Pubdate: Sun, 15 Jul 2001
Source: State Journal-Register (IL)
Copyright: 2001 The State Journal-Register
Contact:  http://www.sj-r.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/425
Author: Matt Buedel, staff writer

EX-INMATE TELLS HOW HE RESCUED HIS LIFE

Francis "Frank" Sherry's reputation 26 years ago was that of a drug-crazed 
murderer.

Saturday morning, however, Sherry ministered to inmates at the Sangamon 
County Jail, urging them to turn their lives over to God as he did 
following a heinous crime.

Sherry spent a weekend in early April 1975 taking PCP (the animal 
tranquilizer phencyclidine). In his drugged state, he came to believe that 
aliens had invaded Springfield and taken over all forms of life, he told 
the inmates.

He retaliated against the aliens on Monday, April 4, 1975, by going on a 
rampage, uprooting all the plants in his apartment and killing his cat. He 
then turned on people.

Wielding a hammer, he bludgeoned everyone in his path, stopping in what was 
then a Thrifty drugstore at Sixth Street and South Grand Avenue, where he 
smashed a jar and slit his wrists with a dull piece of glass.

He had assaulted a total of eight people. Two of his victims died, and one 
suffered permanent brain damage. "Like a boil coming to a head, I believe I 
was the one possessed," Sherry said.

Sherry told groups of inmates Saturday that his life changed when the widow 
of one of his victims came to visit him in jail. She gave him her dead 
husband's Bible, and lines of scripture recited by jail ministers began to 
stick.

Then came his time in the Menard Correctional Center, where Sherry 
continued some of his old ways, smoking marijuana and making bootleg 
alcohol. But in the end, Sherry said, scripture won out.

He ended up serving almost 13 years of his 30-year sentence.

Seven months before his release, a prison chaplain married Sherry and Ruth, 
a prison minister whom Sherry heard singing in the Menard prison years earlier.

Frank and Ruth Sherry have since ministered to more than 150 prisons 
throughout the country, but Saturday was the first time Sherry has returned 
to the Sangamon County Jail.

As he talked about his story and conversion to a life of God, Sherry's 
remarks were met with scattered declarations of "amen" from Bible-toting 
inmates. Sherry referred to all the men he talked to as "brothers," and all 
the women as "sisters."

When he invited the inmates from each group to bow their heads and join him 
in prayer, all but a few tightly clasped their hands together and closed 
their eyes.

One man cried as he stood and proclaimed that he and Sherry used to "shoot 
dope together," and he had wondered if they would ever meet again. Sherry 
didn't remember the man.

As roughly 20 men filed out of Sherry's first session Saturday morning, 
each paused to thank him or ask him to keep them in his prayers.

When the 10 women were leaving, one woman thanked Frank for his testimony, 
and both agreed "the hardest part is forgiving ourselves."

"When you come to talk to us, it's not like a drug counselor who has never 
done it is telling us to stop getting high," she said. "You know, you've 
been there."
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