But his death is far from the only tragedy in her life. This isn't the first marriage for Sue and Gene Norton, who between the two of them have five grown children. Sue Norton and her first husband lost a baby son shortly after he was born. Her younger brother died of AIDS not long after her father was killed.
She is estranged from some of her family members. Some people suspect she's being used by the inmates, especially Knighton. Norton doesn't apologize, nor will she ever, for what she has chosen to do.
"But when God gives you a job," she says frequently, "you just have to do it."
The phone rings. It's B.K. making his weekly call. The prisoners she visits call regularly.
"Hello, how are you?" Norton says, a couple days before her visit to death row. In the background television news reports that the American Bar Association has asked for a moratorium on the death penalty.
"Yes, I'm getting ready to take a trip. Are you ready to have a birthday?" The conversation continues on for about 15 minutes, and then a computer voice tells B.K. the call is about to cut off. "I will see you Wednesday and I love you," she says. "You take care and I'll see you soon."
"Oh, crud," she says, and then the computer ends the conversation.
Gene Norton has come home. He is as non-talkative as his wife is chatty. He says he's proud of what Sue does. He feels a part of it, he says, because he has a job with a large enough salary to finance her work.
"I don't have a problem with it," he says. He doesn't worry about his wife being in danger from a paroled inmate. "She's making friends," Gene Norton says, "not enemies."
One of those friends is Eugene Bradley at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility. Norton comes to Hutchinson once a month, spending two hours in the afternoon talking to Bradley and two hours the same night visiting another inmate. She goes through the barred entrance, stashes her purse in a locker and strips off her jewelry before going through a metal detector.
Once inside the plain, white visiting room she takes a seat. "Inmates prefer to sit against the wall," Norton says. "They've learned to watch their back side. You're not here to be their counselor to remake them. We're here to be their friend."
The Rev. D.A. VanBebber described Norton as being "rather green" when she first started visiting the Hutchinson prison several years ago. Now, he said she epitomizes grace.
VanBebber is the administrator of the pastoral care department at the Hutchinson facility. Norton visits prisoners as part of the M-2 program, which matches an inmate with a person in the outside world.
"I see her as being very Scriptural," VanBebber said, when acknowledging that many people may not understand why she ministers to inmates. "To society that's really crazy. We talk about our walk matching our talk and hers does. She's there regardless of what they do. At first, Eugene really jerked her around. She continued to come back. She fits my definition of grace. God knows the worst about us and continues to love us. She knows the worst about these guys, and she still gracious to them."
When Eugene Bradley enters the visiting room, Sue Norton greets him with an embrace. With the nickname of "Tank," at 6-foot-3 and 300 pounds, Bradley dwarfs the diminutive Norton.
Other pairs of people start to chat in the room. Sue has brought a handful of quarters, and Bradley makes his first of several trips to the food machine. Sue tells him that his dad called her and plans to come to Ark City to visit her foundation. Bradley is up for parole this summer, and he hopes to go through the program at the Fifth Avenue Foundation.
From Wichita, Bradley has been in prison for more than 6 years. He was convicted of aggravated battery and kidnapping, and describes himself as being a problem prisoner his first couple of years of incarceration. Bradley, 33, said at the time of his crimes he was addicted to drugs.
"One of the things that has been hard for me is my lack of knowledge of drug addiction," Sue Norton says. "I've had two inmates who have come out of prison who hurt me - mentally, not physically - by the fact they went back on cocaine."
"I learned that getting high or getting drunk was a way to escape from my problems," Bradley says. He says he has turned his life around now -taking classes and earning his General Educational Development test and changing his attitude - and he gives Sue Norton at least partial credit.
"She's been a support system that I've never had before," he says. "It worked out because she was willing to give me a chance. I didn't want to disappoint her."
