Two Things: Parole hearing for convicted cop killer approaching; First Lady plans a visit (2024)

Without comment, it’s Monday. Again. And Tax Day only makes it worse.

​​A decision about whether to release from prison the man convicted of killing Winston-Salem police Lt. Aaron Tise in 1992 won’t be known for months.

Parole hearings, increasingly rare since an overhaul to state sentencing laws in 1994, are just getting underway, and the board’s life-altering decision won’t come until summer.

But that hasn’t stopped his family and friends from making their feelings known about the possibility that Conrad Crews will be released from prison.

“As long as I have a breath in my body, I’ll fight his release,” said Bailey Howard, a retired Winston-Salem police officer and one of Tise’s closest friends.

That’s understandable, given what he lived through early on the morning of June 26, 1992.

Howard and Tise, both lieutenants, were working that day. Each had responsibility for roughly half the city— Tise the east and Howard the west.

Shortly after 1:30 a.m., patrol officers responded to a call about teenagers fooling around with construction equipment parked off New Walkertown Avenue. They didn’t find anything (or anyone) but two hours later, after another call, they did.

A road grader was being driven wildly through the Lakeside Apartments. Tise had pulled his cruiser off the side of a street and the grader smashed into his car at an estimated 35 miles an hour. He was crushed while trying to escape.

Four young men were charged the next day with first-degree murder, assault and larceny. Charges against three were dropped because prosecutors said they didn’t have enough evidence to convict.

But the fourth man, 19-year-old Conrad Crews who was identified as the driver, was indicted for first-degree murder. A year later, in July 1993, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and a judge sentenced him to life.

But life didn’t really mean life. In those days, before truth-in-sentencing laws became a national trend, parole (and early release) were options for just about all criminal convictions handed down between 1981 and 1994.

And because that was the law when Crews went to prison, Aaron Tise’s family and friends have to recount the worst night of their lives roughly every three years.

So they’ve started preparing for what they might say in a conference call with the parole board scheduled for April 23. Crews’ family and supporters will have their say in a separate hearing.

“It’s been a very long time,” said Tanya Tise, Aaron Tise’ widow. “I don’t dwell on it. It doesn’t control my life.”

She didn’t say the word— she didn’t have to— but yet “but” hung in the air.

Hard questions remain about forgiveness, rehabilitation and how much prison time justice demands for a murder conviction some still say was the result of young men fooling around with construction equipment.

For Tanya Tise, forgiveness is much deeper than a theoretical Sunday school exercise. It’s personal and not getting any easier with the passage of time. “He was the love of my life and always will be,” she said.

She’s Methodist, attends services near her home and has asked a succession of pastors for guidance.

Invariably, she said, they’ve admitted to her they would struggle, too, under similar circ*mstances.

It would be easier to say, at least for public consumption, that she's forgiven Crews but not forgotten. But Tanya Tise isn’t wired that way, and if you ask her a question, she’ll answer honestly and from her heart.

“Out on the street, if someone says ‘God says to forgive,’ that’s easier for some people who haven’t lived with something like this,” she said. “There’s different stages to it. But for me, deep down, no. I can’t. Not yet.”

The concept of forgiveness presents a similar moral quandary for Bailey Howard, too. Especially when a new round of parole hearings rolls around, he reviews the awful events of June 26, 1992, what he saw, what he heard and what came before.

That night, other officers reported that a shirtless Crews was laughing when they got to him even as it was obvious that a policeman had been killed. “It’s just as well I didn’t see that,” Howard said.

The fact that the road grader didn’t stop after destroying Tise’s cruiser and struck a second one on U.S. 311 a few minutes later has convinced Howard that it was no accident.

That and the fact that Crews had been released from prison in 1991 after serving four months of a five-year sentence he’d received for firing a shotgun at two police officers tells Howard everything he needs to know about Crews’ attitude toward cops.

The fours months, by the way, were a result of the same perverse sentencing laws in place at that time.

Prison overcrowding meant that state officials were releasing some inmates after serving about a month for every year of their sentence.

“Raleigh,” said Howard, disdain evident in his voice. “The irony is, Crews should have been in prison when Aaron died. He caught every break they could give a person.”

Though Aaron Tise— “Honeybee” to fellow officers— was a dear friend, Howard also had to work through the violent, on-duty deaths of two other cops: officer Mike Jennings in a car crash June 26, 1992 and senior officer Bobby Beane, who was shot to death April 23, 1993.

So when Howard, a retired cop and the son of a retired cop, is asked about forgiveness, he doesn’t hesitate. His personal experience doesn’t allow another way.

“I feel like I’m a Christian, but I’m not planning to forgive Conrad Crews,” he said. “That’s up to God, not me.”

He and Tanya Tise know that no matter their feelings, no matter what they’ll say at next week’s hearing, a decision about Conrad Crews’ parole isn’t up to them.

“It’s out of my control,” Tise said. “Everything has been real stressful, but at least I’ll know I tried.”

First Lady scheduled to visit GTCC

GREENSBORO— Ostensibly, First Lady Jill Biden’s visit to Guilford Technical Community College this afternoon is about workforce development.

Along with college officials, teachers and a well-screened student or two, Biden will participate in a round-table discussion about ways to better prepare young people to enter the work world with or without a college degree.

Mmm-hmm.

It’s a worthwhile subject, and Biden, with a lifetime of teaching experience, is certainly qualified to weigh in.

But with a general election being set up as nothing short of a battle for the nation’s soul in seven short months— and North Carolina generally considered as something of a swing-state— campaign visits by the candidates (and their stand-ins) will increase in frequency.

And if business takes you anywhere near GTCC around 3 p.m. today, build extra time into your schedule. Those motorcades have a way of bringing traffic to a standstill.