Mother Fights Bid To Reduce Killer’s Sentence

It’s not easy deciding which enemy Connie Pangallo despises more: The brute who raped and murdered her only daughter, Tammie Jo Baril, nine years ago.

Or insensitive U.S. Army bureaucrats who have made this grieving Coeur d’Alene woman’s life a hell on Earth.

The confessed killer, Lavante F. Pope, had a hearing last month in an attempt to reduce the life sentence he received for murdering Pfc. Baril and raping another soldier. Pope, also a private, and the two women were stationed at Ft. Clayton, Panama, at the time.

The Army failed to notify Pangallo of this new development in her daughter’s case. Nor, as Pangallo discovered to her horror, was she told of similar hearings earlier during Pope’s confinement at Leavenworth Prison in Kansas.

She found out after a random dream about Pope getting out prompted her to call the prison.

That’s just the latest chapter in Pangallo’s faith-shattering tale. As the Army is learning, this is not a woman to trifle with.

Pangallo has collected more than 1,000 signatures on a petition to keep Pope locked up for life.

U.S. Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho, joined Pangallo’s crusade in a letter mailed to Army Secretary Togo West.

Kempthorne’s aide, Rachel Riggs, set up a Bank of America account to pay Pangallo’s way back to Virginia next month. She plans to present her petition and concerns to the board that oversees clemency and parole matters.

“I honestly think the Army thought it could sweep me under the carpet and that I’d just go away,” says Pangallo, barely suppressing her rage. “Well, they’re messing with the wrong mother. I’m not going away.”

Reminders of this tragedy are everywhere inside Pangallo’s modest white home that has a view of Lake Coeur d’Alene.

Tammie, looking radiant in a white formal dress, beams from a large color photograph hooked to a living room wall. A row of framed snapshots of her line a shelf. She was a beautiful young woman, 5-foot-4 with strawberry blonde hair.

“She was full of life with high ambitions for herself and a wonderful sense of humor,” says Pangallo. “She was a joy in my life.”

Pangallo says she was shocked by Tammie’s decision to join the Army after graduating from Post Falls High School in 1986. Tammie wanted to use the Army’s college benefits to someday get a business degree.

Her death at age 20 was as senseless as it gets. It happened the night of June 5, 1988, long before sex scandals would rock the military establishment.

Pope, who was entrusted to keep peace in the barracks, stole a key and attacked Tammie as she slept. Her roommate was gone for the night.

According to Pangallo, who has a transcript of the trial, Pope told Tammie he was going rape her and asked her what she would do. “Report you,” she said. “Then I’m going to have to kill you,” he answered before raping her and then stabbing her nine times and slashing her throat.

Pangallo kept a diary that is as much an indictment of the Army as it is a nightmarish account of nine years of pain.

She says she was bluntly told by an officer at her door that Tammie had been stabbed to death. She learned through a later newspaper account that her daughter had been raped.

Pangallo tried in vain to get Tammie’s personal effects. On May 8, 1990, she received a package from Panama with no letter. Inside were items stained with Tammie’s blood that had probably been used in the trial.

“I was reliving her murder all over again,” says Pangallo.

The personal effects never came. On April 21, 1990, a fire destroyed the barracks where they were stored.

On the dining room table is a stack of 53 receipts from registered letters she sent the Army and politicians about the case. None of the letters, says Pangallo, ever got a response.

“The Army never even sent me a sympathy card,” she says. “The only thing I can hope for is to keep this person in prison so he won’t hurt anyone else.

“So he won’t break somebody else’s heart.”

, DataTimes