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| Pastor Davey Blackburn |
“When I first saw on
the news the guys that now stand trial for having killed my wife, like up to
that moment I was dealing with a lot of sadness. Just a lot of intense, deep,
deep, grief. But when I saw their faces, immediately I experienced something
I’ve never experienced before in my life. I experienced a deep, dark, scary,
frightening rage. I never experienced that before and honestly it freaked me
out,” said Blackburn in a Facebook Live broadcast of
his sermon delivered at the Mercy Road Church in
Indiana.
“I mean, to be honest
with you, it would have been so much easier for me to dismiss things if I
hadn’t seen that,” he said.
Blackburn explained
that once he was able to confront his emotions, he noticed it had been welling
up inside him like a cancer and he wanted to “respond in vengeance.”
“Man, I can’t tell you
how many times I imagined in my head, what if the investigators, the
prosecutors, what if they … just let me in a room with them. What would I do?
And I began to imagine it. But that began to bring into this really deep dark
place that I didn’t like and it was destroying me. And then Jesus subtly
reminded me, ‘Davey, I was murdered for your sin. You, Davey, murdered me and I
chose to forgive you,” he said.
He then explained that
when we forgive we trust God with vengeance and it’s the best action to take
because of God’s bigger perspective on life.
Two of the three
suspects charged with the 2015 murder of
Amanda Blackburn, have now had the murder charges against them dropped after agreeing
to plea deals, while the case for murder against the remaining
suspect is still pending.
The Marion County Prosecutor's Office said in a Fox 59 report that
charges including the one for murder against suspect Diano Gordon, now 28, was
dismissed in exchange for his pleading guilty to robbery resulting in serious
bodily injury and burglary.
The late Amanda
Blackburn moved with Davey Blackburn from South Carolina in 2012 to start
Resonate Church in Indiana. On the morning of Nov. 10, while Davey was away at
the gym, police said his wife was shot three times,
including once in the head during a home invasion. She succumbed to her
injuries the following day along with their unborn daughter, Everette
"Evie" Grace Blackburn.
Police announced the arrests of two men, Larry Jo Taylor Jr., then
18, and his accomplice, Jalen Watson, then 21, and charged them with murder and
a litany of other crimes in late November 2015. Gordon, who was 24, at the
time, was arrested and charged in December 2015.
Watson also had
charges including murder dismissed against him in a plea deal in October 2017 in
an agreement that would see him joining Gordon in testifying against Taylor,
who authorities are hoping to convict for the murder.
Taylor’s trial is
still pending while Davey Blackburn’s book Nothing Is Wasted: A True Story of Hope,
Forgiveness, and Finding Purpose in Pain, has been placed
on hold until after Taylor’s trial.
In early 2018, a RTV6 report said
that Davey Blackburn’s unpublished manuscript could be used in his wife’s
murder trial after Marion County Judge Grant Hawkins granted a request by Larry
Jo Taylor’s defense counsel to review it.
Taylor’s public
defender, Jeff Neel, was granted permission to review the manuscript ahead of
trial Feb. 7, 2018. On the same day, however, the judge granted a motion by
Taylor to dismiss his legal counsel and represent himself in the trial. Neel
was noted as remaining as counsel for the issue of reviewing the manuscript on
court documents.
Attorney Jack
Crawford, who is not connected to the case and hasn't read the manuscript, said
it could be helpful to the defense.
“My guess is the
defense will be looking for behavior inconsistent with a grieving spouse,”
Crawford said. “Anything indicating unusual behavior or unusual observations
about his wife’s death. Anything suggesting his reaction wasn’t ‘normal.’”
He continued: “What
you do in a defense case, particularly where the evidence is mounting against
your client, is you want to make the case about the truth — but you want
to make it about your truth. Not the government’s or the state’s or the
prosecution’s truth.”
According to Amazon,
Blackburn’s book is set to be published on July 28, 2020.
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