My letter to my dead daughter - after forgiving the man who killed her

Ann Grosmaire was shot dead by her boyfriend not long after turning 19.

Nearly 16 years on, Ann's mother Kate says she's forgiven the man who took her daughter's life.

"Forgiveness allowed us to move forward and heal," she says. "Do we continue to feel grief?

"Of course we do. But we aren't imprisoned by our grief."

Kate has now written a letter to Ann, for the BBC World Service podcast, Dear Daughter.

In it, she reflects on how she found forgiveness and why she encourages open communication between victims and perpetrators of crime.

The youngest of three sisters, Ann was "very smart" growing up, Kate says, but never enjoyed school. Theatre was her real passion, and she took part in every production her school staged.

She also dreamed of opening a wildlife refuge one day, and her friends described her as wise, kind, loving and compassionate.

Ann met her boyfriend, Conor McBride, at school in Tallahassee, Florida, when she was 16. He was "very nice" and polite, Ann's parents Kate and her husband Andy, thought.

"We really liked him," Kate explains. Conor even moved in with the Grosmaires for three months after his own father kicked him out.

Ann and Conor's relationship could be volatile - they sometimes argued and even broke up, but on the whole they seemed happy, according to Kate.

The pair wanted to get married one day, she adds.

In spring 2010, Ann was recognised for her academic achievements at college. She was delighted, and planned a celebratory picnic with her boyfriend.

"Conor just wasn't as excited about it as Ann had hoped he would be," says Kate. "So they started arguing.

"They were both 19. It was one of those things where they just couldn't stop - and they literally argued all night until they fell asleep."

The pair's argument continued into the next day.

At one point, Conor got his father's shotgun and said he was going to kill himself. Ann replied that if Connor didn't want to live then she didn't either.

"And he pointed the gun at her and said, 'Is this what you want?'" Kate explains.

"And she actually said, 'No, I don't'."

But Conor was exhausted from arguing and wanted it all to be over, "so he pulled the trigger," Kate says.

Conor immediately turned himself in. When the police arrived at his house, they found Ann still alive but with injuries from which she would probably never recover.

With Ann on life support, Kate decided to visit Conor in jail.

Kate told him both she and Andy loved and forgave him. "And when I said those words, I just felt a peace come over me."

Days later, Kate and Andy made the difficult decision to turn off Ann's life support.

"I knew that peace could only come through forgiveness," Kate later wrote in her letter to Ann. "Yes, forgiving Conor, who had pointed the shotgun at you."

Kate didn't want to remember her daughter as a murder victim, she writes in her posthumous letter to Ann.

"You were so much more than that. But if I allowed myself to see Conor only as a murderer, then that would be the label you would carry."

Restorative justice is a process that allows victims to speak to perpetrators about the impact of a crime, while giving perpetrators the chance to take accountability, offer an explanation and address the harm they caused. When Andy first came across the concept, he and Kate quickly knew it was the right option for them.

At their first restorative justice meeting with Conor in summer 2011, "we were able to just really pour our hearts out and explain to Conor just what it meant, how hard it was to lose her," Kate says.

Conor shared details of the argument that culminated in Ann's death.

Kate and Andy were invited to make suggestions for Conor's sentence, which the state attorney took into consideration.

The state attorney gave Conor a choice: a 25-year sentence, or 20 years with 10 years of probation, provided he took anger management classes, publicly spoke about teen dating violence and volunteered in areas related to Ann's interests.

Conor opted for the latter.

"Nothing could have restored your life and brought you back to us," Kate writes. "But we were able to tell Conor how his actions affected us and participate in crafting a meaningful sentence for him.

"Spending the rest of his life behind bars would not make up for your life."

Kate is confident forgiveness has been the best way for her to find peace.

It's allowed her to be more present for her other daughters, who were 21 and 25 when Ann died, without being "bitter" about her loss.

"You can imagine that if all I could think about everyday was Ann and the way she was taken from me, that would affect my relationship with them," she says.

Kate and Andy remained in contact with Conor, who is now 35. At first they spoke to him weekly on the phone and via email, as well as visiting him in prison.

"I think he really needed - especially in those first few years - to know that our forgiveness stuck, that our willingness to talk to him stuck," Kate says. It's now been "a few months" since she talked to him.

While Conor has been in prison, he's volunteered as a law clerk, facilitated classes about accountability and restorative justice, and spoken in a video about teen dating violence.

"I told Conor that he needed to do the good works of two people now," Kate writes in the letter to her daughter.

Kate and Andy still mark Ann's birthday every year with a cake and a rendition of "happy birthday", and they put up her stocking for Christmas.

"I can't bring myself to not hang it," Kate says, "but then it is a sad reminder of her absence."

Advocating for forgiveness and restorative justice has become her daughter's legacy, she says.

"Forgiveness is not a pardon," says Kate. "It doesn't mean what they did was okay.

"It just means that you're not going to wait for them to make it right. With forgiveness, you let it go and you walk away - and feel that peace that comes with it."