M. Gessen

I honestly don't know if repair is in fact possible, but I do know that your only chance of it is to start by acknowledging what you did.

I know I told you in the past that I was starting to have some doubt about your guilt.

This was true at the end of our series of conversations.

Then I went back over the evidence, listened to all the tapes made by the undercover agent...

They leave no doubt, no room for interpretation.

Your continuing to insist that this isn't so comes across as what it is, lying.

And lying, in the end, shuts off communication and precludes compassion.

I have a friend who has spent many years, her whole life in fact, thinking about people who have committed horrible crimes.

Her own mother was sentenced to life in prison when she was a baby, so when I say her whole life, I mean it.

She told me some things that I find very useful in thinking about you.

That sometimes people do truly terrible things, and this includes people in our families.

People who in some way or another will always be connected to us.

And that people do these terrible things when the noise in their heads gets unbearable.

I think I can imagine the noise in your head.

How stuck you felt.

How it seemed to you that any way out was justifiable.

When I think about it, I do feel compassion.

Perhaps other members of our family can come to see this too.

But again, this would have to begin with honesty on your part.

That's the end of my letter.