Family Torches Painful Memories

It's a big weekend for Ron and Sheila Kimmel, this being their daughter Lisa's 36th birthday. That is why they are traveling 350 miles to a small piece of property in Wyoming where Lisa Kimmel was murdered 17 years ago reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod.

"You don't bury somebody and just be done with it," Sheila said. "And be done with it, no," Ron added.

"Life," Sheila continued, "it never goes away."

"It never goes away," Ron echoed his wife.

In March of 1988 Lisa was abducted. A man named Dale Eaton tortured her for six days then stabbed her six times. He's now on death row.

As Sheila stood outside Eaton's former home, she announced, "So whenever you guys are ready to go in we'll go in. It's not going to be pleasant.

"Oh I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna and get the strength to walk in there one last time," Sheila said. "One more time. That's it and no more. Never again."

The Kimmels come here from time to time to this squalor. "He didn't even have a workable toilet," Sheila said of Eaton.

Just to try to understand. When asked her feelings about stepping on Eaton's property, Sheila responded, "What did my daughter go through for six days that she was held here? I just can't imagine it. Horrors. Just a horror story."

Listen to Sheila Kimmel. No piece of land on earth could haunt these two people any more than the one they are visiting right now. Only they don't just visit it. They successfully sued the man who killed their daughter and now they own it. And that means they can do whatever they want to it.

Which is why on Lisa's 36th birthday the Kimmel's are back to burn everything to the ground. It might be about revenge or anger or not being controlled by either.

"You have to understand anger is a natural emotion," Sheila said. "The trick is here: how you act upon it."

Or maybe it's about justice for their daughter.

Or maybe it's a little bit of a lot of things and this firefighter has it best.

"It's there. It's a presence every day," Ken Metzler of the Fremont County Fire Department," said of Eaton's house. Burning it down, Metzler said is "Cleansing it. Cleansing it by fire."

But can a half hour of fire erase 17 years of hell? You judge.

"This isn't a matter of revenge," Sheila said. "This is a matter of honoring our daughter and this will no longer stand as my daughter's legacy to her life or her death."

Maybe this whole thing makes perfect sense to you. Or maybe not. But, the Kimmels feel a whole lot better

"I feel a tremendous amount of sadness, but then I feel a sense of peace," Sheila admitted.

And they hope you never have to understand why.