From Gunfire to Grace: A Story of Forgiveness and Redemption

Welcome to the Victorious Living Podcast. You are about to hear real stories of real people who have discovered the real hope of Jesus Christ. I am Christi Overton Johnson, the founder and publisher of Victorious Living Magazine. Since 2011 I have had the privilege of sharing the most amazing life stories. I never cease to be amazed at the life transforming power of Jesus Christ. Today in our podcast you are going to go deeper into these amazing God stories and hear from those who have overcome incredible odds and discover how they found a life of freedom. You can discover it too. I trust that you will enjoy today's conversation between our host and our special guest. Thank you for listening and be sure to share the hope you hear and the mission of Victorious Living. This is Randy Claypool with Victorious Living. I am honored to have Mark Corbett and Stephen Watt with me today. If you have been following our podcast you will know that we have had a part one and a part two. We have had separate interviews with Steve and Mark. Today I wanted to bring them together. I wanted to ask them questions so we could all get a feel for what it was like to travel what these guys have traveled together. Your story together goes back well over 40 years. We are talking 44 years or thereabouts? 43. You met on a highway sharing with me doesn't have a lot of traffic. Mark had robbed a bank. Steve you were in your highway patrolman car. It had come over the radio that there had been a bank robbery. You pulled Mark over simply to ask him if he had seen the car that was being reported as being driven by the bank robber. That's right. Wow what a surprise. Shots ring out. Mark gets out and shoots Steve. There was some shooting back and forth. We know the story where it ended up. Gosh so much could be said. Where I want to begin today. Mark you were found guilty. You were sent to prison. 40 years and 11 months you spent in prison. Steve here you are all these years later and as I had you do the other day when I was interviewing if you tilt your head forward you can see Steve is missing an eye as a result of this experience together. Now Steve question to you. I understand that at some point not long after Mark was incarcerated he sent you a note. Do you recall? Tell them about in the county jail. I said I don't know if Steve remembers I sent you a note saying I was sorry I shot you. Do you remember that Steve? Yes I do. Knowing how angry you were what was your reaction? I didn't read it. Gave it to my sergeant. Nothing he had to say didn't concern me. Didn't care. Hated him. See I didn't know until I was talking to Mark that he had sent

you a note. I read the note years later after I forgave him but I didn't read it at that point time I just gave it to my sergeant and he stuck it in my personnel file. Now if I understand Steve you accepted Christ earlier something grabbed a hold of you because you were just messed up with how did you describe yourself what you were feeling the anger etc etc. Just so angry bitter hateful there's nothing good nothing good in life. And Mark what were you feeling early on during this after after being in a county jail then Getting put in for 40 years, getting sentenced for 40 some years. How did how sentenced to life that I didn't know. So you got a life sentence at my request. OK, I would say that was the missing caveat that the states, the judge wanted to give me a 20 year sentence, which I didn't know the judge told Steve about that and Steve would tell me about that years later, I found out in the county jail that from a guy that served time that lifers were doing less time than people with sentences of years. So I asked my attorney, he called the parole board, the parole board verified it. Lifers are doing an average of of 12 years and or nine years, nine years, nine years, nine months, something like that. And people's sentences were doing an average of 12 years at that time, like a 20 year, 30 or 40. So my attorney then called the warden we'd gone to college with and he verified it. And my attorney advised me against taking a life sentence. I said, no, I want a life sentence because lifers are doing an average of three years less. And the politics would change. And it was a decision was not good. I might have been able to get out after serving 14 years instead of almost 41 if I just taken what the judge wanted to give me. So you're you're incarcerated for a lot longer than you planned, and Steve is struggling. Tell us, Steve, some of your injuries that you had. The very first vote, very first bullet came through the windshield of my car, through my sunglasses and hit me in the left eye, broke out the back of my eye

socket. The bullet stopped the thickness of a piece of paper from entering my brain. No bone fragments penetrated my brain. I have one bullet still in my spine, a 16th of an inch from my spinal cord. One bullet hit me in the liver and missed the major blood vessel in my liver by a quarter of an inch, which I would have bled out if it would have hit that vein. And then two bullets bounced around inside and ripped up my stomach. My intestines caused all sorts of damage. And Mark, Steve shot you in in retaliation or in defense as you as you were fleeing. And so you were you were wounded, too. Mark, it was it was a minimal. Steve had a big gun, but that bullet went through the back of the seat. It was a 357, if I remember correctly. But so the metal in the back seat greatly slowed it up. And it was I was hit in the back and the shoulder. I didn't hit any major organs. It didn't hit my eye. So compared to the wounds that Steve got, it was nothing. So you you're like thinking, wow, I I got to bring this out again, if you can remember what you said to me, and that was something to the effect of when you got out of the car, there were there was you saw him as someone trying to stop you. You didn't see him as and you gave a list of things. Do you know what I mean by that? Yeah, yeah. He was an obstacle in the way I didn't see a human being. I didn't see a father, a son, a brother, a dad, a neighbor. All I saw was somebody in my way. And I think a great deal of criminal thinking looks at other people that way rather than humanizing them. I think if we humanize them, we can't do the things that we do. So all of these years later, you start to communicate and. Mark's asked for forgiveness, Steve doesn't want to forgive him, so that was a journey

for both of you. Where did it go from there? Who do you want? Well, I'm just either one of you, just we just I guess since you got something you want to say, you go first. Ask ask me again, I. So Mark sent you a note, you didn't read it right, but not only were you dealing with the disabilities, but you were pretty angry, hateful, miserable. Yeah. So you went and talked to a chaplain and trusted Christ and became a Christian. So what what were your options then to deal with the anger and hate? I didn't see any options at that point in time. I was saved, I was a Christian, my wife at that time asked me if I had forgiven Mark and I said I had and she called me a liar and then I called the chaplain and said I'm miserable, why do I not have the joy my wife has? She's reading the Bible, doing Bible studies, going to church, and I wasn't and he said have you forgiven the guy that shot you and I said of course I have and he called me a liar. A month went by, I was still so miserable I couldn't take it anymore, I was just, I was so unhappy, so sad, I called the chaplain and said what do I do and he said why don't you write the man a letter and tell him what's going on in your life and I had written an article, two articles, one was about the shooting and one was about accepting Christ and I sent those articles and a letter to Mark and the exact words of my letter were Mark, I don't wish you pain by sending these to you, meaning those two articles, I just want to share my joy with you, if you haven't already, won't you join me in Christ's love and the Christian family? And the second I wrote that, God just lifted this burden of hate off me and I experienced joy for the first time in my life. So Mark, you're in the county prison before being sentenced and you sent him a note saying you were sorry, did you expect or hope to get a response to that? I don't think so, I just felt compelled to reach out and tell him that I was sorry, sorry

for the pain I brought into his life and no, I don't think I expected a response. Let's talk about that for just a moment. Do you think it's human nature when we've done somebody wrong, I mean, I guess in that situation, were you doing it for him or were you doing it for your own self? Not in a selfish way, but I need to say I'm sorry to this guy and so you didn't expect him to respond, but did it make you feel better? Was that some motive behind it? Of course. I think the motive is I wanted to, if possible, and I had no idea the extent of the impact I had on him, but if possible to lessen the impact. And also when we've done bad, we know we feel better when we say we're sorry. And did you, at what point did you learn that Steve had survived? I knew right away. I mean, we were in the same operating room together. Emergency room. Thank you. Yes. Emergency room. Thank you. But I don't know, eight feet away. It wasn't very far. And they were working on him and he was in tremendous pain and they were working on me and I was in minor pain compared to him. And I knew he had survived at that point. And I think the jailers or somebody told me that he had survived. So I knew. It's interesting. So you said you were sorry. Did it help you to have done that, Mark, to say you were sorry? You know, I don't want to be cavalier or hardened, but it was a long, long, long time

ago and I don't know that I can go into my frame of mind sitting in the county jail when I did that 41 years ago. I felt compelled to write the note and I'm sure it might have mitigated somewhat what I did, my feelings. But of course, I had no idea the impact that I had that I know today that I've had in Steve's life. I mean, it's much greater than I ever understood then. Steve, when you wrote that letter then and tried to follow through after you kind of been called out that you hadn't really forgiven him, when you wrote that letter to truly forgive him, you said immediately once you sent it, you felt joy. Yeah. Did you get a response? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I got an 18-page letter from Mark. 18 pages. Well, Mark, I guess you had plenty of time to write that, right? Yeah. Sorry, that was kind of mean. 18 pages. What did you, well, I guess, I guess that was just, that's a lot of writing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I can't remember a lot of specifics that Mark wrote about, but he's a long letter writer, and I'm more like, one page is pretty long for me. I'm more like a paragraph or two. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mark was writing a book. Yeah. Yeah. Mark always writes books. He never writes notes or ... Mark, what did it feel like after ... I don't know, was it four or five years or the pass between when you said you were sorry? Do you have any recollection of the timeframe? It doesn't have to be exact, when Steve sent you that letter? Of course, I was overjoyed to get the letter, and I don't know if either one of us mentioned in our article about Steve coming up to see me at the revival. After we exchanged letters for a while, and then Steve felt compelled to come up to the revival, and I think he should respond about why he came up, and then we can talk about what happened then. So what you're about to tell us, you went to a revival inside the prison. Inside the prison, yeah. And this would be the first time that you had laid eyes on each other or been in each other's presence since the emergency room? Yeah. Yeah, since we'd tried to kill each other. So why'd you go? I went again as an act of obedience to God. I'd written another second letter to Mark that I didn't wanna write,

which in the letter I said, these are the hardest words I've said to anyone outside of my family. I love you, and you wanna know why? Because Christ first loved me. And I refused to write that letter, and God just crushed me. I had such a heavy burden, and when I wrote that letter, he lifted the burden. Well, then the Christian revival comes around, and I knew God wanted me to go. A pastor friend had called me and said, you can go with me, and I said, no, I don't wanna go. And God just crushed me again. And when I called the pastor friend immediately and said, I'll go, I'm smart enough to figure out that God's gonna keep me miserable until I agree to do what he wants me to. And so I went to the Christian revival. Because that's what God was commanding me to do, to go there. I knew I was going to be witnessing to Mark, because that's what God wants me to do. And for our viewers, that's Sam, the dog. Somebody gave him to you, and he's there. He's trying to comfort you right now, because he senses any kind of reaction you were sharing with me the other day when we were talking. He's just trying to keep you calm, and he's not camera shy.

He senses a great joy in my mind right at that moment. He knows that I'm very, very happy, and I'm above the normal line. My brain is above normal, and he's trying to get my brain down to normal, which, that's what he's trying to do. So Mark, when he showed up, what was your reaction when he showed up at that revival meeting inside the prison? Well, I can understand why you asked that question, but I think Steve's got a little bit more to add about what was going through his head when he went to meet me at the revival. I think that's an interesting thought. So, okay, you're being asked to expound more on that, Steve. What was really going through your head? I saw Mark across the gym floor, and he approached me, and I approached him, and he stuck out his hand to shake hands with me, and I couldn't do it. I couldn't reach out and take his hand. I threw my arms around him, and I hugged him, and I said, God, I'm glad I didn't kill you. And he said, I'm glad I didn't kill you, and I'm still, my brain still operates as a law enforcement officer, and I thought to myself, I bet you are, sucker. You'd be on death row if you'd killed me. And then I thought, I had my arms around him, and I was hugging him, and I thought, I can kill him, I know how to do this with my hands.

I could kill him, and I turned loose and I went, no, no, no, no, no, I don't think that anymore. And then we started talking. Okay, Mark, your turn. So, what were. What was going through your mind? I mean, what were you feeling? Do you remember? I mean, can you expound on that? I was delighted to get to spend some time with him. I sense of peace, a sense of gratitude that he reached out to me. I don't know. In the article, I haven't read the article yet that Steve wrote or can't remember everything I wrote, but Steve would go on to bring his family at times to visit me in the prison. We wrote a lot of letters and came to 16 parole board hearings advocating for my release. It's been a lengthy relationship and it's what I've been very, very grateful for. I'm asking questions and I'm sitting here listening to your answers very organically. None of this conversation is planned. Just for our viewers to understand, I just really wanted to get the two of you together. I just said, let me ask questions and then let's just share. Because what I really am trying to bring out, which you were doing a good job of, and that is the whole thing that people deal with. This world is so angry. I don't want to get into politics and that, but it's just the hate for law enforcement and then often too, the disdain for people who've committed crime, whether or not they should get another chance to live for the Lord. Then we come right down to the point of to forgive and be forgiven. This is just huge. Go ahead, Mark. I'd like to address that. Forgiveness is not for the person you're forgiving as much as it is for yourself. It's to put down that burden. Steve told me one time, over the years, Steve's had to re-forgive me sometimes because it's been an ongoing battle. He's lost count of the times he's had operations from the scar tissue and the bullets and he's always in pain. He was going through a struggle one time of forgiving me. He came and told me, asked me to forgive him. I said, what do I have to possibly forgive you for? He said, for my unforgiveness. He told me about how he had had this unforgiveness going through this period. It was like a knapsack that he had on his back. He kept putting rocks in the back of this knapsack and it got heavier and heavier and heavier. Then he made a decision to put it down and he had to

release again from the bitterness and the anger. When we don't forgive people, the biggest person harmed is ourselves. It also harms the relationships with us, of the people around us, our family, our friends, our jobs, because that anger and that bitterness can't help but spill out into other places. It's huge. I know on a minor level there's been some times where I've had trouble forgiving somebody and I'll end up forgiving them. There's a sense of release. I can be around them. I don't have to be uncomfortable. I don't have all this duplicity or the bad thoughts in my head. I can just be at peace. So forgiveness is for the person forgiving even more than it is the person being forgiven. I want to share a story. I was down in Colorado. Wyoming sent us—no, it was Oklahoma—sent us out of state. I went to four different prisons because we were overcrowded for a while. I was down in Oklahoma in a private prison and they had inmates from Colorado, California, Vermont, and Wyoming there. I was sharing the testimony of how Steve forgave me and how he had fought to get me out and all the damage I'd done to him. I shared my testimony in church, which I used to do about once every six months. A month or two went by and a guy comes up to me on the yard. He's an inmate. He said, I want to thank you. I said, for what? I didn't know who he was. He said, when you shared your testimony, I was able to forgive my father. I don't know what his father did. He said, for 10 years, I haven't talked to my dad. When he writes letters, I just tear them up. I throw them away. I won't let him visit me. After I heard about Steve forgiving you, I reached out to my dad. Now my dad and I have reconciled. My dad visits me, and we write, and he calls me. I want to thank you for sharing that testimony. I want to share another story. My dad was in law enforcement. He was a peace officer in the Sioux Falls Police Department for 16 years, and went on to work for the U.S. Marshals doing security in the banks. And when I shot Steve, and I didn't grow up with my father, so I didn't have a close relationship with him. We knew each other because my parents got divorced when I was young, but I had a relationship, but it wasn't close. When I shot Steve, I'd sent letters to my dad, and I'd sent Father's Day cards, and Christmas cards, and birthday cards, and every one he got for five years, he tore up. People would ask him, how's your son Mark? He says, I don't have a son, Mark. Because the worst thing you can be to a cop is a cop shooter. It's worse than anything. And so my dad could not get past that unforgiveness.

So Steve reached out, and well first Steve asked, he says, can I write your dad? And when he found out what was going on, I said, yeah. So I gave him my dad's address, and Steve wrote him and said, I've forgiven Mark, perhaps you can too. Or words to that effect. And it melted my dad's heart, melted my dad's heart. And my dad and I are very close today. In fact, the name I went to prison under was Farnam, and that was my stepfather's name. And I haven't seen him in 50 years. And I changed my name to Corbett, my birth father's name, because of how close we became. And Steve is good friends with my family. He talks to my dad, he talks to my sisters, he's visited with my family. But if Steve hadn't reached out to my father, even though he forgave me, there probably would be no reconciliation. This story just keeps going and going and going, and I know our time is limited, but man, that's an aspect that's just amazing. So it's like, I guess there's a domino effect. Oh, absolutely. Yes, I know. I told you the story about the inmate in Colorado and my dad, and there's been many others. And we don't know all of them that we've impacted. We don't know. So that's one of the things Steve really likes to share the gospel, because we just don't know the seeds that we've planted. Take a moment, guys, and what kind of message, beyond what we have shared, what you have shared, what kind of message do you want to leave as a result of this interview together, as a result of your lives together? I mean, you guys, you're not just acquaintances, this has brought you together in a deep bonding friendship. I just, the other day, well, you tell him what I said to you, Mark, just the other day. I'm not sure. What did you say? I'm sorry. I'm being obtuse. I'm sorry. You're definitely obtuse. When I said to you, you're not just my friend, you're my brother. Yes. Yes. I didn't know what you're referring to, because we've had several conversations. Thank you. Yes. Yes. So, I mean, you guys, you've hung out together and cooked out together, done things together. Well, here's a quickie, and I know you're almost out of time. No, we don't have time for this story. It's way too long. It's way too long. All right. Anyway, yeah, we're very good friends, more than friends, and it's an extraordinary relationship, and it would not have been possible without Christ. Without Christ, Steve could not have forgiven me, and my life changed immeasurably because of Steve's forgiveness of me and because

of Christ ending my life, and I urge anyone that's listening to this podcast, if they haven't accepted Jesus Christ to do so today, pick up the Bible, get into the Word, and get the peace it's brought Steve and I. Yeah. Couldn't have said it better, Mark. That was great. Thanks. Grace is amazing, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. That's what the song says, amazing grace. And wow. Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys, for being so open. Thank you for sharing just this journey. It's impactful. I mean, it would be impactful if it was over one or two years, but the fact that this story has been going on for over 40 years, and you guys Still keep writing and that story and you keep sharing and you keep building upon it. It wasn't just words, it wasn't just Okay, I'll do this because I feel like I have to you've had have developed a meaningful brotherhood a relationship and these these are two guys that shot each other You know hurt each other One with the law behind him one, you know It's just such an amazing story. Thank you. Thank you for being real. Thank you for Doing what you've done and living the life that you're living and thank you for putting that message of forgiveness Forgive and be forgiven out there to our listeners. Thanks, Mark Corbett and Steve what? I One last thing I'd like to say knew that was gonna happen. I knew didn't you mark? I could tell he had to say something more go right ahead I've had people get very angry at me and say you're saying I should be friends with the man that raped me I'm not saying that I'm saying Forgiveness is for everybody the friendship that Mark and I have is solely because that's what God required Me to do is to become friends with Mark. I don't I don't suggest or think that everybody who's had something bad done to him needs to be friends with With the person that that harmed him. I I'm glad you made that point. That's extremely valid. We're not encouraging you to go out and just you know, it's like like Mark said earlier the forgiveness part is some of You know, okay. So maybe I'm gonna forgive a person to try to let it go and not let it just Build up bitterness and anger in me for the rest of my life. So that's a good message

Thank you I Bet I could get something more out of you Steve Hey guys, thank you so much and Thank you ready. Take care of Sam really, I Appreciate this so much and God bless you guys and don't ever quit. Just keep on going and living for the Lord Thank you so much. I wish for God to bless you in your lives Thank you Thank you, Randy. Bless you and bless you Steve Thank you for watching our broadcast are you an incarcerated brother or sister who needs encouragement write to us at victorious living correspondence PO box 2751 Greenville, North Carolina 27836 or email us at hope at VL mag org To view victorious living magazine in its entirety. Please have your chaplain contact us at three five two four seven eight two Zero nine eight or email us through our website at VL mag org We are happy to provide our victorious living magazine free of charge in bulk with or without staples You