Writing Gives Killer An Escape

Blake Pirtle lost nearly all contact with his former world after he was sentenced to death for a 1992 Spokane Valley double murder.

“All of a sudden, I became a leper and nobody wanted anything to do with me,” Pirtle said in a recent telephone interview from death row at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

“Everyone I went to high school with or worked with, I wasn’t worthy of their time.”

Pirtle, who’s 32, decided to “branch out.” The Internet helps him do that.

Not only has Pirtle recruited pen pals online, he also writes spirited monthly sports columns for Cell Door Magazine, an online publication.

The former Spokane man said he became interested in creative writing after taking a prison literature class several years ago. Now pen and paper provide a mental escape from the cell he lives in 20 hours a day.

Pirtle said he corresponds with about 15 people, some of whom responded to the pen pal request that death-penalty protesters posted on his behalf.

“They basically just let me have a life through them,” he said.

His essays and poetry have also appeared in books such as “Trapped Under Ice: A Death Row Analogy.”

While Pirtle’s writing is far from literary, Julie Zimmerman, whose company in Maine published the book, believes it shows readers that death-row inmates are real people with real feelings. “I’m hoping they have some sense that these are not just monsters.”

Now Pirtle hopes people donate money to his typewriter fund so he can type his letters and columns instead of write them by hand.

Dianna Hartvigsen understands the longing to be a published writer. Her daughter, Dawnya Calbreath, dreamed about it, planned for it, talked about it often.

Then one spring morning in 1992, 20-year-old Calbreath and co-worker Tod Folsom were opening the Burger King on Argonne Road when they had an unexpected visit from a former employee.

Pirtle knocked Calbreath unconscious with gallon-size paint cans and crushed Folsom’s skull with a fire extinguisher. He used a knife and hacksaw to cut his victims’ throats, then blamed it on an imaginary friend.

Hartvigsen, who teaches third grade, is appalled that people willingly post Pirtle’s columns and pen pal request on the Internet.

“My gut feeling is I don’t want his life to be fun,” she said.

Hartvigsen finds Pirtle’s fascination with creative writing sadly ironic. The notebooks brimming with Dawnya’s poetry and stories are tucked away for safekeeping.

Hartvigsen added quietly, “Who knows where it would’ve gone?”