Maureen Maher

Well, at first it was kind of a shock.

The last time I had seen him, he was the skinny 16-year-old boy.

The person I saw walking through the door was a 40-year-old man.

It would be the first of dozens of visits.

This video, taken by a newspaper photographer, captured one of their more mundane conversations.

What made you want to be a lawyer?

Actually, when I was little, you know what I really wanted to be?

A librarian.

She's written about those experiences in a recent book called Change of Heart.

Not yet.

Has he ever told you what happened that night?

Oh, the first thing he wanted to do was to tell me.

This is his explanation.

He went to do a burglary, wanted to wait for the homeowners to come home, wanted to take their wallets and their car, and they saw him.

And that's when he said, I knew I just, I had to finish it.

I had to finish it.

Yeah, and when he said that word, it, I thought in that first meeting, oh my God, that it you're talking about is my sister and her husband.

And that's been part of the reward and the blessing of this journey of these visits with him is having my sister and her husband transformed from an it to these people.

In June of 2012, a few months before Jean's letter to Biro arrived, there was a major U.S.

Supreme Court decision deeming mandatory life sentences for juveniles as cruel and unusual punishment.