'I was in prison and you visited'

By Peter Bronson
Enquirer staff writer

Jesse James Cowans is on death row in Ohio for murdering an elderly Monroe Township neighbor, Clara Swart, in 1996. She was found in her own home, strangled.

When he was 16, Cowans strangled his best friend, who was in a wheelchair. He was arrested for armed robbery when he was 8 years old. Half his life has been locked down in prison. But he's sure he's going to heaven.

Clay Shrout got up one morning in 1994 and murdered his parents and two sisters at their home in Florence. Then he went to Ryle High School in Union and held his trigonometry class hostage.

He's in a Kentucky prison, serving life-without-parole sentences. Technically, he can seek parole in 25 years. He believes he will someday go to heaven.

Both cons have murders in their past but hope in their future because both have a friend named Steve Schlechty - a tool designer in Wilmington who gets up at 3 a.m. two Saturdays a month to visit Shrout, Cowans and other prisoners in the heart of darkness.

"They're where they belong," Schlechty says. "Personally, I feel Clay should die for his crimes, but the state said otherwise."

Shrout was a hard case. After 10 years in prison, he had 29 pages of disciplinary reports. "He was into witchcraft and the occult," Schlechty said. So Schlechty wrote to David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" serial killer who terrorized New York City in 1977.

Berkowitz, who now has his own Web site that proclaims his faith in God, helped to bring Shrout to Christ, Schlechty said. "He gave me some good advice. He said the occult is serious business and that you can be controlled by it."

Now, "Clay is doing very good, but he has a very difficult time forgiving himself for what he's done," Schlechty said.

Cowans was so violent he had to be wired with a shock device during his trial. But lately, "The guards I talk to never have a problem with Jesse," Schlechty said. "He's a new man, I can tell you that. I would feel very comfortable having Jesse Cowans in my house with my wife and children. Same with Clay. I know him well."

Schlechty admits, "My own father thinks I'm crazy for going in there. It's a very dark place, a very heavy spirit."

But prison officials tell him his visits help. And he says Shrout and Cowans "have been a blessing to me."

If the word of God is a two-edged sword, this is where we feel the sharp edge. Nothing cuts deeper to the heart than to hear that evil murderers have been "saved."

Cowans still denies he killed Swart, but the evidence is airtight: He told a jailhouse snitch how he killed her; he knew details before they were released by police; his palm print was found in her home; and items from her home were found in his bedroom or buried in his yard.

When Schlechty saw a picture of Cowans in the paper, "I figured if any man ever needed help, he did," he said. So he visited him in jail. "I saw a man beginning to melt from the inside, who knew he was in big trouble."

Cowans has nobody else - no relatives or friends on the outside, Schlechty said.

A simple act of Christian kindness turned Cowans' life around.

"He told me that Jesus could save anybody no matter what they have done or how bad they thought they were," Cowans wrote. "I didn't believe it."

That's the beauty of redemption, Schlechty said. "There is nobody on this earth too bad to be forgiven. Thank God for that."

We can believe it. Or not. But the evidence speaks for itself.

"God's done for them what prison reform cannot do," Schlechty said. "He changed their hearts."

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.