Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette

Brother Jim Townsend visits with "my favorite girlfriends" in the lunchroom of St. Mary of the Assumption School where he works during the school's lunchtime. Townsend, now retired, lives at the Friary at the parish in the Herman section of Summit, Butler County. He is the subject of a new book telling of his troubled childhood, his murder of his wife, his life in prison, and his sentence commutation and acceptance as a Capuchin Friar.

Apart from the graying of age, Jim Townsend's face has changed little from the night in 1947 when a news photographer shot him being arrested for the murder of his young, pregnant wife in Ohiopyle. The handsome lines remain unchanged by 20 years in prison, 35 years as a Catholic friar and the more recent ravages of cancer and heart disease.

But his eyes are a different story. In the news photo, they glared hard and cold with rage and fear. Now, at 78, as he ministers to prisoners and to Butler County children in the brown robes of a Capuchin Friar known as Brother Jim, his eyes reflect the joy and compassion which many have come to recognize in him.

"This is about a miracle. ... He was totally depraved, yet the miracle is that God knew differently," said the Rev. Paul Everett, author of "The Prisoner," a recently published biography of Townsend from Paulist Press. "He is a walking demonstration of what hope is all about," Everett said.

Hope was scarce during Townsend's childhood in Bristol, Bucks County. His alcoholic father beat him constantly, and his mother died when he was 12. His rage led to a childhood spent in reform schools, orphanages and riding the rails as a hobo.

When he wasn't in trouble, there were glimmers of promise. He had a strong work ethic and loved classical music. But he was a wild animal in other ways. Sex, which he first had at 13, was never connected with love. And he didn't care who got hurt.

When he was 15, cleaning chicken coops in exchange for lodging, the landlord's daughter ridiculed him for being a dropout. In anger, he beat her up and tried to rape her.

He was sent to a prison for juveniles, where psychiatrists labeled him a dangerous sex offender. Released at 18 in 1946, he moved to Pittsburgh.

He worked in the supply room of Allegheny General Hospital, where he was smitten with a hospital maid, a sweet-faced blond orphan named Alice Moss.

"She was really pretty, and she had a heck of a smile on her face," Townsend recalled.

Alice spurned his advances, saying she would remain a virgin until marriage. He took it as a challenge. They went to movies, restaurants and concerts, and took long walks. He had intended to seduce her. Instead, they married May 10, 1947.

Nothing had been dealt with
Alice soon became pregnant. Then he was laid off. But they were offered a cabin in return for labor on an Ohiopyle farm.

At first, it was the honeymoon they never had. But the peacefulness didn't last long. Townsend, then 20, knew nothing about pregnancy. He couldn't understand why Alice started declining sex. He told her that mountain men were out to get them, thinking that fear would drive her back to him.

There was never any doubt that he shot 19-year-old Alice in the face with a deer rifle as she stood naked in a tin bathtub. But his motive remains shrouded in time, denial and remorse.

The first story he told police, and retold through most of his ministry, is that he grabbed his gun to fight some men who had roughed him up in a bar, and it fired accidentally when Alice tried to stop him. But he later confessed that he had fired to scare her into thinking that mountain men were attacking.

Some newspapers quote him telling police that he intended to fire past her. Others say he admitted shooting her in anger.

Everett, whose research forced Townsend to confront his own denial, believes he fired in rage at every person who had ever abused or abandoned him.

"Nothing had ever been dealt with earlier in his life," he said.

"She was six months' pregnant and didn't want to have sex 20 times a day. His conclusion was that she was pulling away from him like everyone else had. And he was not going to lose her."

Townsend says he never meant to kill her.

"I was going to fire next to her. Instead, I hit her. And I still suffer for that. Tonight I will see her as she laid in the tub and the blood," he said.

He was convicted of first-degree murder. Judge H. Vance Cotton, who sentenced him to life, excoriated the state for having released him at 18.

He arrived at Pittsburgh's Western Penitentiary in 1948. He was a troublemaker who awoke every night screaming from dreams in which Alice sat beside him with a young boy who asked, "Why, Daddy?"

His first sincere confession
After a decade, he decided to see if good behavior would get him transferred to minimum security Rockview Penitentiary in Bellefonte, Centre County, from which he intended to escape.

	Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette
	Brother Jim Townsend

He stopped fighting, became polite to guards and began to attend weekly Mass. He had no faith, but he made such a good impression that he was given a job in the chaplain's office.

In 1961, he received his transfer to Rockview. Again, he became the chaplain's aide.

The Rev. Richard Walsh, now long retired and living in Tyrone, had been assigned to prison ministry against his will, but came to view it differently. ....."The Lord called me," he said. In prison, he found souls abandoned by society, but waiting to be reclaimed by God.

"Father Walsh really became Jim's father," Everett said.

Townsend says he mocked Walsh by making up bizarre sins in confession.

"Some of the things I said, most priests would probably just shoot me out of pity. But I never heard him mad, he never raised his voice. He would always give me good advice and tell me to say three Our Fathers," he said.

One day, Walsh gave him a book that would change his life. "The Seven Storey Mountain" was the autobiography of Thomas Merton, a young atheist who became a Catholic and entered a Trappist monastery. When Merton realized the depth of his own sinfulness, Townsend felt Merton was describing him. And when Merton realized God's love for him, it became a revelation.

He forgot his plan of escape and made his first sincere confession. Then Walsh helped him recall everyone he had ever hurt. They prayed together that each would be healed from the harm he had done to them.

One night, the dream that had tortured him since Alice's death changed. Now Alice appeared smiling, and the little boy said, "I love you, Daddy."

At the time, it was possible for an inmate with a life sentence to apply for commutation. Townsend believed God wanted him at Rockview to help Walsh, but the priest insisted he apply.

On June 19, 1967, Walsh drove him out of prison. Townsend returned to Pittsburgh, where he worked as a handyman. He had dreamed of becoming a Trappist like Merton, but decided to explore the nearby Capuchins.

No money or honey but a boss
His inquiry sounded alarm bells for the Rev. Lester Knoll, the vocation director. Townsend passed psychological tests. Still, there were long talks, including a trip to the ruins of the cabin where Townsend had killed Alice. In a trash dump, they found a pitcher that had belonged to the newlyweds. It was pierced by a bullet hole. They brought it back and cleaned it up; a nun later decorated it with a ribbon and plastic flowers.

Townsend "was very open, very simple. It was clear that there really had been a major change," Knoll said.

He became a postulant in 1970 and belongs to the Capuchin Province of St. Augustine with headquarters in Lawrenceville.

"We received more from him than he received from us, with his simplicity, his openness and his prayerfulness," Knoll said.

"No money, no honey and I've got a boss upstairs" is how Townsend summarized his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience for Pat Mulligan, with whom he does prison ministry.

Mulligan had heard what she assumed was an urban legend about an ex-con Capuchin. When she met him at a retreat center, she insisted he expand his prison ministry beyond annual visits to Rockview.

She learned he could still change at 70, when she urged him to clean up his prison yard language. Knoll once told her that her greatest contribution to the Capuchins was getting Brother Jim to stop swearing.

But they were never words spoken in anger, she said.

"I've never seen him angry, not even close to it," she said.

Experience and humility make him an excellent minister to inmates, she said.

"I don't even know if he would recognize it as humility. He feels inferior. He is very humble about what he did, and, at times, ambivalent about telling the story. On one hand, he'll say that if he can help one person, it's worth it. On the other hand, it's so hard having all of your faults and failings exposed to the world. At times, it makes him very sad."

He cries every time he talks about killing Alice, she said.

"He cannot come to terms with the fact that he actually killed her. He'll talk about seeing her face when she died, and say, 'I was so dumb. I lost the most beautiful thing in my life through my actions,' " she said.

"He can't forgive himself. He says he has, but he can't."

Townsend lost his colon to cancer in the 1980s and suffered cardiac problems in the late 1990s. Knoll became convinced that his story had to be told. He recruited Everett, a retired Presbyterian minister.

It was excruciating for Townsend to dig into his past. For a year, he put off reading newspaper accounts Everett brought him of his arrest and trial. The old clippings showed he had been telling himself a lie about the shooting. And they revealed something else that drove him even deeper into remorse.

"When Paul Everett told me that we were going to have twins, I remember figuring to myself that now I'm guilty of three deaths," he said. Mulligan helped him grieve. She suggested he name the twins, and he christened them Alice and Jimmy.

Most of his days are spent at St. Mary Assumption Church in Herman, where he serves lunch to schoolchildren. He jokes with them, tells them God loves them and gives ice cream money to any who lack it.

Cherilayne Miller, school secretary, has told him things she would never share with a priest.

"When you tell Brother, you know he's in prayer at all times for your soul," she said.

The last time Alice appeared in his dream, her parting words were, "We're waiting for you."

Brother Jim is not sentimental about how their marriage would have fared if she had lived. "I think about it sometimes, but I think we would have been split. She would leave, or I would have. And I probably would have wound up in jail. I would have been stealing, and boom!"

Still, he thinks about seeing his family in heaven.

"One of the things I've said when I'm praying is, 'Lord, I'm not exactly sure how you rule that place. But if you have a place where you put kids, can I go there?' I'd get to talk to them and everything."