THOMASVILLE — On April 3, 1990, Bertha Sardis’ life changed forever when her youngest child and only son, Ronald Wyche Jr., was murdered.

It was a crime that shook the Thomasville community and left an indelible mark on Wyche’s family.

Now the man responsible for his murder, Ernest B. Shuman, 57, is up for parole in 2005.

Sardis, ex-husband Ronald Wyche Sr. and her two daughters, Natoshia and Teresa Wyche, are breaking their years of silence to talk about what happened that fateful day in the spring of 1990, how they have coped with the death of Ronald and why Shuman should stay behind bars.

n A boy named “Nookie”

Ronald’s nickname was “Nookie” (pronounced new-key).

Sardis said her son was a very loving child.

“Every day, no matter where I went, he would always tell me, ‘Momma, I love you,’ and I would say, ‘I love you, too,’ ” she said.

Ronald was a Head Start student at Dunlap Elementary School.

“He was always a very, very quiet person,” said Sardis. “He would never talk to anybody unless he knew them.”

Natoshia said Ronald knew he was spoiled.

“He had all the love and attention any child could have asked for,” she said. “He was always happy.”

n April 3, 1990

At the time of Ronald’s murder, the Wyche family was living on Phelps Street, 40 yards from Shuman’s Gulf Service Center on East Jackson Street.

Shuman knew Ronald from a young age because the children would often walk to the store for snacks.

Sardis clearly recalls an event that happened the afternoon of Ronald’s disappearance.

“Ronald was running around the racks and under the clothes like an ordinary child,” she said. “He was playing with somebody, although I didn’t know who it was.”

Years later, Sardis found out it was a girl classmate of Ronald’s.

“My eyes filled with tears, but it was happiness knowing that she was the one he was playing around with,” she said.

Sardis was attending Thomas University (then Thomas College) and dropped Ronald off at home before class.

“He got out of the car and said, ‘Mom, I love you,'” she said. “That was the last time I ever saw him or heard him say that.”

Teresa Wyche, Ronald’s sister, was only 12 at the time of Ronald’s disappearance. That day she was doing something in the house, and Ronald kept telling her the neighbor wanted her to come over.

Teresa kept putting him off until he gave up and left her alone.

Natoshia was 15 and was also home on the fateful day.

She was not worried about her brother until later in the evening when the sisters discovered Ronald was with neither of them.

“Ronald knew that when it got dark, he was supposed to be in the house,” said Teresa.

It was thought that Ronald might have gone to the store to buy a snack.

“I went looking for him,” said Natoshia. “I went to all the houses in the neighborhood. I went to the service station, too.”

When the girls could not find him, the family called the police.

Sardis returned from school around 9:30 p.m. and learned that Ronald was missing.

“The first thing that came to my mind was I grabbed a picture and took it around to about every store there was in Thomasville and asked, ‘Have you seen this little boy?'” she said. “Nobody said they had seen him. I came back home, and I couldn’t sleep that night. I thought somebody had kidnapped him.”

Shuman was asked if he had seen Ronald and replied that the boy had been in to buy chips and a soda and left.

n Devil at the front door

Ronald was missing for 26 days before his body was discovered on April 29, seven miles from his home in the Little Ochlockonee River.

During this time, Sardis held onto her belief that Ronald had been kidnapped.

“Every night, I would leave the porch light on and pray that someone would call and say they had found him,” she said. “I didn’t know what to believe or think.”

Shuman was making daily trips to the house to offer support and help in the search to locate the missing boy.

“Every day he would come down to the house and ask had we heard any news about Nookie,” said Natoshia. “What kind of man would do something like that? He came in my mom’s house and hugged her.”

The Wyches received the dreaded phone call on a Sunday afternoon.

Two couples had been out canoeing near Egg and Butter Road when they saw a black trash bag trapped in a makeshift dam from two fallen trees.

“They smelled the foul water, and that was what had drawn them over,” said Sardis.

The bag had been torn open, and they saw the fully clothed body of a child inside it.

A woman from the Thomasville Police Department arrived at the Wyche residence and stayed until the body could be identified.

Since Ronald was the only child missing in Thomasville, Sardis felt sure it was her son because he had been gone for so long.

It was.

“I just went to pieces,” she said. “It’s still hard to even talk about it. The pain goes very deep. He was seven years old, and we’ll never be able to see him grow up or know what he may have looked like today.”

Sardis received an anonymous phone call stating that Shuman had admitted to killing Ronald.

“They told me Ernest Shuman was out at Mental Health at Archbold and had just admitted to killing my son,” she said.

An hour later, Chief John Perry and an officer came to the Wyche residence and delivered the news that Shuman had confessed to the murder of Ronald.

Shuman checked himself in on May 2 and was arrested in his hospital room May 3.

n Aftermath

Shuman’s confession surprised many in the community.

“I would never have thought that he would be that type of person,” said Natoshia. “I guess he had everyone fooled.”

Though Sardis did not want to believe Shuman was capable of hurting her son, she said the fact that the store was the last place Ronald was seen alive became a red flag.

Investigating Shuman seemed the logical step, and she asked Perry why they did not have the dogs search for a scent around the store.

“He said you’ve been watching too much television,” said Sardis. “We don’t do something like that anymore. What if your child shows up in Atlanta and you’ve accused this man of taking your child?”

After Shuman confessed, she went to Perry’s office and gave the police chief an unedited piece of her mind.

“If you’re black and you don’t have anything, then you’re nobody, but I feel that if it were a child of a different color, you would have had the National Guard force in here looking for him,” she told Perry. “I told him that I didn’t feel they did everything they could to find him, and they knew they didn’t.”

Sardis said that hurts, and Natoshia agreed.

“They were focusing on the family instead of whom they were supposed to be focusing on,” she said. “My dad and stepdad had to take polygraph tests. That could have been time used to find my brother.”

On the day of Shuman’s June 1990 hearing, because of a mixup between the attorneys and the courtroom, Shuman pled guilty and was sentenced while the Wyche family was waiting in the district attorney’s office.

“We never got a chance to see him or hear him admit he killed Ronald,” said Sardis.

Though the events of 1990 are long gone, Sardis said Perry once told her that if he had it to do over again, things would be different.

n Putting the rumors to rest

From the day Ronald disappeared, vicious rumors ran rampant.

“You had people who were genuinely supportive, but you had those who just spread rumors and lies,” said Natoshia. “What made it so bad was that these people would come to the house during our time of bereavement and tell my mother these things. For those people, I just pray to God that they never have to go through what our family did.”

Though the family preferred not to mention the rumors that circulated and still circulate when the case is discussed, it said there was no evidence to substantiate any of them. Some of them were sexual in nature.

Natoshia said Shuman never treated her any differently than the other neighborhood children and the store was simply a place where she went to buy candy.

“He never said anything out of the way or made any moves toward me,” she said.

Teresa said the same thing, and the sisters are certain nothing untoward happened between Shuman and Ronald, either.

“I’m sure Nookie did trust him,” said Natoshia. “He was quiet, and the only way he would talk to you was if he knew you.”

Among some of the most vicious rumors to circulate involved how Ronald was killed.

During his confession, Shuman told the judge that he “lost control” and choked Ronald. He also said the body was dumped the same day.

Sardis said Ronald died from asphyxiation and was killed the same day he was taken and that rumors to the contrary were unsubstantiated.

“There was no factual evidence to support those rumors,” said Sardis. “They were absolutely lies!”

The rumors took a toll on Sardis, and she had to be admitted to the hospital.

For more than a year and a half, the family went to the Pain and Stress Center in Tallahassee, Fla., to learn to cope with Ronald’s death.

Sardis was on nerve medication for almost two years.

“I couldn’t sleep, and I had to walk around with the hurt and pain inside,” she said. “I’m sure there were a lot of people out there believing those lies.”

n The question

What Sardis and her family want to know is “why?”

They have not been face-to-face with Shuman since before he confessed and the only information they have was obtained from documentation of Shuman’s confession where he said he felt “great remorse” and was sorry for the pain he had caused the Wyche family and his own.

“We still don’t know why,” she said. “We’re left with a lot of unanswered questions — questions no one can answer but him.”

But the truth is a double-edged sword.

“If he really gave me ‘why,’ I don’t know if he would be telling the truth or not,” said Sardis. “There’s nothing that he could say or anybody could say that would ever take away the pain. ‘Sorry’ just doesn’t do it.”

Forgiveness has yet to reach Sardis and her family.

“Even if I had the answers, I wouldn’t forgive him,” she said. “I don’t know about later. I know in order for me to make it into heaven I need to, but right now, I’m not there. It’s going to take time.”

However, Sardis hopes to some day achieve that forgiveness.

“I need to forgive him, and within my heart I may find forgiveness, but I don’t feel that I can tell him face-to-face that I forgive him,” she said.

Ronald Wyche Sr. said he was brought up to forgive a person, but that he, too, is finding it hard.

“If you don’t, you’ll be less of a person, but I think he has not served enough time for them to let him go,” he said. “I hope my child comes to Shuman in his mind and haunts him.”

Natoshia and Teresa also said it would take time, but that they wanted to be able to forgive Shuman for their own benefit.

n Living with the loss of a loved one

Ronald’s death is still an open wound for the family.

Natoshia said she was glad they were finally talking about the tragedy, but that progress would be slow.

“It took us 14 years to get to this point,” she said.

Ronald would now be 21, and Sardis said he would probably look like his father.

Natoshia figures Ronald would have played basketball in high school. Teresa said she could see her brother being a ladies’ man because he was so charismatic.

Sardis admitted to being angry with God for a short period because He had not stopped Shuman from killing her son.

“I remember thinking, ‘If you even saw him when Shuman was killing my son, you never stopped him,'” she said.

Ronald was loved, and she said it was not right for God to take him away.

Sardis’ anger also evolved to the point where she hated all white people.

“I didn’t care if they had never done anything to me,” she said. “They were all just alike, and it was the anger inside of me.”

It was an anger Sardis never wanted to have and one she worked hard to alleviate through counseling.

The anger is gone. The pain is not.

“The pain never goes away,” said Sardis. “There are times when you sit down and just cry. It’s something you never get over but that you learn to live with.”

Natoshia and Teresa expressed guilt over not being with their brother on that April evening.

“Being a child, you don’t realize that it wasn’t your fault or that there was nothing you could have done,” said Natoshia. “But it doesn’t make you feel any better.”

Teresa said she has often wondered if Ronald would have been killed had she immediately stopped what she was doing and gone with him to the neighbor’s house.

Sardis said she misses the little things the most and that it is still hard to go to the cemetery.

“I felt I was OK when I was walking around, but when I got in the car and got ready to pull out, I just collapsed,” she said. “I was not able to drive back. It’s the hardest thing for me to do, go out to the cemetery, I can’t even go out there.”

A positive note to dealing with Ronald’s death is Sardis’ belief that she will see her son again and have the answers she needs to be OK with the past.

Helping her with this are her dreams of Ronald.

“He came back in a dream and told me how much he loves me,” said Sardis. “A lot of times when I see him in dreams, I see him in a classroom with other little children. He is smiling and seems to be really happy.”

n Life with the possibility of parole

Shuman is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole at Smith State Prison in Glenville.

His first parole review was in 1997, and his second is slated for May 2005.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole in Atlanta will review the case and Shuman’s actions behind bars to determine if he is eligible for parole.

If parole is denied, he will not be eligible again until 2011.

“We don’t think he should be eligible for parole,” said Natoshia. “I don’t think he should be given a second chance, because my brother didn’t have a chance to go to high school or graduate, so why should Shuman be given another chance in society? The only way he should be able to come out of that prison is in a body bag.”

Wyche Sr. said the board should remember that Shuman murdered a seven-year-old child.

“There’s no reason for that,” he said. “Ronald did nothing to deserve it.”

Sardis and her daughters plan to make a trip to the board after Christmas, armed with impact letters written by people who support keeping Shuman behind bars.

Sardis already has a few letters from people of all walks of life.

Most raised the question of whether the board could guarantee that Shuman would not hurt another child.

One stated what mattered was not Shuman’s reason, but what he did and that he should have to pay with his life.

“True, we all deserve forgiveness, and I pray that he has asked God for that,” said the letter. “Mr. Shuman took an innocent child’s life and, just as Ronald Wyche can never be replaced, neither should freedom for Mr. Shuman. He should spend the rest of his life thinking about the thousands of lives he has affected and the millions of tears he has caused the Wyche family to cry.”

Sardis asked that anyone in the community wanting to voice his or her opinion by writing an impact letter send it to: P. O. Box 7371, Thomasville, Ga., 31758.