After the visit with Stewart, Geraghty-Rathert, McManmon and another paralegal, Shane Kincaid, drove around an unfamiliar Des Moines neighborhood, looking for a house they think might belong to Stewart's son, Shane -- now a 22-year-old man. They met him back in 2013, but he's since changed phone numbers and addresses. An ex-girlfriend gave them a general area where she believes he's living -- a house she described as having a lot of vans parked out front.
"Vans!" yells McManmon from the back seat, pointing to a small house, and Geraghty-Rathert pulls over on a snow-covered side street. They write down the address and return to their hotel. Weeks later, Shane Stewart called.
After he was whisked away by the Osceola police in 1994, Shane went to live with his grandma, Stewart's mother Linda. When she died he was fourteen, and he was sent to live with distant relatives. He remembers those years were hard, and he was getting into a lot of fights. People told him he'd likely end up dead or in prison.
"I didn't grow up in a very good place. I got picked on a lot," he recalls. "It was tough. I've been through a lot. It just got easier as time went on."
Today, he's a full-time welder, living in Des Moines with his biological father and working six days a week at a job he says he enjoys.
He has good memories of visiting his mother in prison, back when his grandmother used to take him. The last time he saw Angel, he thinks he was about ten years old.
"She was very emotional at first because she didn't raise me. She did what she did because of the love she had for me," he says. "The first time I saw her it was the happiest moment I had. Nothing else mattered except seeing my mom."
It's been years since Shane went to visit his mother, in part due to his transient childhood, and now in part because of his intense work schedule. But it may also be because he didn't always understand what had happened in those weeks back in 1994. But he is now very supportive of her release.
The WILLOW Project attorneys remind Stewart of this on their next visit to the Mitchellville prison. According to them, she has only recently stopped talking about him as if he is still a baby.
"Don't think your son does not think of you. He does," says McManmon.
"You've seen the pictures, so you know he's very pretty just like you," says Geraghty-Rathert.
"I just miss him," says Stewart, tearfully. "People weren't telling him the truth. He probably thought it was my fault."
Stewart's son and her attorneys are not the only ones who support her bid for clemency. Though he didn't respond further to interview requests, Bradley wrote Riverfront Times one letter from the Anamosa, Iowa, penitentiary that begins, "YES ANGEL SHOULD BE SET FREE." Chamberlain, now a married mother of two who speaks to at-risk youth about her experience in prison, agrees as well.
Shaffer did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Today, at 89, he is likely the oldest inmate in the Iowa prison system. There is a brief glimpse of him in the Oscar-nominated documentary short "Prison Terminal," about the hospice unit of the Iowa State Penitentiary. He was best friends with the film's protagonist, Jack Hall, and sits in silence for a few moments by Hall's bedside in the film. The director, Edgar Barens, says Shaffer never opened up, and only begrudgingly signed the waiver after Hall died. It's not unreasonable to think Shaffer will die in the same hospice wing.
Officer Hollinger, the man who arrested Stewart in 1994, would like to see her go home. After he left the Osceola Police Department, he became a corrections officer at Mitchellville, and after fifteen and a half years there, got to know her well. He says she thanked him for arresting her and saving Shane's life.
"I think that she deserves a second chance...I don't think she's going to be a menace on society," he says. "I would probably say that it'd be very crucial for her to continue some kind of therapy when and if she gets out."
That's exactly what Geraghty-Rathert and the attorney representing Stewart on the Iowa side say will be arranged for her, likely in some kind of group-home setting, should she be granted clemency. Because the clemency process in Iowa is more clearly defined -- all applications must be reviewed and answered in 90 days -- it would in theory make sense to apply there first. However, if Stewart were to receive clemency in Iowa, she would be immediately shipped to a Missouri prison, something she calls a "nightmare." It's also a prospect Saint Louis University School of Law dean Michael Wolff finds preposterous.
"There's no good reason to keep her in a Missouri prison if Iowa says she's been corrected. Why are we going to drag her into Missouri and spend the money on her? I don't see the point," he says.
It's an argument Stewart's attorneys are hoping Nixon finds compelling when they visit his office on March 13 to advocate for their clients. Many of the clemency-coalition members say they are cautiously optimistic that such meetings are even happening in Jefferson City. (Nixon's office would not comment on the clemency coalition or on Stewart's case but to say that it is "under review.")
As for Stewart, if nothing else she's happy just to have visitors and letters after many years of silence from the outside world. Although she's terrified of many things, she emphasizes that she wants the chance to live a free life, and to mentor troubled teenagers like she once was.
"God brought you all to me," she says to the WILLOW Project members before they leave. "I just look at you guys as angels."
Everyone at the table is in tears.
"We're not angels," says Geraghty-Rathert.
"You guys are angels because you're here, you know what I'm going through, you understand," she chokes out. "I been thinking about you guys all night and thanking God -- someone is finally looking at me."
To learn more about the WILLOW Project visit their website or Facebook page.
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