It was a typical morning two decades ago when I opened the Washington Post and was confronted with the stark headline: my acquaintance, Stephen Peter Morin, had been executed by the state of Texas for capital murder. The sentence felt jarring, not because it was inaccurate, but because of the complex and disturbing layers of memory it unearthed.
Firstly, “friend” is a term that feels grotesquely inappropriate now. Morin was a master of manipulation, a deeply malevolent individual. If the concept of hate holds any meaning for me, it is directed squarely at him.
Secondly, I knew him as Ray Constantine. Stephen Peter Morin was the name he was born with, the name that became synonymous with brutal crimes. For several months in 1981, “Ray Constantine” was a near-constant presence in my life, and in those moments, his true darkness was expertly concealed beneath a veneer of affability.
“Ray Constantine” cycled up to my mother’s house one day, inquiring about apartment rentals. My mother, despite now being with a wonderful partner, had a history of remarkably poor judgment when it came to men. True to form, it seemed within a day, “Ray” had moved in.
He was a smooth talker, closer in age to me than my mother. She had endured a series of disappointing relationships with increasingly unsavory characters, the most recent ending just weeks prior. Fueled by the intense self-righteousness of a 21-year-old witnessing his mother’s self-destruction, I confronted her, accusing her of naivete and setting herself up for another inevitable heartbreak.
Her response was firm: he was staying, and I needed to accept it. And so I did. “Ray,” in an attempt to ingratiate himself, secured me a job – a precious commodity in Buffalo in 1981. He fabricated his way onto a union painting crew and vouched for me. I joined the union, and we worked together throughout that summer.
Three memories from that summer are particularly vivid amidst the tedium of painting, hauling tar, and a story about a ladder that I will recount later.
The first was traveling to Washington D.C. to participate in the massive march supporting the striking air traffic controllers. It was a moment of solidarity and collective action, a stark contrast to the individual darkness that would later define “Ray.”
The second was discovering that my mother had ordered my birth certificate, intending to give it to Ray so he could forge identification under a different alias. I intercepted it, an act of chance that likely altered the course of my life and potentially prevented unimaginable harm.
The third memory is from just before Ray and my mother embarked on a cross-country trip in her van. On a humid evening, I visited her house – having moved out to my own place with my union earnings – and found Ray in a sweltering van, attaching carpet to the walls and ceiling. He struggled to hold the heavy carpet in place while securing it with rivets. I offered my help, unknowingly assisting in soundproofing a mobile chamber of horrors.
My mother and Ray traveled from city to city – San Francisco, Denver, Las Vegas, eventually reaching Texas. In each location, Ray would vanish for a day or two, only to reappear with a nervous demeanor, urging they leave immediately. My mother eventually realized he was engaged in illicit activities. He abandoned her in Texas, and she contacted the police.
A tense period followed in Texas that December, after Ray learned she had reported him but before his capture. He was eventually apprehended, tried, and pleaded guilty to capital murder, even requesting the death penalty. On March 13, 1985, after a torturous 45 minutes where the executioner struggled to find a viable vein – an ordeal that drew criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union – Stephen Peter Morin was executed by the state of Texas for the murder of Carrie Marie Scott, whose car he was attempting to steal.
In a grim twist of fate, Scott’s death, while horrific, was arguably less brutal than the suffering inflicted on some of Morin’s other victims. He raped and tortured some of them, actions that chillingly may have occurred within the very van I had unknowingly helped soundproof.
The van I helped him soundproof. The banality of evil.
Morin’s final words, as recorded by the state of Texas, are a disturbing display of manipulative sociopathy: “Heavenly Father, I give thanks for this time, for the time that we have been together, the fellowship in your world, the Christian family presented to me [He then named personal witnesses]. Allow your holy spirit to flow as I know your love has been showered upon me. Forgive them for they know not what they do, as I know that you have forgiven me, as I have forgiven them. Lord Jesus, I commit my soul to you, I praise you, and I thank you.”
Using a veneer of Christian piety to mask amoral, murderous violence? Perhaps “Ray” was simply ahead of his time. With a more sophisticated PR strategy, he might have thrived in certain political circles.
I refuse to entertain the notion that a single word he uttered was truthful. He sent me a letter from death row, bizarrely claiming I was the closest thing he had to a brother. I destroyed it after a single reading. Who attempts to steal their “brother’s” identity for their criminal endeavors? He even claimed to his attorney to have no memory of killing anyone. But the fake IDs, the soundproofed van, the frantic departures from towns – these actions paint a clear picture of calculated and remorseless criminality. His theatrical embrace of religion was a transparent attempt to manipulate the devout within the Texas penal system, a cynical performance for a captive audience.
If anyone ever deserved the death penalty – and I still grapple with the ethical implications of capital punishment – Stephen Peter Morin was that person. The world is undeniably better off without him, and I find a measure of cold comfort in the thought that his fabricated hopes of divine forgiveness dissolved into the finality of non-existence. My only regret is that he wasn’t stopped before he could claim the lives of Janna Bruce, Sheila Whalen, Carrie Scott, and potentially thirty or more other young women. Even two decades later, the memory of Stephen Peter Morin still evokes a visceral rage.
And yet…
A forty-foot wooden ladder is inherently unwieldy. Position it against a house on ground saturated from days of summer rain, and its instability becomes alarmingly apparent. Ascend that ladder with a two-gallon bucket of paint, and if it’s leaning against freshly primed clapboard three stories high, the risk of slippage escalates dramatically. Years of navigating precarious terrain in the western wilderness have dulled my fear of heights, but on that particular morning, thirty-five feet above the ground on a heavy ladder sliding incrementally to the right against slick clapboard, I froze. I was paralyzed, watching my slow-motion descent into potential disaster.
And “Ray” saw. He moved from the yard to the third-floor window with impossible speed. Speaking with a calm that defied the urgency of the situation, he convinced me I was not actually afraid. His words, strangely, instilled a sense of resolve. He persuaded me that I could grab the ladder’s rails – which were usually almost impossible for me to lift even in ideal conditions – and jump the base back to the left, restoring its vertical alignment.
And, impossibly, I did it. I heaved back on the ladder, slamming it back into a vertical position. Now within reach of the window, I helped Ray secure the ladder to the window frame as sobs of relief wracked my body. I descended on legs that trembled with delayed adrenaline. Ray met me at the bottom, enveloping me in a bear hug, preventing me from collapsing to the ground.
This memory, juxtaposed with the horrifying reality of Stephen Peter Morin, creates a disturbing dissonance. It is a stark reminder that evil can wear a human face, that acts of apparent kindness can be interwoven with profound darkness. The summer I spent with “Ray Constantine” remains a chilling testament to the deceptive nature of evil, and the enduring impact of encountering a man who would become synonymous with the name Stephen Peter Morin.
