The only people who can forgive him are his victims. Forgiveness - that's up to God.''
http://king.thestar.com/thestar/editorial/life/20001015LFE05_BS-JEHOVAHS.html
Yakki Da
Kent
"The only difference between a fool and the JW legal department is that a fool might be sympathetic ."
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