An estranged husband with a violent temper guns down his wife, Kelli Alexander, 35, and the friend who took her in, April Wheeler, 29. A heartsick community cannot even ask the somewhat comforting questions.

We can't ask, why didn't she just leave him?

We can't ask, why didn't she involve the police?

We certainly can't ask, why didn't anybody help?

"She did every single thing right," said Jane Aiken, Washington University Law School professor and a member of the Missouri Battered Women Clemency Coalition. "I can't imagine her doing anything better."

And yet, Kelli is dead.

After years of abuse, she had taken out a restraining order. She and her three children had moved in with April and Mark Wheeler and their two children. Then a few days before the couple were to appear in family court, John C. Alexander gunned down his wife on the way to a Lenten fish fry. Then, he killed Wheeler. A high-speed chase ended, fortunately, with only John Alexander's own death as his SUV took flight off Highway 40.

Ten years ago, Michelle Hendrickson couldn't imagine doing anything better. For 14 years she was brutalized, dangled from a rooftop, threatened with a hunting knife and struck so powerfully she suffered a miscarriage. Like Kelli, Michelle left home. Several times, the graduate of Mercy High School fled. Every time, Rodney Hendrickson found her and threatened to kill her if she didn't return. Finally, when Michelle couldn't imagine doing anything better, she did the unimaginable.

On a fall day in 1994, the 37-year-old food-service worker and mother of four went to Kmart and bought a 12-gauge shotgun. She hid it under the mattress. Several days later, after Rodney tied her to the bed, beat her face black and blue, raped her and fell asleep, she slid the shotgun from under the bed. As the news accounts bluntly put it, "Michelle Hendrickson shot her husband as he slept."

Michelle Hendrickson had never committed a crime in her life. She is serving a 15-year sentence at the women's prison in Vandalia.

Ruby Jamerson couldn't imagine doing anything better. Ruby was raised with strict religious beliefs that demand a woman stay with her husband, no matter what. Ruby's family knew of the beatings - he kicked her and cracked her ribs, hit her in the head with a skillet if food wasn't to his liking - but her family did nothing, reasoning, "This was business between a man and wife." On the last day of that man's sorry life, Horace Jamerson beat the family dog with a wooden hanger, then turned on their daughter. When Ruby intervened to protect her daughter, Horace screamed, "I'm going to teach you like this damn dog!" He beat Ruby until the hanger broke. Then he got another hanger.

Ruby Jamerson did the unimaginable. She offered her son, 18-year-old Antonio Smith, money to kill his stepfather. Smith also had been abused by Horace Jamerson. That night, he stabbed his stepfather to death as he slept in his north St. Louis County home.

Ruby Jamerson had never committed a crime in her life. She is serving life without parole at Vandalia.

There are at east eight other women stuck in Missouri prisons, women so physically and psychologically mauled they believed their only choice was kill or be killed. The coalition has been fighting for their clemency for more than four years.

Aiken found Kelli Alexander's situation "remarkably similar" to that of the women murderers.

"A vast majority were in the process of leaving," she said, a time when violence often escalates. Most of the women were pushed over the edge by the danger posed to their children.

In the past 10 years, Hendrickson has left prison a few times - in shackles to be handcuffed to a hospital bed and receive chemotherapy for breast cancer. Her four children, all under 12 at the time of the shooting, will be 18, 20, 21 and 24 when their mother is released, if she makes parole.

Ruby Jamerson has served 15 years of her life sentence. She is 46 now and has high blood pressure and diabetes. Ruby and Michelle are living hard, sad lives. But unlike Kelli Alexander, Ruby Jamerson and Michelle Hendrickson are alive.

If we knew then what we know now, would we begrudge Kelli Alexander buying a 12-gauge shotgun at Kmart?

E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 314-340-8383