Jason and Daniel: where are they now?

(If this is your first time here, read this first.)

In a play, the characters' story stops when the curtain comes down. But history makes bad theater, and the real story never ends. Jason and Daniel are still around. So what are they doing now?

Both boys spent a year in the Smith County jail before being transferred to their current locations. Daniel is incarcerated at the Alfred Hughes Unit near Gatesville, serving five concurrent life sentences and two concurrent twenty-year sentences. He's a model inmate: well-behaved, hard-working, and earnestly repentant of his crimes. He never graduated from high school, so he's been taking classes to get his GED. After his mother's death, a dark cloud had descended over Daniel's life, transforming this once warmhearted young man into a brooding, withdrawn drug addict. But after the arrest, he sobered up. His sister Chisty told me about the first time she visited Daniel in the Smith County jail. When she sat down to talk to him, he asked if she was okay--he was more concerned with how his actions had affected her than with himself. "And that," she said, "was when I knew my baby brother had come back." He's eligible for parole in 2016. I think he'll get it.

Jason is serving out ten concurrent life sentences and three concurrent twenty-year sentences at the Robertson unit near Abilene. He blames his actions on Chantix, an anti-smoking medication he was taking that's been known to cause severe psychological problems. He says he can't even remember setting the fires. But he says he's turned his life around since his arrest, accepting God back into heart and reading the Bible every day. When he gets out, he wants to do something great with his life, like maybe become a minister.

If that sounds like bullshit, it's because it is. According to his lawyer, Jason wasn't even taking Chantix when the fires started. And he's been far from well-behaved: one routine search of his cell at Smith County turned up seizure medication and bootleg alcohol, and guards there intercepted a note in which he told his mother how to sneak contraband into the prison. And he refuses to accept responsibility for his actions. His grandparents tell me that every time they go to visit him now, he asks the same question: "Why would they do this to me?" He thinks he's been unfairly punished. He won't be eligible for parole until 2024, and at the rate he's going, he won't get it.

Draw your own conclusions.