MATHEWS FINDS REALITY HARD TO FACE

NEWS

With two life sentences and 154 years to serve, it's not likely, prosecutors say, that 21-year-old Heather Mathews will ever be a free woman.

Last week Mathews was spared from having to testify against her boyfriend, DeMarcus Smith, 18, about the six Christmas killings that became Dayton's worst shooting rampage.

Mathews had been sent from the Ohio Reformatory for Women at Marysville and was sitting in jail in Dayton, waiting to take the stand to detail how Smith either shot four people or watched as they were killed. It was the same story she'd told and retold in tearful testimony against her other co-defendants, Marvallous Keene, 20, and Laura Taylor, 17.

She's troubled by having had to turn on her former friends, and said she was most hurt by the idea of testifying against Smith. "I told him: 'Would you rather I die in the electric chair, or maybe one day get out even though I'll be old?' " Mathews said Thursday.

It was her first lengthy interview since the four were arrested for the slayings over Christmas weekend 1992. Mathews pleaded guilty to two aggravated murder charges and agreed to testify against the others in order to escape a jury trial that some say would surely have landed her on death row.

"He understood, and he said he would still be there for me," she said. "I told him I have feelings for him and they ain't gonna change just because he did what he did."

But in a last-minute decision, Smith pleaded guilty on Tuesday. He got four consecutive life terms and several other sentences that will keep him from a parole hearing for 124 years.

Afterwards, Smith sought permission from Judge Robert Brown to marry Mathews. The judge refused.

"I want to get married because I love him," Mathews said. "It will bring us closer emotionally, even though we are far apart physically."

Left Dayton for good
On Friday, a prison van carried Mathews from Dayton for the last time. She was accompanied to Marysville by the woman who has become her best jailhouse friend: Tanisha Nobles, 21, who was convicted on Feb. 11 of killing her 2-year-old son. She's in for 15 years to life.

"It worries me I might not ever see this place again," Mathews said, the night before her transfer. "My memories are in Dayton. I'm never going to see my mom again. I probably will never see my sister again, and that hurts."

While the families of the six victims rejoiced last week after the last killer was sentenced, Mathews says that she, too, is glad the trials are over.

"I want to get on with my life," she said, sitting in her green and yellow prison garb. "I'm just trying to get over this. I want to forget everything even though this will always be a part of me."

Mathews admits she hasn't fully accepted the fact that she'll probably spend the rest of her life in prison. She looks at women who've been in the system for 15 years and says she can't see herself in their shoes. She says the older women are "institutionalized," and have adapted to prison life.

"Women who've been in for a long time, they be sexual with other women and I can't see myself doing that. It doesn't matter how long I'm in here," she said.

Though court officials say Mathews will probably be dead before she's eligible for parole, Mathews talks about the possibility of going to the parole board in 20 years. Officials say she's deluding herself.

'No life at all'
But for Mathews, accepting her life sentence is like accepting death. "Life in prison is no life at all," she mourned. "I've been wanting to kill myself for the very longest time. I feel I have nothing to live for. I think about it every day."

Sometimes she talks to suicide specialists from Eastway Behavioral Heathcare. Other times, corrections officers offer her support. More often, though, it's the letters from Smith that convince her not to take her own life.

Mathews says she cries herself to sleep nearly every night. And while Marysville prisoners taunted her at first by calling her "The killer from Dayton," she admits they've quickly come to know her as a crybaby.

"I cry over can't have a baby, you know, can't see my mom, my sister. I think about how I miss the outside world. I think about DeMarcus and never being able to see him again," she says. "I'm not tough. I'm a punk. A punk is someone who cry, cry, cries."

Her life used to revolve around boys, drinking, drugs and running away from home, starting when she was 15. She stole cars and robbed with her boyfriends. She ran the streets and skipped school. She defied authority and thumbed her nose at her parents.

"I don't know why I wasn't happy, then," she said. "I didn't like to stay home. I didn't like authority and I didn't like people telling me what to do. I always did what my friends did, that was a problem."

And that is why, she says, that she wound up where she did.

Says she's not a killer
"People look at me like a killer and it hurts, because I'm not," she said. "I had a problem. I was with them people and I didn't go to the police when I know I should have."

Now her life is one of regimentation and somber routine: in bed by 8 p.m. most nights; no drinking; paying complete attention to prison guards, and making no moves without their approval.

"It's irritable and frustrating. Right now I need a drink," she says. "I think about it every day. Every day I think about sex. I think about it all the time, and I hate it."

To get by, she deals with her sentence one day at a time. She tries to be active by taking classes, playing sports. At Marysville, she's on volleyball and softball teams.

"I want to get my GED and go through college courses. I have enough time to get a lot of degrees while I'm in here," she said.

Cellmates with Taylor
She'll initially share the same prison cottage with her co-defendant, Laura Taylor. She says they get along and Taylor understands why Mathews had to testify against her.

"She was going to court one day and she stopped by my cell and said: 'I would have done the same thing if they would have gave me a deal,' " Mathews recalled. "We might as well get along - we're going to be together for a while."

She shakes her head at the thought of her and Taylor growing old together. Next Sunday, Mathews turns 22. She says she feels 40.

"I found a gray hair the other day. I was shocked. I pulled it out."

Her biggest regret? That she'll never have children.

"I feel like if I had a baby a long time ago, I wouldn't be here today 'cause it would have settled me down," she said.

Mathews' advice to teen-agers is to stay in school. "Try as best as possible to get along with your parents. They're pushing you hard because they love you," she said.

For now, Mathews is comforted that Nobles, an old acquaintance from high school, will be serving time with her. The two women like to dance and listen to the same music - gangsta rap. Mathews' favorite rappers are Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose music is often criticized as glorifying violence and misogyny.

While she occasionally chokes back the tears, Mathews holds onto a shred of hope. She writes in a daily journal and talks of writing a book about her life and how she wound up in prison. She's contemplating writing the governor and asking for a pardon.

But in the meantime, she ends each day dreaming of marrying DeMarcus Smith and asking a higher authority for her pardon.

"I always read Psalms 51," she says. "It's a prayer for forgiveness."\

CREDIT: JAN UNDERWOOD/DAYTON DAILY NEWS\