ALTHOUGH still clearly pained by the brutal murder of her only son who was shot and stabbed several times then dumped in a shallow grave some 30 years ago, 71-year-old Gloria Goode says she has forgiven Earl Pratt, the sole surviving perpetrator.

Shortly after Pratt was released from the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre on May 18, he immediately told reporters that he was sorry for the murder of Everton ‘Junior’ Missick.

“I was not man enough to say sorry then. Only time and experience can make you a man. I’m saying sorry now,” Pratt told the Sunday Observer.

Several days later, Goode said she hoped Pratt had forgiven himself for the murder, and prayed for God’s presence in his life.

She said she “was obligated” to forgive Pratt because of her faith in Christ – a faith that kept her going over the last 30 years.

“I truly forgive him, and I hope that he has forgiven himself. May God help him that he may change his ways and turn his life over to Him,” said Goode, who attends the Central Village Seventh-day Adventist Church on the outskirts of Spanish Town, St Catherine.

“My son is gone already, [holding ill feelings] will not bring him back,” she continued.

Goode told the Sunday Observer by phone on Monday that before the October 1977 murder of her son, she had always heard that he was “mixed up in bad company”.

” [Because of this] I sent him to Hanover and my husband gave him some material to sell there, but he came back.

“When he came back from country, I told him about a vision I got that four men came into the yard with a casket. I told him that he is going to die and he said, ‘Mama you a call down death pon mi’.”

About a week later, Goode said, she received a call at work to say that her son, who was 17 at the time, was killed and his body discovered in a shallow grave near the river along Little Lane in Central Village, where the family lived.

“The person said to me ‘I have something to tell you but promise that you won’t cry’,” Goode recalled.

“From that day I asked the Lord to give me strength, and here I am today,” she told the Sunday Observer.

“When I think about it. He would have been alive today if he never followed bad company,” said a reflective Goode.

“But I have forgiven, and I am moving on with my life,” she added.

While Goode said she could not say if her children had forgiven Pratt – who was once a friend of her murdered son – one of Missick’s sisters, who asked not to be named, told the Sunday Observer that she “could care less” what happen to Pratt.

“I was a child at the time [my brother was killed]; when I grew up I was told what happened. [Pratt] being released from prison is neither here nor there with me. My brother is gone, it will not bring him back,” she said.

Missick’s only child, a son, now resides in the UK, but could not be reached for a comment.

According to Central Village residents with knowledge of the incident, Missick’s death stemmed from gang warfare.

Pratt, who was 18 at the time, Ivan Morgan and six other youths killed Missick and buried him in a shallow grave that was uncovered by roaming dogs, they say. Missick was shot several times to the head.

Pratt and Morgan were arrested shortly after, tried and sentenced to hang in 1979. Police and gunmen later killed the other suspects, according to the residents.

Both men were taken off death row and their sentences commuted to life imprisonment in 1994, due to a landmark ruling by the Privy Council making it illegal to execute inmates who had been on death row for more than five years.

Morgan died of natural causes while in custody at the St Catherine District Prison.

After his release from the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre on May 18, Pratt, 48, publicly apologised to Missick’s family and thanked them for assisting with him being paroled.