Dear Daddy, I hate you: Letters to my mother's killer

The date is June 25, 1978. The location is a small apartment near 83rd and Cottage Grove on Chicago's South Side. Twelve-year-old Ulysses "Butch" Slaughter, Jr lies on his bed paralyzed with fear as his father Ulysses Sr. prepares to pull the gun?s trigger. ?I?ll kill you if you try to leave,? Ulysses Sr. tells Butch?s mother Clarice. "Kill me!" the woman shouts. "Kill me!" And so Ulysses Sr. does. He kills his son's mother. Within moments, the door to Butch's bedroom opened and the boy sees his mother bleeding from two gunshot wounds to her right temple. His father is holding the gun. "I had to do it," Ulysses Sr. tells his son. "She was going to leave us. I had to do it." At age thirteen, Ulysses "Butch" Slaughter would become the chief witness in the trial against his father who pleaded self-defense and served less than four years in prison. Over the next 30 years, the father and son would rarely talk. The father became a social outcast, cut off by his son. The son became a father himself but remained bitter and frequently considered exacting a revenge for which God seemed reluctant. Dear Daddy, I hate you: letters to my mother's killer is a compilation of letters and transcribed phone conversations that represent the initial stages of a powerful reconciliation between Ulysses Jr and his father. The book contains the raw, passionate and heart-felt expressions of a son trying to understand how his father could beat his mother and ultimately kill her. Before passing in May 2012, Ulysses Sr wrote an introductory message to the reader which is included in this updated version of the book.