JACKSON — Before the anguish got too strong and she had to be carried away as she wailed for her father, Tykecia Wilson looked into news cameras and delivered a message Thursday night.
“I don’t know if he’ll ever see this,” the 23-year-old said of her dad Marion Wilson, who was about to be executed by the state of Georgia’s needles. “But…”
She wanted to speak to him, though she knew it would soon be too late.
“I love you so much,” she said, breaking into tears and frequent shallow sobs, “and I’m gonna miss you so much, Daddy. I’m gonna miss your hug, your laugh, your touch, your scents, the feel of your hand on mine and you calling me your lamb chop.”
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Tykecia Wilson never met her dad on the outside. She was born a month after her father’s arrest for the murder of Donovan Parks. Parks, 24, was working two jobs and studying to become an inmate counselor so he could help people like the man Marion Wilson became.
On March 28, 1996, Parks left Bible study and went to buy cat food at a Milledgeville Walmart. There, he agreed to give a ride to Wilson and Wilson’s fellow Folk Nation gang member, Robert Butts. Minutes later, Parks was yanked by his necktie and pulled from the car and shot. He was killed by a single sawed-off shotgun blast to the head.
Outside the prison, Wilson’s daughter said her father had told her he was sorry for his role in the crime, but maintained that Butts was the shooter.
The case has always suffered from ambiguity in the evidence.
In 1997, Baldwin County District Attorney Fred Bright told the jury at Wilson’s trial that Wilson fired the shot to gain elevated status in the gang. A year later, in Butts’ trial, Bright told the jury Butts fired the shot for the same reason. Years later, Bright testified he believed Butts, who was executed last year, was the shooter. The prosecutor died in 2018.
Legally speaking, it didn’t matter who physically killed Parks. Georgia’s party to a crime law, similar to statutes in other states, makes anyone who participates in any way in a murder just as guilty as the killer. Wilson was in the car and, prosecutors claimed, yanked Parks’ necktie, then helped burn his Acura.
Credit: Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Credit: Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
“I don’t understand why these people are doing this,” Tykecia Wilson said, wearing a black “STOP EXECUTIONS NOW!” shirt. She didn’t understand why the Parks, Butts and Wilson families had to have loved ones taken from them. “Now there are three — not one but three — families that are hurting.”
Her voice cracked and she held onto one of her father’s longtime pastors.
“I apologize on his end — I really do, but this is not right,” she said, adding defiantly, hopefully: “My daddy is going to Heaven.”
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Would he see Donovan Parks there?
His brother Christopher Parks describes the victim as a young man worthy of Heaven if there ever was one. A gentle and caring man. A thoughtful and prayerful man. A man who died, ultimately, because he offered help to someone.
Christopher Parks went to the prison to watch Wilson die, just as he’d watched Butts die last year. He wanted to be in the death house, he said, because seeing Butts and Wilson dead was his and his family’s best chance at recovery after 23 years of grief. He did not care if Wilson apologized in the last moments. Parks just wanted him gone because of how his brother was treated: “Like he wasn’t worth anything.”
As word came Thursday night that the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn’t stop the execution, a group of protesters huddled around Tykecia Wilson in stinging silence, which was broken only when she began to scream for her father. “I want my daddy back!”
“Daddy!”
“Daddy!”
“Daddy!”
Echoing over the property, making bystanders cry and watch like they wished they could make her feel better, though they knew they couldn't.
A man scooped her up, placed her in an SUV and drove away.
In the death chamber, her father said: “I ain’t never took a life in my life.” He didn't apologize.
Earlier, he’d said his last words to Tykecia, and she’d said hers to him.
Both said: “I love you.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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