Parents Who Forgave Their Daughter's Killer: It 'Frees Us'
By: NBC News
Updated: January 7, 2013
After their daughter was murdered in a fit of rage by her fiancee in 2010, a Florida couple decided to do the hardest thing possible - forgive him.
Instead of pushing for a life sentence for their daughter's killer, Andy and Kate Grosmaire chose to pursue a process called restorative justice, which they learned about after a church friend referred them to an Episcopal priest who works in the Florida prison system. An alternative to a criminal trial, restorative justice gathers the families of both parties, the accused, and law enforcement in the same room to talk about the crime and determine how best to repair the damage done.
The Grosmaires met with Conor McBride, who had admitted to police that he had shot their daughter, Ann Grosmaire, with his father's shotgun on March 28, 2010, after two days of arguing with her. McBride's parents were also part of the process, which began while Ann was still on life support for four days after being shot before she died.
The Grosmaires appeared on TODAY Monday to speak to Savannah Guthrie about making the decision to forgive their daughter's murderer, and the McBrides joined the interview from their home in Tallahassee, Fla.
"I felt like my daughter was asking me to forgive Conor, and I just told her I couldn't, and there's just no way I could,'' Andy Grosmaire told Guthrie. "At the end I said, 'I'll try.' Later on in that week, on Thursday, I really felt like my daughter was joined with Christ, and that he and her were asking me to forgive. And I just had never said no before to them, so I wasn't going to say no this time. It was just an uplifting of joy and peace.''
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