June 1, 2012

An incident recalled by a former Edenton resident:

“A friend had a son in Little Rascals but wouldn’t let him participate in the ‘hunt.’ She shielded him, as best she could, and didn’t interrogate him.

“Years later, when Bob Kelly was released, she thought it best to tell the son herself. He exploded in anger. Alarmed and filled with trepidation, she asked just what Mr. Bob had done to cause such a reaction.

“The child’s answer: Bob hadn’t let him put ketchup on his peanut butter sandwich.”

Jan. 4, 2013

“Psychologist Jean Piaget reported that his earliest memory was of his nurse defending him against a potential kidnapper at age two. He distinctly recalled sitting frightened in the baby carriage while the nurse fought off the man (incurring a scratch on her face in the process), and the police officer chasing away the kidnapper with his short white baton. Piaget was even able to describe the officer’s uniform in detail. His family, relieved that the nurse had prevented his kidnapping, rewarded her with a gold watch.

“Thirteen years later, the nurse returned the gold watch to the family accompanied by a letter confessing that she had made up the story because she wanted to raise the family’s opinion of her.

“Piaget used this false memory to emphasize the role of others’ influences on one’s memories. He noted that the nurse frequently had recounted the story in his presence, and others then had repeated the story in his hearing, thus creating the memories he had adopted as his own.

“Piaget noted that even in his old age those memories persisted as clear events, even though he knew them to be false.”

– From “The Encyclopedia of the Brain and Brain Disorders” by Carol Turkington and Joseph Harris (2009)

Given this phenomenon of memory, it’s hardly surprising that no child-witness against the Edenton Seven has stepped forward to publicly recant.

Oct. 11, 2011

In 1989 Bob Kelly was charged with 100 counts of child molestation.

In 1992 he was convicted and sentenced to 12 consecutive life sentences.

In 1995 his conviction was overturned and he was released from Central Prison.

“It was the best six years of my life,” he says of his time behind bars, “because it set me up for the rest of my life.”

When he walked out, Kelly was a man who had determined “never to feel ashamed, because I had nothing to be ashamed of.”

Today, remarried and retired at 63, he lives in a tidy suburban house just outside Sanford.

Perhaps the anger he still feels toward those who conspired to imprison him has been compartmentalized.

His attention goes to gardening (“500 pounds of tomatoes this year”), writing and visiting inmates, carving walking sticks out of old Christmas tree trunks, playing Sudoku, hitting golf balls and reading only those Westerns in which “the good guy always wins in the end.”

And he still cooks and cans the spaghetti sauce he once served every Friday at the Little Rascals Day Care Center.

“Freedom don’t ever get old,” he says.

June 13, 2012

“Actually, making a false memory is pretty easy.

“(Psychologist Elizabeth) Loftus describes a father convincing his daughter she’d gotten lost in a mall when she was five years old. At first, the daughter denied any memory of the event, but as the father provided more fake details – ‘Don’t you remember that I told you we would meet at the Tug Boat?’ – the daughter began to ‘remember’ and even provide details of her own. Eventually when her father said, ‘I was so scared,’ she responded, ‘Not as scared as I was!’…

“You can probably imagine the implications of false memory in the courtroom or on the therapist’s couch (which famously leads to the courtroom)….”

– From “How You Remember, How You Decide: Memory Part II”
by Garth Sundem in Psychology Today (October 6, 2010)