My Dad's Killer

In one of the toughest neighborhoods in Indianapolis kids have found a place to spread their wings, a refuge from the world outside.

The man behind this place is Tim Streett. And he knows a lot about the outside world.

"I grew up with a real comprehensive understanding of the fact that this place that we call Earth is not perfect, and what evil is, and what horror is," Streett says.

Correspondent Harold Dow reports on the challenge Tim Streett faced after witnessing a murder.

"He was a paratrooper," Streett says of his father, an Army major and a chaplain. "He had over 1,000 jumps."

"He was a great guy," Streett said. "Everybody loved him, he was a very loving person, a very caring man. Most of my memories of childhood are real happy."

Life was good in 1978, when his father was stationed in Indianapolis and Streett was 15 years old.

Then on a cold and snowy night that January, Tim and his father were shoveling the driveway when two young men appeared. One of them pulled a gun and demanded his father's wallet.

"My father said, 'What's going on here?' And then I heard the gun go off," Tim Streett recalls.

His father fell to the ground. The gunman then turned his attention to Tim Streett.

"I was just standing there, looking at my dad on the ground, and just expecting at that point in time to be shot," Streett says.

Instead, they took Tim Streett's wallet; he only had a dollar. Then they ran up the street to a getaway car.

"I ran over to my father and picked up his head," Tim Streett says. "And I heard a gurgling sound. And I knew it was bad."

His father was rushed to the hospital. He was dead on arrival.

"I think I was just in shock," Tim Streett says. "You just go into this state of unconsciousness. I think over the next week, even months, I kind of came out of it slowly."

Within weeks, three young men were arrested: Michael Daniels, the shooter, Don Cox, who drove the getaway car, and Kevin Edmonds, who testified against the other two for a lighter sentence.

"The lack of remorse from the defendants was remarkable," says prosecutor Stephen Goldsmith, who showed no mercy. Daniels was sentenced to death. Cox was sentenced to 90 years in prison.

"He went for 90 years because that was the longest possible time I could put him in prison. I didn't want him to get out," Goldsmith says.

The case was over, and so was Tim Streett's childhood.

"I drank a lot and got into drugs after college," he recalls. "And I spent a lot of time alone."

"I think my personality dramatically changed during that period of my life," he adds.

While Tim Streett sank into grief over losing his father, Cox was beginning to own up to his resposibility for the murder.

"It was my car. It was my gun," Cox says.

Cox had been 20 the night Alan Streett was gunned down.

"I went into it to do what I thought would be a robbery," Cox says. "And a murder happened."

For Cox's family, it was a shocking blow.

Cox had little hope of ever leaving prison. But accepting responsibility seemed to set him free. He began to take classes and eventually got a college diploma. He also learned a trade.

Why did he do all that when he was looking at 90 years?

"Because in the back of my mind I was saying I would rather be prepared and never get out, than to get out and not be prepared," says Cox.

While Cox was making the best of life behind bars, Tim Streett was still drifting.

"I tried to do a few different things, different jobs. And I was just never happy doing anything," Tim Streett says.

One day, nearly 10 years after his father's murder, he received a message while driving his car.

"This song by Bruce Springsteen came on the radio," Tim Streett recalls. "And I just started to cry. And I had to pull over 'cause I couldn't drive. But I knew what that hole was. I knew that knife, that I had taken that knife, that I had cut God out of my life."

So Tim Streett decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a minister, with a single mission: to save inner city kids, like the ones who killed his dad.

And he got married and had a son of his own. He was so committed to his new cause, he even moved his family into one of the worst neighborhoods in Indianapolis. He wanted to live among the kids at risk.

Then he did something truly unusual. In 1997, almost 20 years after seeing his father gunned down, Tim Streett decided to face his father's killers again. So he sent each of them a letter.

"Well, he introduced himself and he wanted me to know that he had forgiven me," Cox says.

"It was unbelievable," he says. "Until it actually happens to you, you're not really sure that people like this even exist, or if it's real."

Tim Streett was asked why he didn't think along the lines of: "know forgiveness is in the Bible, but these young people took my father's life."

"It's very easy to say that, but it's amazing what a person can go through psychologically when they're unwilling to forgive," he says. "Anger and bitterness - that can build up. But true forgiveness says, 'I forgive you, and it's over.'"

CBS

Don Cox meets with Tim Street.

"As I got to know Don," he says, "and as I began to think about it, 90 years; that was pretty severe for not even having been at the scene of the crime."

So Tim Streett decided to put his forgiveness into action. He went to see Stephen Goldsmith.

"He said, 'I'd like you to help me get Don Cox out of prison early," Goldsmith remembers. "Well, I was a pretty hardline prosecutor. I never agreed to clemency; I never agreed to parole."

But Tim Streett convinced him to help, and Cox's sentence was reduced to 23 years. Cox was released from prison last year, and is now working as an auto mechanic.

"True forgiveness not only says that you're forgiven, but it acts on that," Streett says. "Whether it be somebody who committed a murder, or just a white lie. We can all be forgiven."

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