CLEVELAND — Feb. 15, 1980 is a day Joseph Kerr will never forget. Not only is it his birthday, but it is also the day his older sister, Rebecca “Becky” Kerr was brutally murdered.
“What kind of person can commit such a heinous crime against a human being?” a snippet reads in his letter to the parole board. “Becky was executed in a premediated and horrific way and that act of violence can’t be ignored by the parole board.”
While most people celebrate their birthdays surrounded by love and gratitude for another year of life, Kerr mourns a promising life taken too soon by her ex-boyfriend, Lincoln Mabry.
Mabry is serving a life sentence for aggravated murder.
According to the family, Mabry stalked her after work and followed her to the babysitter’s home where her daughter was at the time.
“He ran down behind the house with a gun and put them in the house,” says Kerr. “He hit her on the head with the gun and told her and [her daughter] Melissa to get in the car.”
Fearing for her and her daughter’s lives, Becky pulled into a gas station and tried running to find help. Mabry shot her a total of seven times. At one point, he reloaded the gun and stood over all in front of her eight-year-old daughter.
“She had a hard beginning of her life,” says Kerr. “She told the member of the parole board that she has a photographic memory and she can still close her eyes and remember everything that happened that day.”
44 years later, this family says time does not heal all wounds. That’s why they started an online petition asking the public to sign it in support of keeping Mabry behind bars at London Correctional Facility.
It’s been frustrating for the family who went from attending parole board hearings every five years to every two and says they’ve never got an apology. Mabry was denied in 2022 after the parole board ruled the nature of the crime is beyond rehabilitation.
“I’m not sure what has changed in two years,” Kerr says.
Becky was one of seven. Losing her has left a gaping hole in this family.
“She was a smart girl and a really nice person. It was really tough on my mom.”