bottom, the shaft was only four feet high. We had to work on our knees. The darkness swallowed up our lights.'
Forced on his ninth birthday to begin working in the hole, he had finally escaped the confines of Crikside, Kentucky, when he was eighteen, urged by Miss Rebecca, the town's one-room-school teacher, who had nurtured his thirst for knowledge since his first day in school. In Chicago, he had been rescued by Archbishop Richard Rushman, founder of a home for runaways called Saviour House. It had been Stampler's home until he and his girlfriend decided to live together. It had turned out to be a disastrous idea. She had left and returned to her home in Ohio. Stampler had ended up in a sordid and lightless hades for the homeless called the Hollows.
VAIL: Aaron, did you blame Bishop Rushman for that, for having to live in that awful place?
STAMPLER: He never said a thing about it, one way or the other.
VAIL: Aaron, did you ever have a serious fight with Archbishop Rushman?
STAMPLER: No, sir, I never had any kind of fight with the bishop. We talked a lot, mostly about things I read in books, ideas and such.
But we were always friends.
VAIL: So the bishop did not order you out of Saviour House and you were still friends after you left?
STAMPLER: Yes, sir.
St Claire next studied the testimony relating to the murder itself. There were two versions of what happened: Aaron's, which had no details, and Medical Examiner William Danielson's, which was almost pornographic in its specifics.
VAIL: Now I want to talk about the night Bishop Rushman was murdered. There was an altar boy meeting scheduled, wasn't there?
STAMPLER: Yes, suh.
VAIL: Did any of the altar boys show up?
STAMPLER: No.
VAIL: Nobody else?
STAMPLER: No, sir.
VAIL: Was the bishop upset?
STAMPLER: No. He said he were tired anyway and we could meet another time.
VAIL: What did you do when you left?
STAMPLER:… I decided to go to the bishop's office and borrow a book to read. When I got there, I heard some noise - like people shouting - up in the bishop's bedroom, so I went up to see if everything was all right. When I got to the top of the stairs I took my shoes off and stuck them in my jacket pockets. The bishop was in the bathroom and then I realized what I heard was him singing. Then… I felt like there was somebody else there, beside the bishop, and that's when I lost time.
VAIL: You blacked out?
STAMPLER: Yes, sir.
VAIL: You didn't actually see anyone else?
STAMPLER: No, sir.
VAIL: Did you see the bishop?
STAMPLER: No, sir. But I could hear him. He was singing in the bathroom.
VAIL: You fust sensed that somebody else was in the room?
STAMPLER: Yes, sir.
VAIL: Then what happened?
STAMPLER: Next thing I knew, I was outside, at the bottom of the wooden staircase up to the kitchen, and I saw a police car and the… there was a flashlight flicking around, then I looked down… and uh, there was blood all over… my hands… and the knife… And… and then, I fust ran… don't know why, I just ran into the church and another police car was pulling up front and I ducked into the confessional.
VAIL: Aaron, did you have any reason to kill Bishop Rushman?
STAMPLER: No, sir.
VAIL: Did you plan his murder?
