A mother's fight

COEUR d'ALENE - Connie Pangallo wrestles each year with the idea that the man who brutally raped and murdered her daughter, Tammie Jo Baril, could be released from a federal penitentiary before serving his full life sentence.

Annual parole and clemency hearings for the confessed killer, Lavonte Pope, are like a slap in the face to the Spirit Lake woman, whose grief has been compounded over the years since the 1988 murder, by a lack of trust in a judicial system Pangallo has felt let down by time and again.

"I'm not the one that committed the crime. I'm the one that's still trying to seek justice for my daughter, and they're the ones that make it so difficult," Pangallo said.

She learned of her daughter's death when a soldier showed up at her home in 1988. Just a messenger, he had no details other than the fact that the 20-year-old had been murdered.

Pangallo's experience as a grieving mother quickly became a bureaucratic nightmare as she had to fight for information about her daughter's death, for her daughter's personal belongings (which she never received), and for notification of Pope's parole hearings.

Pfc. Tammie Jo Baril was stationed at Fort Clayton, in Panama, when she died.

Pope, her killer, was also a U.S. Army private. Pope's assignment on the night of the crime was to maintain the safety and security of the barracks where Baril lived. Pope confessed to raping and stabbing Baril after entering her room while she was sleeping. He used a stolen room key. Pope was caught two months later, after he raped another soldier at knifepoint.

Pope spent the first 15 years of his sentence in the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., and is now confined in the high-security U.S. Penitentiary in Victorville, Calif.

Another parole hearing is planned next month in Victorville, but the hearing date has been changed several times, and Pangallo is again frustrated.

"I just want to show up every now and then and let him (Pope) and them (the parole board) know I'm not going away," Pangallo said. "I should be able to do that."

It's hard for Pangallo and other family members to make travel arrangements and attend hearings if they don't know when the hearings are going to be held.

Pangallo received notification on Aug. 8 that a Sept. 1 hearing was scheduled. She was then notified the hearing was tentatively set for the week of Sept. 13. She next received a phone message that the hearing would take place on Sept. 13. The next news she received was that the date was set for Sept. 16.

On Thursday, the automated online victims notification system still showed a parole hearing date of Sept. 1 for Pope.

Family members had already booked flights to California based on the Sept. 13 date.

"As it is now, I have plane tickets, and I'm not even going to be able to be there," said Dana Shapland, Pangallo's sister-in-law and one of her greatest family supports.

Shapland said they can't afford to spend the money per ticket to change the flight date.

"We tried to talk to the examiner to see if we could get the date changed, but they won't call back," Shapland said.

They received a call from the U.S. Parole Commission representative who said the date can't be changed.

Pangallo reached out to members of Idaho's Congressional Delegation for help.

Aides from Sen. Mike Crapo's office and from U.S. Rep. Walt Minnick's office are looking into the situation.

"As a member of the Victims' Rights Caucus, I am dedicated to helping mothers like Mrs. Pangallo and other victims. My office heard about the tragic case today and we spoke with Mrs. Pangallo," said Minnick on Tuesday. "We have been in touch with the federal prison system and the Army Clemency and Parole Board and we are going to keep working on this until Mrs. Pangallo has the answers she deserves. No mother should have to live through what Mrs. Pangallo has endured and I don't want our federal bureaucracy to add to her pain."

Minnick's office is looking into whether Shapland and other family members can attend the hearing by video conference. Shapland received a call from the parole commission letting her know a video conference might not be possible.

Pangallo is going no matter what.

"I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure he stays right where he is," she said.

It's not the first time Pangallo has had to fight this fight.

In 1997, she collected 10,000 signatures on a petition to keep Pope behind bars. That was after discovering a month too late, that a parole hearing had already occurred. Pangallo never received notification.

She has traveled to Washington, D.C., and to Seattle to plead her case at different times.

In the first years after her daughter's death, Pangallo made several pleas for her daughter's belongings, but they never came.

Then, two years after the murder, a box arrived from Panama with no letter or other explanation.

It contained items stained with Tammie's blood, likely evidence from the trial.

Pangallo was horrified by the Army's insensitivity. She later learned that the barracks where her daughter's things were stored burned in a fire and all was lost.

Pangallo never received her daughter's dog tags.

Now that Pope has been in the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons, she's continuing to feel the insensitivity of bureaucrats.

"If they want to know where the system is broken and where it needs to be fixed, they need to get a hold of us victims, because we're the ones that know," Pangallo said. "If this is the way that they treat all the victims, I can see why the victims get discouraged and give up, and just not do it anymore. It takes a lot out of you to do this."

Susan Howley, director of policy at the National Center for Victims of Crime, said Pangallo's plight illustrates the importance of crime victims' rights.

"If your rights and interests are at stake, someone should honor that," Howley said.

"If you think the people in the system not going to be responsive, why would you report anything?"