This article was originally published in The University Press, Lamar University’s student newspaper, on April 26, 2018.
Story by Eleanor Skelton
UP contributor
Twenty years after a home invasion changed her life, Erin DeLeon is graduating with a degree in art from Lamar. She said her senior project, which will be shown at the Dishman Art Museum in a few weeks, tells her story, even the darker parts.
Her thesis deals with the emotional repercussions of a tragic event.
On Feb. 6, 1998, Elroy Chester entered the home of Kim Ryman DeLeon, a Port Arthur firefighter and sexually assaulted Erin, who was 17 at the time, and her younger sister.
Erin said she was home alone watching a movie when it happened — her mom, Kim, was at work and her younger sister Claire was out with her boyfriend. Erin said she left the door unlocked so they wouldn’t wake her infant son when they came home.
“This guy just walks in my door with a gun and mask and he said, ‘I bet you wish you locked the door,’” she said. “I thought one of my friends was playing a really, really bad joke. I felt like my stomach tried to fall out of my body.”
When Claire and her boyfriend came home, Chester held them all at gunpoint, tied up the boyfriend and raped Erin and assaulted Claire.
When her uncle, Willie Arnold Ryman, III also a firefighter, stopped by to check on the girls, which Erin said he did regularly while her mom was at work, Chester went outside, shot and killed him.
Claire jumped up and locked the door, and Chester fled because he couldn’t get back in the house, Erin said, adding that the two teenagers couldn’t call anyone since he’d cut the phone lines. While her sister and boyfriend went to find a policeman, Erin grabbed her infant son and fled to a neighbor’s house.
“My mom was a firefighter and she got the call from the 911 dispatch,” Erin said.
The fire department would not let Kim drive the rig because she was too emotional, but she was part of the response.
Dutch filmmaker Jaap van Hoewijk featured the story in the 2013 documentary “Killing Time,” which was filmed around the time of Chester’s execution for the crime, and interviewed Erin and her family.
Erin said she hasn’t watched the documentary, but her family told her it has information about Chester’s life and background, as well as her uncle’s.
“My uncle was the fifth person murdered, but he was actually the 10th person shot,” she said. “People asked me, ‘Why haven’t you watched it?’ To be honest, I was kind of done with it at that point. I don’t have anything bad to say about the guy who made (the documentary), he was a pretty neat guy.”
Now at 37 years old, DeLeon is finishing her bachelor’s in fine arts. Most of her studies concentrate on drawing and ceramics. For her senior thesis, she threw a some ceramic plates and broke them, drawing pictures on the shards.
“The biggest platter I’ve made was for my uncle,” she said. “It’s his portrait. On top of it, I have all the old newspaper articles. I copied the headline, ‘Veteran PA firefighter murdered,’ with a girl leaning head down, arms around her knees. It’s basically a commentary on survivor’s guilt. I still feel it just as strong today as I did in the beginning.
“I feel like I could have done something. I’m the one who survived it, but my uncle was a hero, awarded medals, and the last thing he did was save me and my sister, her boyfriend and my son.”
Erin painted his initials on the bottom of the plate, along with his son’s initials, scratched out since William’s son died of a heroin overdose after the murder.
“It ruined him, he couldn’t handle it,” she said.
Erin said her emotions surrounding Chester’s execution are complicated.
“In the beginning, after everything happened, I felt like it was taking too long, that justice needed to be served,” she said. “I was angry because I was hurt, my family was hurt really badly.”
It’s taken the majority of the last 20 years to sort out her feelings, Erin said.
“It wasn’t just a rape, it wasn’t just a murder, it wasn’t just a home invasion — there was all those different things that were separate traumas,” she said. “It took me a long time to finally work all the way through all that.”
Erin and her family watched Chester’s execution, which was the hardest thing she’s ever done, she said.
“I did watch that man die,” she said. “I thought I would feel vindicated. I thought I would have closure. But it just hurt really bad to see another human being die.”
As Erin and Claire watched behind the glass, Chester made eye contact with them. Erin said she thought he looked scared. Then the chemicals were injected.
“He just started to relax,” she said. “He made this one last loud gasping breath, and then that was it. At that point, I was crying so hard that I couldn’t catch my breath anymore. My mom sat there with her hand on my shoulder and I just felt so awful. That was the most terrible thing I have ever seen. I don’t like the death penalty, I despise it, but I don’t have any other solution for when people do these terrible things to other people.”
“That’s why I’m torn. I don’t want to see people hurt. I don’t want to see people suffer, and if we had a better way to punish the people who have destroyed other humans, I would be 100 percent for it. I think that’s the only form of justice — that’s the most they can do to somebody who has taken so much from someone else.”
DeLeon said she missed the documentary screening at the Jefferson Theatre, Friday, because her grandfather recently died and she was at his funeral.
Erin said the tragedy shattered her family.
“I was very, very close with all of my family, it was almost surreal,” she said.
Erin remembers her family having Sunday dinners after church, playing guitar on the porch, going shopping together, and on outings to the beach and fishing before her uncle’s murder.
“After (he) was killed, it stopped, because I guess we just had a hard time being in the same room together,” she said. “I don’t have the words to truly explain how I feel because I don’t know if there are words.”
Erin hopes to focus on production pottery after graduation.
“I enjoy making affordable art,” she said. “Coffee mugs, pieces of functional, useful art that make people happy.”
Most of Erin’s pieces have been sold through word of mouth, but she plans to launch a web site and an Etsy store after graduation.
Working on the pottery has helped Erin make sense of the trauma she experienced. Although she will never be able to fully put it behind her, she has some advice for other victims.
“We don’t have to be trapped in that trauma our entire life,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you have to live in this horrible fear and confusion. You don’t have to be a victim — be a survivor.”
The Senior Thesis show, which includes DeLeon’s artwork, will open with a reception at 6 p.m., Friday.
Eleanor Skelton 