A battered newspaperman takes another stand to help a mom keep her son's murderer in prison

Barbara Mack, the mother of Rodney Long, an Austin Peay State University football receiver who was executed by David Frey and Stephen Drake so they could steal his car to escape authorities 37 years ago up in Clarksville, is not in the best of health.
So she won't be attending the parole hearing for Frey (Drake was shanked in prison long ago) Thursday.
I spoke long ago with my friend, the late John Seigenthaler, the pre-eminent print journalist in Tennessee and in the nation for that matter, about whether it was OK for me to write a letter opposing a parole.
He said that since the murder affected me so deeply -- even served as the setting for a newspaper memoir, "When Newspapers Mattered: The News Brothers & their Shades of Glory," published more than six years ago -- it made good sense and indeed was proper, if unusual.
The book was written by me and by my best buddy, Rob Dollar, who was my cops reporter at the time of the murder.
John loved the book, by the way, and devoted an episode of his award-winning "A Word on Words" TV show to it.
Since the Parole Board meets tomorrow (Jan. 10) to consider Frey's release and since it has only been two years since his last hearing, I wouldn't be surprised to learn he is freed.
I did feel compelled, by my love of Barbara Mack and by the physical and mental toll her son's murder took on my body and soul, to write another letter that I have filed with the Parole Board.
Here it is:

In regard to the parole hearing for David Frey, TOMIS Number 0097856

My name is Tim Ghianni.

I am a freelance journalist, author and adjunct university instructor living in Nashville, Tennessee.

I am writing today to vigorously oppose any potential parole for David Frey, the convicted murderer of Rodney Long.

I spent 34 years as a newspaper journalist before being “bought out” (euphemism for being laid off) 11½ years ago.

I have continued to work as a journalist in a freelance fashion since that time.

Particularly during my newspaper years, I came to know the details of way too many stories of the darkest underside of the human spirit.

I found no darker tale than that of the cold-blooded murder of Rodney Wayne Long. Rodney was a good kid, a football player at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville and the pride of his hometown of Rainbow City, Alabama.

I did not know Rodney when he was still alive.

But, even all these years after his murder in 1982, I feel like he is with me every day due to the vile and cowardly act of David Frey and Stephen Drake. Fortunately, Drake died in prison before anyone could consider the unjust idea of granting him parole.

And if the state does what is correct, then Frey, too, will die in prison. Not violently, like Drake, but as a beaten old man who killed an innocent young man for the joy of killing. Perhaps he has reformed, but that doesn’t cancel out the brutality of the execution of Rodney and the trail of heartache that has continued for the last 37 years.

David Frey and Stephen Drake duped Rodney into giving them a ride to the edge of Clarksville, Tennessee, where I was associate editor of the daily newspaper as well as a human-interest columnist and where Rodney was a receiver for the university’s Governors football team.

After they arrived at the edge of town, they killed him for his car, so they could escape the cops who were looking for them in a string of burglaries.

I to this day, even as a 67-year-old former newspaperman who unfortunately has seen the very worst of society, I have never been able to understand why they didn’t just drop him off on a deserted highway and just keep going.

It would have taken him hours to get back to “civilization” to alert authorities and they could have continued on their merry thugs’ journey to the East Coast, their home area.

Instead, they shot him dead for the cold and cruel thrills of it all.  “Good shot!” Drake said to Frey as he put a bullet at close range into the nice young man’s head.

The body was found two weeks later near a creek in what then was a very rural area of Montgomery County, Tennessee, miles and miles from the nearest house even.

In my role at the newspaper, I came to be in charge of the coverage of Rodney’s slaying as well as that of a young woman named Kathy Jane Nishiyama, whose abduction and murder mirrored Rodney’s. Her killer, Eddie Hartman, died on Death Row.

With two young people, good citizens, murdered at roughly the same time, Clarksville was traumatized.

In my role as editor, columnist and occasional breaking news reporter, I came to know the families of both murdered children.

That meant befriending Barbara Mack, the mother of Rodney Long. The first time I met her, she was in Clarksville leading the search for her son or her son’s body.

After that, I encountered her as she cried uncontrollably over her son’s coffin at the funeral home in Rainbow City.

But our friendship has continued over the decades. Our conversation isn’t always about Rodney’s death.

We talk about his life and the loss of which she has never been able to overcome.

If Frey is released, it will kill her.

He already killed her son.

Sincerely,

Tim Ghianni