Former area man turns life around
Jim Townsend stops to say hello to grade school children at St. Mary Friary in Herman, Butler County. The quiet man wears a brown robe and a heartfelt smile as he shakes hands and makes small talk.
But the story of the 78-year-old Capuchin Franciscan monk from Pittsburgh’s St. Augustine Province is anything but small.
His is a tale of redemption, of transcending a life of abuse to find compassion through faith, of escaping a dark past – all with the help of someone he’s come to know as “Slick.”
In the confines of the friary, Townsend talks about his growing up in eastern Pennsylvania in a childhood laced with abuse.
He tells of how he was sent to reform schools and juvenile detention centers.
He also talks about killing his pregnant wife while living in Ohiopyle in 1947, when he was just 20 years old.
After pleading guilty in the Fayette County Court of Common Pleas, Townsend spent 20 years in prison, where, after much resistance, he experienced a religious conversion.
For years, he had gone through the motions of attending Mass, going to confession and joining a secular Franciscan order with the hopes that a good record would earn him a prison job as a truck driver so he could escape. But along the way, Townsend underwent a transformation.
“My nickname for the lord is ‘Slick,” he says. “The lord said, ‘Yeah, right, you do that.’ But along the way, I started to believe what I was hearing and saying.’
In 1968, Townsend was paroled as a model prisoner and became a Capuchin Franciscan, who, among his other duties, continues to share his story in prison ministry. He offers hope to those who feel they can never be forgiven.
“You ask for forgiveness and you get it,’ Townsend says. “Jesus didn’t go up on the cross for nothing. They hung the letters INRI above him. That means King of the Jews. But a friend told me it also means ‘I Never Regretted It.’ He never regretted what he did for us.”
The early years
Born Jan. 27, 1927, in Bristol, Pa., a small town northeast of Philadelphia, Townsend led a difficult childhood. His mother, Kit, was chronically sick and spent most of her time in a bed in the downstairs parlor. His father, Patrick, was a harsh man who didn’t show him affection. One of five children, Townsend also fought constantly with his younger brother, Bob.
Townsend began getting into trouble at an early age, breaking into places, stealing and becoming involved in fights. He entered reform school at age 8, returning home when he was 10. His mother died when he was 12, and his father eventually sent him to an orphanage. Townsend was sent back home a few months later for stealing money.
Back in Bristol, he continued to get into fights, skipped school and began sneaking rides on freight trains, sharing meals with hoboes. He was sent to another institution when his brother blamed Townsend for pulling a fire alarm when he was 13.
Two years later, Townsend’s father had him enlist in the Marines during World War II. He was brought to court-martial for hitting a second lieutenant who slapped him first. When officials discovered Townsend’s true age, they gave him an undesirable discharge.
He returned home but was soon sent to a juvenile detention center in Camp Hill on charges of assault and battery and attempted rape after he beat a girl who liked to torment him.
Townsend left Camp Hill at 19 and moved to Pittsburgh, where his parole officer lived. He eventually found work at Allegheny General Hospital, where he met Alice Moss, who was on her own and working at the hospital in housekeeping.
“I still remember when I proposed. She said it was about time,” Townsend recalls. The two married on May 10, 1947, in a small Methodist church in Pittsburgh. Life was good, and Alice soon became pregnant with twins.
“She was a good worker. She could handle a lot of things,’ Townsend says. “She’d have made a good mother, too, I’m sure.’
Death in Ohiopyle
Through layoffs, Townsend lost his hospital job but met a police officer who had a farm in Ohiopyle. He hired Townsend to work the place.
The Townsends enjoyed Ohiopyle. They lived in an old farmhouse in Bidwell Hollow.
“It really was a nice place,’ Townsend says. “We worked on the house. She had to take it easy because she was pregnant.’
But as his wife’s pregnancy advanced, Townsend felt she was pulling away from him. He didn’t understand the effects of her condition, such as morning sickness, mistaking it as a means of rejecting him. And he had been rejected most of his life.
“And I drank a lot. I caused all the trouble,’ Townsend says. “I got mad and stingy. It was my way or no way.’
One night – Nov. 13, 1947 – after drinking, Townsend shot his wife in the head with a deer rifle in the kitchen of their home.
Although first saying the shooting was accidental – the Morning Herald newspaper quoted him as saying he tried to shoot past her or “nip her in the shoulder” – Townsend pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
Prison life and conversion
The first day he went into the prison yard at Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Townsend started a fight to make it clear to everyone not to mess with him. The 5-foot-71/2-inch man went over to a large black man and slugged him in the jaw.
He and the other prisoner, named Purdue, were locked up. Days later, Purdue asked Townsend why he hit him. When Townsend explained his reason, Purdue, who would become his friend, told Townsend not to worry: “Everyone here figures you’re nuts.”
Townsend didn’t care about anyone or anything. He was considered a hardened criminal, provoking fights and mouthing off to everyone.
But his behavior changed when he learned he might have an opportunity to transfer to Rockview Penitentiary in Bellefonte, a minimum-security prison that provided better living conditions. He also thought he might be able to get a job as a prison truck driver and have a chance to escape.
So Townsend started towing the line at Western Penitentiary.
Raised a Catholic, he began attending Mass and worked briefly as a custodian in the chapel and later in the chaplain’s office. He would be sent out into the yard to give prisoners bad news about the death or illness of a loved one, or that they were served with divorce papers. This was also Townsend’s first opportunity to talk to prisoners who came into the chapel with problems.
After he made the transfer to Rockview, Townsend retained his model behavior, but for him it was a charade, a way to earn that job as a truck driver. He began reading, earned his high school diploma and continued with the chapel program, eventually becoming the chapel’s janitor.
Along the way, he began reading the works of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and spiritual writer, and found a kinship.
“Some of his life was like mine. As I read, I began thinking, maybe if I ever get out of here, I’d ask to be a Trappist monk. …My big change came at two o’clock in the morning. I cried my head off. I recognized that I couldn’t do what I was doing anymore,” he says, referring to living as a hypocrite.
So, he faced this realization head-on the first Saturday of the next month, when he was expected to attend confession as part of his secular order. When he told his priest, the Rev. Richard Walsh, of his conversion, Walsh simply said, “It’s about time.” The two talked intently before Townsend made his confession.
“And that’s it. I was a brother,” Townsend says. “Everything came together.”
Gone were the nightmares of Alice that had haunted Townsend every night since the murder.
“I would see her holding a little boy. She didn’t say a thing. When I accepted the Lord, she said, ‘We’re waiting for you,” says Townsend. “I have never seen her since, and that’s been more than 30 years.”
Capuchin Franciscans
In 1968, after 20 years in prison, Townsend was paroled under a program that he explained was soon changed to exclude those inmates serving life sentences. He moved to Pittsburgh and found a job at a cleaning company.
While living a secular life, he approached the Rev. Lester Knoll, a former vocations director who is now in a preaching ministry, about joining the Capuchin Franciscans.
“As a vocations director, your job is two-fold: to recruit and screen out the candidates who cannot make it,’ Knoll says. “When Jim came to the door, all the red flags were flying, but his simplicity struck me. He was so honest.’
Townsend entered the order, making his final vows on Feb. 9, 1976. He received many assignments, working in Herman, Pittsburgh, Annapolis and Ohio before retiring about three years ago to Herman.
Along the way, Townsend has reconciled with his family, and he event spent time with his father before he died. He also visited his Ohiopyle home in the 1970s with Knoll, who called it “an emotional trip.’
Townsend has suffered health problems but still maintains his prison ministry. Foremost in his heart is Rockview, which he calls his “alma mater.’ He spends a week there every October, and the inmates readily respond to him. In fact, they recently renamed in his honor an award given to an outstanding Catholic inmate. Townsend won the award under a different name when he was a prisoner at Rockview.
“I’ll do that until I can’t,’ Townsend says about returning to Rockview. “The first time going back, it was tough. But as I got to talking to people and they were trusting me, I thought, this is a golden opportunity and I can’t let it go by.’
Knoll adds, “The majority of people who go into prison come out worse or go back in. And people believe if you have the death penalty – if you do something so heinous – you don’t change. God does work, and Jim is a great witness that people can change.’
‘The Prisoner’
In fact, Knoll believed that Townsend’s story was such an inspiration that he persuaded Paul Everett, who worked for an ecumenical group called The Pittsburgh Experiment and visited the Capuchin Hermitage in Herman for retreats, to write a book about Townsend.
Everett, now retired and living in Connecticut, agreed, and the book, “The Prisoner,’ will be published March 1 by Paulist Press. Meanwhile, Everett wrote a story about the book for the February edition of “Guideposts,” a national magazine.
In the book’s preface, Everett writes, “Through the life of Jim Townsend, I was made aware in a deeper way that God’s love for us is unchanging and is never altered by anything we have ever done. No act of ours is beyond his forgiveness and no life is beyond his ability to change and redirect.’
Speaking about the book, Townsend says, “My big hope is the book will reach people. If I can do it, so can you. If you turn yourself over to the lord and let him guide you, great things can happen.”