The Turning Point – Ricky’s Greatest Mistake

Introduction

I want to ask you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Proverbs chapter 1. Proverbs chapter 1, in just a moment we’ll take our study from that text. What I’d like to do this morning is begin by telling a story that a number of people in this audience have already heard before. So let me preface it with an explanation of why I want to do that. I want to retell this story because not too long ago somebody made a request that I go back and tell this story again and consider some of its applications in our lives. And when they made that request, it occurred to me that there are actually a number of people who weren’t here four years ago or so when this story was first told, and so it will be new to you.

And as well over the last four years, I’ve had opportunity to learn more about this story that I can share with you, even for those who’ve heard it before. And so I’d like to tell it again today. Actually, the material I’m going to present this morning, I’m going to be using in two weeks in Irving, Texas, at a special series for young people. And so if you don’t mind letting me warm it up with you this morning, no pun intended, that will be of help to me, and I hope an encouragement to you. The story I want to tell you is set in the small East Texas town of Haslum. And I suspect, other than Bob and Arlene, there probably aren’t too many people in this audience who have heard of Haslam.

It’s a little wide spot on the road up in the northeast part of the state, just right along the border with Louisiana, just across the river from Logansport. It’s one of those places in America that just sort of epitomizes small town life. It’s the kind of place where a guy might pull his truck up at the local convenience store, because you see most guys in Haslum drive trucks. That’s the way kind of town that it is. And he might leave the keys in the ignition and leave the motor running if he just had to run in real quick and get something. It’s the kind of place where people go to bed at night and they don’t worry about whether or not the doors are locked or not.

They don’t have to be concerned about those kind of things.

1. Carl Rinkel Brutally Murdered in Haslum

There was a young man in town named Carl Lincoln who owned a local grocery store. This was the last picture ever taken of him. His mother shared that with me. One Sunday morning he didn’t show up for work, as he typically did to open the store, so one of his employees was concerned and he went looking for him. He found him at his home where the night before he had been brutally murdered. You can imagine in a little town like Haslum that story just captured everyone’s attention immediately. It was the lead story in the local newspaper.

I visited Haslum about two or three years after the fact and went just across to Logansport and sat in the library and talked to the librarian for a while. Boy, she could still recall, although it had been several years, the vivid details of the ten days it took them to track these guys down. And how everyone in the town was just in fear until they found them. She said, in fact, I started locking my doors when I went to bed at night. But you know, sadly, this kind of thing, innocent people being brutally murdered, that’s all too common in our culture. Watch the evening news, folks, and you’ll find in larger cities like Orlando, it’s virtually a daily occurrence if it doesn’t occur multiple times on some given days.

2. A Request to Go See Him on Death Row

And so while the story of Carl Rinkel’s murder was front page news in Haslum, Texas, I suspect that probably none of us heard anything about it. I didn’t live too far from Haslum at that time, about 160 miles. I didn’t hear anything about it until much after the fact. I was involved in my first local work in the small town of Huntsville, Texas. I will tell you, because it is important to the story that Huntsville, if you don’t already know this, is the seat of the Texas prison system. There are actually at that time seven prison units that surrounded Huntsville and Walker County, including the Walls unit right in downtown Huntsville. That’s where they execute death row inmates. And at that time, the Ellis unit there in Walker County housed those inmates to await their execution.

While we were there late one evening, I got a phone call from a man in Oklahoma. I didn’t know him at all, and he didn’t know me, but some mutual friends had hooked the two of us up. And he explained that when he first began talking with me, and then he said, I have something I need you to do for me. After a long pause, he said, My son was just convicted a few weeks back of capital murder in Shelby County. And he said, they’ve sent him over to the Ellis unit out nearby you, where he is to await his execution. And he said, I was just hoping that you’d go see him. And that you’d try to talk to him and study with him and help him get his life straightened out.

Well, I’d like to stand here this morning and tell you guys how eager I was to go. And to do that, that would be a lie, because the truth was I was scared to death. I don’t know if you’ve ever visited a prison before, but it can be a bit of intimidating experience, as though going to death row in and of itself is not intimidating enough. You go out, there’s a large tower, and this ominous looking guard looks out carrying an automatic weapon, and that made me feel real good. Checked me over real good, checked out my ID, and then finally when they let me go in. I remember if I passed through these two gates, and then I closed the last one. There was this little placard on the back of the gate that said, No hostages beyond this point.

3. Ricky Wasn’t What I Anticipated

I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t look good, and it didn’t make me feel any more comfortable going in. But how do you turn down a request like that? I felt I had to go. And so I went to see this man’s son. And that’s when I learned about how Carl Rinkel was murdered. And met the man who murdered him. His name, as many of you know, was Ricky Blackman. I’ve got to tell you that Ricky wasn’t at all what I anticipated when I went to see him for that first time. I imagine, like a lot of you folks, I had some presuppositions about the kind of person that would commit a murder. The problem was, as we sat and visited for those first couple of hours and got to know each other, and I kind of heard his life story.

I’ve got to tell you that he just didn’t fit any of my preconceived ideas. He didn’t grow up in the inner city, surrounded by gang violence and murder, so that that kind of thing was just an ingrained part of his upbringing. He wasn’t raised in an abusive home by parents who who mistreated him. He wasn’t insane. I think had any of those things been true, his story wouldn’t have been quite so disturbing. It was the commonality that I felt with him that made his story disturbing. He wasn’t raised all that different from the way that I was, and I suspect the way many of you were raised, too. Ricky grew up in a town about a hundred miles east of Dallas called Mount Pleasant, a little country town.

4. Raised in the Home of Christians

Bigger than Haslum, but still a small town. And he was raised in the home of Christians. His mom and dad were dedicated disciples of Jesus. They went to church. They loved the Lord. They taught him to love the Lord. In fact, it really, his dad was sort of a small town preacher, or a part time preacher, I should say. There was a little spot out from Mount Pleasant. Now, folks, I know we’ve been talking about small towns. But I’m evermore about to tell you about a small town. There was a place out from Mount Pleasant called Cooper’s Chapel, and folks, that’s Cooper’s Chapel. What you’ve seen is it. It’s just a little wide spot on the road with an old church, a cemetery, and a few houses.

But at that time, there was still an older group of Christians meeting in this old frame building without air conditioning. That seemed appropriate today. And Ricky’s dad would take turns with another man in the congregation, and they would go out to this spot and they would preach from this group. In fact, that’s one of the oldest congregations of our brethren. Began meeting more than a hundred years ago in that old building. When Ricky was old enough, and after he had become a Christian, he’d go with his daddy when he would preach. And his daddy would do the preaching and he would lead the singing. I remember walking around inside that old building. And I tell you, I could just kind of get in my mind’s eye.

5. Starts Out So Right, Ends Up So Very Wrong

Can you see it? The image of that teenage boy. Yes, those are slatted pews. Don’t you feel a whole lot better about sitting here this morning, even though it’s a little warmer? Sitting on those slatted pews right up front while his dad’s in the pulpit there preaching, waiting for him to say those words when he would know it was his time to get up and lead the invitation song. I could just see that in my mind. Can you see that? Certainly doesn’t sound like the kind of beginnings from which a killer would come. Does it? How does somebody who start out, who starts out so right end up so very wrong? Michael Graysick was a reporter for the Associated Press, and not long before Ricky died, he asked him, he says, how does someone who’s never been in trouble before end up in a place like this?

How does the son of a preacher go from that to death row? I don’t know if there’s an easy answer to that question. But Ricky had an answer for it. If you ask him that question, he would begin by saying, let me tell you about the time when I was 15 years old. And I was starting high school. And I made the choice to run with the wrong crowd. He said, I just chose the wrong people as my friends. That’s where my life started going wrong. Because of that, he faced a lot of pressure to do things that he knew were wrong. They were smoking and drinking, and then eventually using drugs, and because he was with them and they were doing those things, there became mounting pressure in his life to do the same, and in time the pressure just became too much, and he gave in to it.

In fact, for him, it was unexpected almost. It was as though he didn’t anticipate that’s the way it would turn out. In a letter he wrote to me, he said these words. He said, Before I knew it, I was in with the ways of the world. I’m talking about sex and dope and drinking and thinking my parents didn’t know what they were talking about, telling me not to do this or that. And I didn’t like someone telling me how to run my life. But he says, as I look back on it, my friends were running my life. Well, he ignored the warning of his parents about that and continued that living that way until he graduated. That’s his graduation picture. And went on into his adult life, continuing to run with that crowd.

6. The Cycle of His Life

He abused every kind of drug. He was sexually immoral. He couldn’t keep a job. He was in and out of debt. In fact, he described for me, not long before he died, sort of the cycle of his life at this time. He said, what I’d do is I’d go get a job. And it didn’t matter what kind of job, just any job to make money. He might work as a cook in a restaurant, he might cut wood at a sawmill. He’d just go find a job. And he’d work and work and work, maybe three or four months, and he’d take everything that he made and he’d save it up and save and save. And when he had a little bit stockpiled, what he’d do is he’d quit his job and he’d go party.

He’d buy drugs, he’d get drunk, and he’d party day and night until the money ran out. And then he’d go find another job, and he’d start the cycle all over again. Work for a little while, set a little aside, and then quit and party. And that’s the way he lived. For much of the ten years that were his twenties, that’s how he lived his life. Till the spring of 1987. He was on the downside of that cycle, flat broke.