When you've been given a whiff of freedom after serving 20 years for felony murder, dreams and reality become competing sirens - one sings sweet songs for your heart while the other bellows warnings in your head.
Bennie Heard knows which one he plans to listen to. He wants to fight again, to find out how much glory he can recapture from when he was one of the nation's best amateur boxers in the early 1980s.
But boxing is a tough gig. It has a way of slapping a cold dose of reality in the face of dreamers, particularly one who will be 47 by year's end and must successfully complete a work-release program at the Augusta Transitional Center before he can be paroled.
The former Augusta Boxing Club member says he can still do 1,000 sit-ups in a row and 100 one-handed push-ups. His toned physique is only a few pounds over his peak weight when he dominated the 178-pound class as an amateur.
Demonstrating an exercise he uses to keep fit, Mr. Heard punched the air forcefully for several minutes as he talked, his fists firing rhythmically like twin pistons in the cylinder of a finely tuned engine.
"What I can do when I was 20 years old, I still do them now," said Mr. Heard, who wants to become a boxing trainer after he attempts his comeback. "I want to shock the world, be the only somebody who ever spent 20-some years in prison and still came out there and did it. I want to test myself. I really want to, 'cause I believe I can."
After talking about his dreams, reality soon elbowed its way into the conversation. A counselor at the transition center who sat in on the interview began talking about how the world has changed in the past 20 years, noting how many stores now use automatic checkouts.
Mr. Heard interrupted, asking: "What do you mean bagging your own stuff?"
He has never used a cell phone. He has never e-mailed anyone. Only a few months ago, he was startled by an automatic toilet that flushed itself because he had never seen one.
"I'm trying to flush the toilet stool and I can't find the thing nowhere. I walked away and uuuuuh," Mr. Heard said, imitating the sound. "It kind of threw me off."
Knockout punch
Dear Mr. Heard,
You have been thoroughly and carefully considered for parole. The Board's decision is to deny parole at this time. The main reasons cited by board members ... are circumstances and the nature of the offense. The Board has decided to consider you again for parole during December 1994.
- Jan. 23, 1993, letter to inmate Bennie Heard from the State Board of Pardons and Parole
Sometimes, it's the what-ifs in life that haunt a soul.
What if Mr. Heard had stayed in California after winning his first two professional fights instead of coming home to Elberton, Ga., in September 1985 for the white Corvette he had loaned his brother?
What if he hadn't crashed that car shortly after arriving home, which kept him in Elberton and in a hospital until November with injuries to his neck and knee?
What if he hadn't been accused of cheating during a card game of Georgia Skin on Dec. 19 and been intimidated by one of the men, Neal Winn, to give back part of his $200 in winnings?
What if his bruised ego as a boxer who prided himself on being afraid of no man hadn't driven him the next day to get a gun with which he planned to scare Mr. Winn?
What if his best friend Raymond, Neal Winn's younger brother, hadn't grabbed at the .357-caliber Magnum as he pulled it out later that night at the Sugar Shack?
What if the pistol hadn't gone off, firing a round into his buddy's head?
"If I stayed in California, I don't know how life would have turned out," Mr. Heard said. "I've been thinking about it for a long time."
Many people close to Mr. Heard also have thought long and hard about the convergence of events that KO'd a promising professional boxing career.
ESPN saw Mr. Heard's potential, signing him to a three-year $350,000 contract in 1984 after he had amassed a 90-10 record as an amateur. His right fist was the last thing 62 of his opponents saw before they were scraped off the canvas.
He started his pro career 2-0, with one knockout.
Tom Moraetes, the director of the Augusta Boxing Club, has no doubts about what awaited Mr. Heard, whom he met in 1979 after an associate told him about a raw 19-year-old phenom who was "just knocking people dead."
Three years later, Mr. Heard was the nation's top amateur light-heavyweight.
"He could have been a world champion," said Mr. Morates, who started the boxing club out of his garage in 1974. "He could have been in the hall of fame. Those things were viable results that just didn't happen."
They might have happened if Mr. Heard had returned to California like his trainers wanted him to after he got out of the hospital, but he decided to stay in Elberton until the first of the year in 1986.
Coming from a town of fewer than 5,000 residents in northeast Georgia whose main claim to fame is its nickname, "Granite City," he had become a celebrity. He had even been honored in 1982 with a resolution from the Georgia House of Representatives for winning a gold medal at the National Sports Festival.
But like many people who move away from the small towns they grew up in, Mr. Heard left Elberton, but Elberton never left him.
That attachment to a hometown with its share of wrong sides of the track, and to old friends who simply knew Mr. Heard as "Little Red," ultimately led him to that card game and to his undoing.
"In Elberton, it's rare when you beat the odds," said Angela Heard, his wife. "He beat the odds. He got out of Elberton. He came home for a couple of months, that's all he knew. He came back to familiar territory. Nothing wrong about coming home, but when you talking about Elberton, you're talking about straight-up ghetto."
On the ropes
Dear Mr. Beard,
You have been thoroughly and carefully considered for parole. The Board's decision is to deny parole at this time. The main reason for the decision cited by the Board members during their individual study of your case are circumstances and nature of the offense. The Board has decided to consider you again for parole during December 2002.
- May 9, 1995, letter to Mr. Heard from the pardons and parole board
The names of the penitentiaries start to run together after a while.
Central Correctional Institute. Johnson Correctional Institute. Mens State Prison. Bostick State Prison. Those are just a few of the dozen or so prisons Mr. Heard called home at some point in the past 20 years.
He never thought he would be in prison this long. A lifetime sentence didn't necessarily mean that back in 1986, about 10 years before Georgia legislators made it tougher to get parole by enacting mandatory sentencing guidelines for those committing one of the "seven deadly sins."
There were four members of the State Board of Pardons and Parole at his first parole hearing in December 1992, Mr. Heard recalls. They asked him whether he planned to get a job when he got out. He told them five people from Augusta wanted to give him a job and that there was a strong likelihood he could resume his boxing career.
They asked him whether he was going to get in trouble again.
"I said I learned my lesson about being with the wrong people," Mr. Heard said.
He even showed them a newspaper clipping about a story done on him while in prison. One of the board members asked for the clipping and kept it, something he believed was a good sign.
"I just knew I was going to make parole," he said.
It was nearly two months later when he found out differently.
"I felt hurt. You go in the room and you shed tears," Mr. Heard said. "You shed tears because you know you did what the prison wanted you to do: stayed out of trouble, kept a good head, and people like the warden spoke good of me."
He was 32, still young enough to pursue his dream of fighting for a championship if he had gotten out.
The second rejection two years later hurt even worse. Adding insult to the body shot was the board referring to him as "Mr. Beard" on the letter that deferred his dream for at least another seven years.
"I had to do seven years in somebody else's last name," Mr. Heard said, shaking his head. "That was a big knockdown."
He had hoped that letters from supporters would sway the board. He would later send letters to anyone he thought could helpe, among them Govs. Joe Frank Harris and Zell Miller and U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn. He would include in his letters the names of inmates paroled for offenses ranging from kidnapping/rape to double murder.
"The case on its merit didn't warrant being in jail 20 years," said Mr. Moraetes, who was in law enforcement for 22 years and believes Mr. Heard should have gotten a lesser charge than felony murder. "I just think the whole thing stunk. It's not that he didn't do anything wrong. The punishment didn't fit the crime."
At some point, though, Mr. Heard admitted to himself that he wasn't really ready to go back into the "free world." The vices that always got him in trouble, women and gambling, had yet to be conquered.
"I wasn't focused on God at that time. I knew him, but I wasn't focused on him. Not like now," Mr. Heard said. "I think I still probably would have been messing around, but not with those guys no more. I say I would have been messing around with different girls.
"And now, I don't want that. I'm satisfied with one, and with that one, I can build a foundation with her. I know I can be a successful person out there now. I just want to be out there and be happy with what I got."
In his corner
Dear HEARD, BENNIE FRANK,
Your case was recently reconsidered in accordance with Board policy. The Board's decision is to deny parole at this time. The Board determined that your parole release would not be compatible with the welfare of society due to the severe nature of the offense(s) for which you were convicted. In accordance with Board Policy your case will again be reviewed by the Board during December 2005.
- Feb. 3, 2003, letter to Mr. Heard from the pardons and parole board
For a man who made a name for himself by rearranging the features of other men, there's a gentle quality to Mr. Heard. He speaks softly in a slow Southern drawl and is quick to espouse his faith in God.
Angela Heard saw this gentleness in her future husband when she had just become a teenager and he was a star athlete in Elberton. She lived in Anderson, S.C., and met Mr. Heard when she visited family in Elberton.
They became good friends, and Mr. Heard told her on more than one occasion that she was going to be his wife. She didn't really take it seriously, given that he was four years older and had a large number of other girls vying for his affections.
She found out how much he really cared when she was 17. While visiting Elberton for the July Fourth holiday in 1981, Mrs. Heard said, she was held at gunpoint and raped for about six hours. After the attacker had finished with her, he dumped her on the street early the next morning.
Mr. Heard found her. He picked her up in his arms and carried her to a cousin's house and up three flights of stairs. He stayed with her most of the afternoon.
"I never forgot it," she said. "It was something that constantly stayed in my head all the time."
They started dating off and on but eventually drifted apart as Mr. Heard's amateur career took off. After she learned about Mr. Heard's plight, she wrote to him in prison, and the two exchanged letters over the next several years.
Mrs. Heard was well aware that she was among a number of women who stayed in contact with him, however, and decided before his first parole hearing to back away. She didn't find out until 12 years later that he was still in prison.
It was in 2004 when, as she puts it, "The Lord spoke to me and brought his name across my mind."
Not being able to put him out of her mind, she went to the Department of Corrections Web site to see whether she could get some information about Mr. Heard. She discovered he was still incarcerated.
"Had I known he was still in prison, honest to God ... I would have hired an attorney to help him get out of prison," she said. "There is no way I would have left him in prison."
She wrote him, and Mr. Heard wasn't surprised to hear from her after so many years. Two weeks earlier, he had prayed for her to come back into his life.
"I called for her name, and (God) answered," he recalled. "She came to me, and I knew she was going to be my wife."
On March 4, in a tiny Bostick State Prison visitation room that had a couple of small steel benches, they were married by her mother, a nondenominational archbishop, as a couple of other inmates and their significant others served as witnesses.
"It was just the right moment," said Mrs. Heard, an event planner in Lithonia, Ga. "He let me know that he knew God, he was saved, he wasn't the same person he used to be. And his life had changed, and ever since then I've been his cheerleader, because if your life has changed, somebody needs to give you a second chance."
Saved by the bell
Dear Mr. Heard,
Your case was recently reconsidered in accordance with Board policy. The Board's decision is to tentatively grant you parole upon successful completion of the Department of Corrections work release program ... The Board reserves the right to change their decision in your case at any time for any reason.
- Feb. 2 letter to Mr. Heard from the board of pardons and parole
One foot in, one foot out.
That's how Mr. Heard describes his current situation. Almost free, but not quite.
The Department of Corrections lets him out several days a week to work prearranged jobs without supervision. He currently works at the Augusta-Richmond County Civic Center, helping set up for events. After work, he has to return to the transition center. He could be in the work release program nine to 12 months, according to a pardons and parole spokeswoman.
The carrot for successfully completing the program - securing a job, following all the rules, no disciplinary reports and having an approved residence plan - is parole.
When he gets out, he plans to head to Elberton. Not to stay, not to see friends, but to hold and hug his mother, whom he hasn't seen in about 10 years because her ailments won't allow her to travel.
Mary Harper is longing for that day, too.
"I hope I can stand up and at least hug him. I hope I don't faint," said Mrs. Harper, 70, who has heart problems and uses a walker to get around. "I'm just taking it one day at a time, you know, just hoping that I get to see him, you know what I mean. And I'm just hoping, that in my condition that I'll be all right, that I can accept that."
Some family members of the man Mr. Heard shot are not sure they can accept his getting out, though others believe it should have happened sooner.
"You ever lost a member of your family (like that)?" asked Curtis Winn, Raymond Winn's brother. "I don't say I feel bitter or nothing like that. I leave it in God's hands, and there it is."
Another brother, Cornell Winn, said he has forgiven Mr. Heard.
"God's words say forgive and forget," Mr. Winn said. "So you have to trust the Lord to handle all and everything and leave nothing for us to contest. I just thought the boy done too much time in the first place."
It took a while for Mr. Heard to forgive himself. He made peace with what he did after a dream he had about his friend.
In the dream, he wanted Raymond Winn to come to Las Vegas, where he was training, to sing because he was a good singer, but his friend didn't show up. Later in the dream, Mr. Winn came to be with Mr. Heard in the prison he was housed at the time.
Mr. Heard woke up smiling, believing that God was telling him that Mr. Winn had forgiven him.
Coming out swinging
Whether Mr. Heard gets a chance to lace up the gloves again will be up to him. His family and friends are not going to stop him.
"I think I don't have the right to tell him he can or he can't fight again," Mrs. Heard said. "I think that if that is what he wants to do, then I am definitely beside him 200 percent. That's a 20-year dream. Only God can tell him he can't box."
Mr. Heard says his sparring sessions will tell him if he still has the right stuff.
"If I see that I don't have it, I don't have it," he said. "If I get hurt in the ring, I'm the person that will stop and tell the referee I can't go no more. I'll still feel good about it because I gave it a try."
Mr. Moraetes doesn't want Mr. Heard to even try. He wants him to become a trainer, to pass on his boxing knowledge and training discipline to younger fighters.
"But I know Bennie, and there's no way you can convince him, and he's going to have to try it," Mr. Moraetes said.
He knows Mr. Heard's prowess as well as anyone. He was there when Mr. Heard became the nation's top amateur light-heavyweight in 1982 at the National Sports Festival in Indianapolis.
He had already won the USA National Championship in his weight class, and a boxer from the renowned Kronk Gym in Detroit, Keith Vining, had won the Golden Gloves Championship.
The two knocked out their semifinal opponents to set up a much-hyped final. The fight lasted one minute, 28 seconds.
"Bennie destroyed him," Mr. Moraetes said.
Of the fighters he has trained, and they include former welterweight champion Vernon Forrest and current rising star Rayonta Whitfield, Mr. Heard was the best, Mr. Moraetes said.
Mr. Forrest didn't disagree.
"Bennie was a bad man," said Mr. Forrest, who was around age 9 when he met Mr. Heard at the boxing club and got his inspiration to become a boxer from him. "Even though I accomplished a lot more than he did, I would think he was a better fighter than I am."
Mr. Heard realizes what he could have had: fame and fortune, the spoils enjoyed by boxers he came up with and whom many believe he was just as good as - Evander Holyfield, Mark Breland, Pernell Whitaker. All are former world champions who took a different path.
"I would have got with that group," he lamented. "I would have been just like them, I would have been up to the top. But I went another way and ended up in here.
"But I got a lot of time to think and see things clearly now. See all the wrong that I had made in life. Wrong decisions. I made wrong decisions. Now God has blessed me and given me another chance to make the right decision."
Reach Mike Wynn at (706) 823-3218 or mike.wynn@augustachronicle.com.
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