Witnesses speak against parole for ex-minister

? Former Emporia minister Thomas Bird has neither shown remorse nor accepted responsibility for the brutal death of his wife Sandra, her mother told the Kansas Parole Board on Friday.

Regardless of Bird’s reported good deeds in prison as a chaplain and Christian fellowship leader, Jane Grismer said, he should never be freed.

“He was a minister when he killed Sandy,” Grismer told the board. “It’s what he was trained to do.”

The parole board is hearing Bird’s case for the second time. His first request for parole was denied in January 2001.

While almost all of the input Friday came from people opposed to Bird’s release, several people spoke on his behalf Thursday at a similar hearing in Wichita, and the board will conduct another public hearing on Bird’s case Monday in Kansas City, Kan.

Bird himself is scheduled to go before the board on May 17 at the state prison in Lansing. The board could rule on his parole as early as June.

Bird is serving a life sentence for the 1983 death of his wife in what initially was believed to be a traffic accident southeast of Emporia. Four months after Sandra Bird’s death, Martin Anderson, the husband of Bird’s church secretary, Lorna Anderson, was shot to death by a masked gunman south of Junction City.

Bird was convicted in 1984 of criminal solicitation to commit first-degree murder for his involvement in an earlier failed plot to have Martin Anderson killed, but was acquitted in 1990 of Anderson’s death.

Lorna Anderson, Bird’s lover at the time of the killings, is serving a sentence of 15 years to life at Topeka Correctional Facility for second-degree murder in Martin Anderson’s death.

The case was the subject of a 1987 television miniseries, “Murder Ordained.”

Discreetly dabbing tears from the corners of her eyes, Grismer showed several pictures of her daughter to the parole board. Some were of Sandra Bird as a small child, and one was taken when she played quarterback in a powderpuff football game.

Grismer’s face lit up when she described her daughter as a seamstress who made her mother a dress like one in a department store that didn’t come in the right size and a member of Phi Beta Kappa who didn’t have the traditional key because it cost $10 and she didn’t want to ask her mom for the money.

“We tell the old stories because we just don’t have any new ones,” Grismer said.

Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent Kyle Smith, who worked in the Lyon County Attorney’s office when Bird’s case was being investigated, told the board he had never met anyone as manipulative as Bird.

“I had never seen anyone in that mode before, or since,” Smith said. “He has shown a total lack of remorse and has never taken responsibility for his crimes. But in his own mind, he can’t pull back from his statements that he didn’t do it. That man hasn’t changed.”

The only person speaking Friday on Bird’s behalf was Hans Heinemann, a Topeka resident who served time in prison with Bird more than a decade ago.

Heinemann said Bird isn’t capable of killing anyone and in prison, Bird’s story of innocence never changed.

“Most of the time citizens believe the criminal justice system,” he said, suggesting that a DNA analysis would prove Bird is innocent. “Sometimes that system is not fair. He’s innocent and there’s no reason to keep him in prison.”