The Murder of Roxie McFadden: A True Female Corrections Officer Story

(Entire Story)

The way in which I have come to the conclusion that human nature is lovable — the way I have learned something of its deep pathos, its sublime mysteries — has been by living a great deal among people more or less commonplace and vulgar.

— George Eliot, in Adam Bede

The Person

No girl grows up telling her mama that she wants to be a prison guard, but it’s where Roxie McFadden found herself after twelve years with a dead-beat husband, an exhausted marriage, and Robbie, a twelve-year-old son she would never give up.

Her husband was considerably older, rattled by insecurity and hostage to his emotions; Roxie had only enough energy, desire, and willingness to raise one child. Their marriage was a mistake made to escape a brittle father and abusive brothers in a house where anger was like oxygen.

Roxie had a vision of a future but until now no plan on how to achieve it, so her vision continually brightened and faded, coalesced and evaporated due to the uncertain life she lived as a captive of a social class labeled the ‘working poor’: too many addresses; too…