Beth Varga (left, pictured with her son Kevin) isn't hanging her hopes for a stay of execution for her death-row inmate son on anyone but God.
Varga's hope is not in appellate attorney Robin Norris. It is not in Texas Gov. Rick Perry, or the slim chance that he might offer a 120-day reprieve before the May 12 scheduled execution. Nor is it in any federal or state court judge, in any clemency committee or any death penalty opponent -- not even Pope Benedict XVI and his plea for a commutation to a life sentence that the Vatican has submitted in the Varga case.
"My hope is in God," Varga said. "I don't know how God is going to do it ... but I quit hoping in any person long ago."
If that hope is dashed on Wednesday and Kevin Varga is executed for the 1998 murder of David Logie, his mother said she'll be angry with the state of Texas for being the "instrument of God's will," but not with God. "If God takes Kevin's life through lethal injection ... I'll be devastated. I'm not sure I'll be normal anymore, but I won't be angry at God."
At the Rapid City Wal-Mart, where Varga has worked nights for the past three years as an overnight shelf stocker, she shared her situation openly with co-workers and found support, sympathy and a sense of community there, she said. Her supervisor, Teresa McNabb, said she knows Varga as a good employee with a strong faith.
"People were supportive of her. If she wanted to talk, then we were there for her," McNabb said.
McNabb helped Varga transfer two months ago to a Wal-Mart in Greenville, Texas, to allow her to be closer to Kevin as his execution date approached. Greenville is also the town where her son and 3 other South Dakotans robbed and beat Logie to death on Sept. 9, 1998, one day after they are accused of doing the same thing in Wichita, Kan., to David McCoy.
At the time of her son's crime, Beth Varga was living in Mobridge. To this day, she maintains her belief that although Kevin was involved in the robbery/murder, another man, Billy Galloway, committed the actual murder of Logie.
"The fact is that Kevin did not kill anyone. He's not a murderer. He's stupid, is what he is," she said.
Beth Varga moved to Mobridge from Michigan in the mid-1980s to attend the now-closed Central Indian Bible College, after hearing a teacher from the school speak at her church in Michigan. "I knew when I heard him that was where I was supposed to be," she said.
She graduated from the Bible college and remained in Mobridge after marrying Larry Taylor, who died in November 2001.
Blair Schepp, now of Phoenix, remembers Beth Varga as an intelligent, engaged student who earned good grades and became a friend as well as a student. He met her son, Kevin, several times when he came to Mobridge to visit his mother and stepfather. He lost touch with the Vargas about the time of Kevin's conviction for capital murder but contacted Beth recently to tell her he is praying for them.
"I just told her that I was praying for her and Kevin ... . Praying for a stay of execution and also for them both to be strong."
Now, Varga stays with friends in Greenville, pinches her pennies and makes the 4-1/2-hour trip one way to the death-row unit in Livingston, Texas, each week. Every Friday, she has a two-hour visit with Kevin that is conducted with a wall of glass between them.
"I haven't had physical contact with my son since the night he was sentenced to death," Varga said. She hugged him goodbye that day in a Texas courtroom and hasn't touched him since.
Family members will spend Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday with Kevin Varga at the death-row Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, which is 40 miles east of Huntsville, where he will be taken for execution at 6 p.m. Wednesday. According to prison protocols, all pre-execution visits are done through a glass partition.
"I feel so sorry for Stephen. Stephen was so wanting to hug his father," his grandmother said. "He's grief stricken over this."
Stephen Varga, 20, and his younger brother, Richard, 18, left Rapid City on Saturday for a trip to Texas that, barring an intervention by God or a reprieve by Perry, will leave them fatherless on their return flight home. Stephen is employed by Perdue Furniture in Rapid City, and Richard lives in Sioux Falls, where Kevin Varga's ex-wife lives.
The Varga family connection to Rapid City also includes Kevin's brother and Beth's only other son, Sean, who decided not to travel to Texas or to speak publicly about his brother's impending execution. A stepsister, Erica Davis, lives in Mobridge. Beth Varga credits Davis with making it possible for her grandsons, who have few financial resources, to fly to Texas for whatever time they have left with their dad. "She went to great lengths to make sure the boys could get there," Beth Varga said.
During an interview at his death-row unit last week, Kevin Varga said that a falling out with his estranged brother has been mended, but he continues to be concerned about his younger son. Some family members worry as they watch him make some of the same bad choices his father once did.
"I have talked to my son; he visited me in August," he said. "I understand he is hurting, and I would like to talk to him again, to tell him not to follow in my footsteps, to get an education and don't be stupid."
In a clemency petition to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, Richard Varga made an emotional plea to spare his father's life while acknowledging his guilt.
"There is no doubt in my mind that my father either directly or indirectly had a hand in the crimes he has been accused of. However, as a 17-year-old, I've hardly seen my father and would like to see him, even if it's only while he's incarcerated," he wrote. "Even though my father has been in prison the majority of my life, I believe my father loves me and regrets ever getting into the truck that night. My father is a kind, loving man with a big heart."
His letter concludes with these words: "In the end, killing someone on purpose is murder, whether for profit or justice. I don't condone my father's actions, but why tear another father, son, brother and uncle from a family that loves him?"
Beth Varga clings to the remote possibility that a clemency committee may be persuaded by the results of a test that she underwent Friday in an effort to determine if Kevin suffers from a specialized form of mental retardation caused by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that it was unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded inmates.
Kevin Varga's court-appointed appellate attorney, Robin Norris, has represented him for about 10 years now. Norris has made a specialized mental retardation claim part of a pending clemency petition to Gov. Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole. He is asking for a commutation of Varga's sentence to life in prison or, alternately, a 120-day reprieve to allow further exploration of a new argument that Kevin may suffer a form of mental retardation caused by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
He previously has undergone thorough neurological and psychological tests that included standard measurements of his verbal and adaptive IQ, Norris said. Those tests show that he is of average intelligence; one performance IQ test even put his score at 126. Those fall far out of the range of the standard diagnostic criteria for mental retardation, which is typically considered an IQ of about 70, coupled with significantly sub-average intellectual functioning.
"Mental retardation has always been ruled out for him," Norris said. Adaptive behavior tests show that Kevin Varga does have some significant mental deficits that include poor judgment, impulsivity and short-term memory loss.
"It is exceedingly improbable at this point that any court in Texas would accept a claim that he qualifies for a claim of mental retardation," Norris admits. "Nevertheless, Kevin does have them, and they are very real."
That claim is based on Beth Varga's history of problems with alcohol.
Beth Varga, 61, describes herself as a born-again Christian who quit drinking when she was 32. She says only that she was a heavy binge drinker from the time she was a teenager until she had a spiritual conversion to Christ.
"I got saved when I was 32. Prior to that, I don't like to think about," she said. "How much I drank when I was pregnant with Kevin is anybody's guess."
Her sobriety came 2 years after the death of her 6-year-old son, Philip, from leukemia in 1980. "I became a raging drunk when Philip died."
Another son, Richard, was shot to death at the age of 18 in Texas.
A single mother, Beth Varga raised her children alone. Kevin's father is now deceased, but he abandoned the family when Kevin was 6 months old.
In the death-row blog "
Minutes Before Six," Kevin Varga wrote about his mother's inability to cope with his little brother's illness and death and his own behavior problems that began about that time. Those quickly led to his 1st stay in a juvenile facility at the age of 10. He has been in and out of the correctional system ever since.
Beth likens her parenting skills to "trying to be a ballerina when you can't stand on your toes."
"My children were my whole life ... even though I did it pretty badly," she said.
This week, as Beth Varga faces the impending death of a third son, she seems paralyzed by the prospect of making post-execution plans. She doesn't want to think past May 12.
"Your mind wars with itself. My faith says this isn't going to happen, that God will save Kevin's life," she said. "My practical mind tells me that I should make some plans."
Kevin Varga hopes his mother will return to South Dakota to be with family.
"I want her to go back and to be with my children," he said last week. "Even though they are grown, I hope that they will be raised better than I was. They still need guidance."
