PLEASE HELP STACEY LANNERT!

PLEASE HELP STACEY LANNERT!
Following is the letter I wrote and mailed to:

Govenor Matt Blunt
Office of the Govenor
Room 216 State Capital Building
Jefferson City, MO 65101

PLEASE write to the Govenor of Missouri and ask for clemency for Stacey. Thank you all! Lori

ALSO: If anyone has a mailing address for Stacey's public defender attorney: Ellen Flotman would you please post it here? thanks

________________________________________
June 29, 2008

Honorable Govenor Matt Blunt
Office of the Govenor
Room 216 State Capital Building
Jefferson City, MO 65101

Dear Honorable Govenor Blunt,
I am a 52 year old, single woman living in upstate New York. I consider myself to be intelligent and very community minded. I vote, believe in God and always try to do the right thing. I worked for many years for the town, village and school system as a recreation director and unfortunately got to see many abused and neglected children, but nothing like this.
I have been trying my hardest to ignore it all, but my conscience has not let me rest since I became aware of the injustice of this horrifyingly sad and unfair story.

I ask for your patience as I am going to try my best to give you the true story so that you can form an opinion based on the facts. I am sure that you have access to more information about the case. I hope that in my re-telling I do not unintentionally give incorrect information. I am not writing this to deceive but to ask, no to beg you for your consideration and help. So, my aim is to give you as accurate an account of it as I possibly can.

Sir, I cannot get this out of my head, hopefully writing this to you and putting it down on paper will help. I just felt that I had to do something to try and help this woman after seeing her story on WE TV during an episode of Women Behind Bars on June 17 of this year.
I took notes during the entire broadcast not knowing at the time what I was going to do with any of the information I wrote down, just that I had to do something.

Stacey Lannert was a beautiful, tiny, sweet, little blonde girl who was
abandoned by her mother at age 12 and left with her younger sister, Christy to live alone with their extremely abusive father. Her mother saved herself by escaping, leaving her small daughters there to deal with him all alone.
From age 9 to age 18 Stacey was repeatedly raped, held down or tied up and brutalized, sodomized, urinated on, physically and emotionally beaten, spit on by this man, verbally abused with language and objects in a way that no child should ever experience from anyone in life let alone from her own father.
While she was being raped, sodomized, beaten, neglected, urinated on, spit on, and taunted with death day after day, week after week, year after year by this man who called himself her father, no one helped her.

It seems that Mr. Lannert had replaced Stacey's mother with his oldest daughter who was just a little girl at the time. If the mother couldn't stand it and left can you imagine what Stacey was left to endure?
Unlike her mother, Stacey didn't run or leave. Her mother didn't want her and she had no where else to go. Besides, she had a baby sister to keep him away from.

No one stepped in to save her either. She stayed and suffered horrifying
damage to every aspect of her life and every inch of her little body. She stayed and hoped it would get better. She stayed and protected her younger sister, Christy. Even as a very young child she had this responsibility on her tiny shoulders. She knew she did not want Christy to go through what she did.
Stacey's youth, her innocence, her hopes, dreams, body and life were destroyed bit by bit, piece by piece, act by horrible act every day by a father she loved. A father who brutalized not only her self esteem and her sense of right and wrong but also her tiny little body and female organs. I cannot imagine the living hell that this child experienced at the hands of this monster and in front of her baby sister. I would not want to imagine it.

The life that she lived for 9 long years up to age 18 is one of horror from the constant attacks and physical and emotional pain and suffering heaped upon her by her father. She had to go to save her own life but knew what leaving her little sister behind meant would happen to Christy. So she left and for 3 short months the brutalization stopped. It stopped for her but began for Christy.

Stacey shot her father with his own rifle (the one he had used to threaten her so many times with), killing him when she was 18 years old after Christy (14 at the time) told her that he was physically abusing her now that Stacey had left the house. The rifle was sitting by his chair where it always was when she grabbed it and she shot him twice.

On October 30th of 1992 Stacey was found guilty of 1st degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. She is currently serving her time at the Women's Eastern Reception & Diagnostic Correctional Center in Vandalia, Missouri. She is a 34 year old grown woman now and a model prisoner. She trains dogs for an organization called C.H.A.M.P. Stacey has done her best to accomplish some good things, even from prison and against all odds.

A 1998 petition for clemency for Stacy was denied by the then Govenor of Missouri.

Stacy has spent 17 years in prison for stopping a man who brutalized her, her mother and her little sister. Mr.Lannert had already imprisoned Stacey and destroyed her childhood, her body, her life and future, even before she finally shot him.

She has paid and paid since the age of 9 for things that were not her fault and were beyond her control. If I were Stacey and had to endure what she had endured I would have done the same thing, but sooner.

Honorable Govenor Blunt, I read your column of July 20, 2007 titled "A Safer Place for Missouri Women and Children" and cried. If ONLY your legislation had been in place for Stacey. Maybe her mother would have stayed and used it to deal with her father. Maybe her mother would have taken both girls with her and if he followed used it to keep him away from all of them. There are a lot of maybes. It's too late for speculation about that now.

But it's not too late for Stacey to have a small part of a normal life as a free woman, something that she has never really known. She has more than paid her debt to society although society could never repay her for what was stolen and molested from her. There is no amount of money that could restore her childhood innocence, spirit or body.

Govenor Blunt, I am begging you to reconsider clemency for Stacey Lannert.

I have never met her but I don't have to to know that it is a huge
injustice for her to sacrifice her entire life after all that she suffered and survived at the hands of this man whose brutalization and humiliation she endured for so long and at such a very young age.
As a little girl she paid dearly for something that was not her fault. Her father stole her childhood, her body, and everything else she had. Her mother, knowing what was going on, never stopped him or got the two little girls out of there. She left her there with him and his attacks became more violent and frequent.

The question now is, will Mr. Lannert's murder 17 years ago steal the rest of Stacey's life from her? Ironically then he will have taken her entire life away from her.
Only you have the answer, Govenor Blunt.
Stacey has been serving a life sentence since the age of 9.

She lost everything to this man. Now, after all these years in prison, she deserves a chance at something she has never known. The chance to have a small part back of what was stolen from her by her father, her mother and anyone else who knew and did nothing to help an innocent child, a tiny victim. Like so many victims who die everyday from abuse or commit suicide because they cannot handle the trauma.
Stacey Lannert lost everything that we take for granted and has paid her debt to society for what happened many times over.

Govenor Blunt will you please help Stacey Lannert?

Thank you so much, for your time and consideration of all that I have written, I hope to hear from you.

With highest regard,

Lori XXXXX
XXX X. XXXXXXXX XX
XXXXXXXX, NY xxxxx