I’m taking the liberty of stepping outside my role as an objective news reporter to offer my personal perspective on the retrial of Mason Wayne Sisk, 18, found guilty Thursday of four counts of capital murder.

The jury took 2 hours, 10 minutes in bringing back guilty verdicts in the Labor Day 2019 shooting deaths of Sisk’s entire family: father, John Wayne Sisk, 38; stepmother, Mary Kimberly Sisk, 35; brother, Grayson “Kane” Sisk, 6; Aurora “Rory” Sisk, 4, and baby brother, Colson Sisk, 6 months, while they lay sleeping.

Although officially retired since 2011 after 30 years in journalism – if you count my stint as a contributing writer to a university student newspaper. I didn’t have to cover this trial. I could have stayed home, peacefully painting and writing fiction, instead of sitting on hard courtroom benches through nearly two weeks of testimony that at times gave a whole new meaning to the term “heinous.”

So why did I call my former employer, The News Courier, and ask to cover this trial as a “stringer” or contract writer? First of all, I live in the same community in which this crime occurred – Elkmont. I don’t live in close proximity to the Ridge Road home where the massacre occurred, but in a town as small as Elkmont, population 419, one can pretty much count everyone as a neighbor.

Secondly, it was a vanity thing. After sitting on the shelf for nearly 13 years, I wanted to prove to myself that I hadn’t gone stale and could still cut it as a hard news reporter. I’ve often told folks this reporting thing gets in your blood. At different times over the past 43 years, I’ve left reporting to work in university relations and advertising.

But like a homing pigeon, I always come back. In talking with other career journalists, we agree that we’re adrenalin junkies. If we’re smart, we kick the deadline habit and take a nice, sane 9-to-5 public relations gig and go out with a generous retirement check. Heaven knows, we don’t report for the money. and if there’s any fame to be had, its fleeting.

After early reports of the murders by local news media, I approached the original September 2022 trial – which ended in a mistrial – prepared to be repulsed by the sight of Mason Sisk, who allegedly killed his own family members, one of which was a 6-month-old infant. I always sit in the front row while covering a trial, if possible, better to see and hear what’s going on.

So, I took a seat where I could see both the defense table and the witness stand. After a few days, I brought a stadium cushion, because frankly, some of this includes butt-numbing testimony.

When I could tear my mind away from my physical discomfort, I spent a lot of time watching Mason Sisk. He mostly sat stoically, never showing strong emotion except some observed discomfort at sight of graphic autopsy photos displayed on a big flat-screen monitor beside Circuit Judge Chad Wise.

I was surprised at my reaction to Mason Sisk. I wasn’t repelled by the sight of him, even after viewing gruesome forensic photos of the victims. There’s something about him that makes him seem an almost sympathetic figure.

He’s small, maybe even scrawny by some interpretations. One can only speculate that his late birth mother must have been a petite, fine-boned brunette of whom he has no memories. He doesn’t resemble his murdered father, who was a heavily-tattooed, 6-foot, 4-inch, 337-pound, biker, RV mechanic and hairdresser on the side.

He’s pale complected, not much sunshine in solitary confinement, where he’s been held for much of his incarceration since his confession and subsequent arrest. His black, horn-rimmed glasses make him look kind of nerdy. and in the opening days of testimony, he sported the sparse beginnings of a fuzzy goatee. Always immaculately groomed with a good haircut, he attends each day dressed in a crisp, preppy-style shirt and khakis.

He was just 14 when he committed the murders. Nearly 36 years ago, I had a 14-year-old son, who was fatally injured in a car accident. As I fight for the objectivity of my training and long experience, I ask myself if this is one of the reasons why this young man is getting to me.

And I ponder, what could have happened in the short intervening time from birth to 14 years to lead him up the stairs from his basement bedroom, armed with a stolen Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol, and shoot his parents and three young siblings in their heads?

He told former sheriff Mike Blakely and his investigator Johnny Morrell after he confessed that his stepmother, Mary, was “always on” him and his siblings about their manners, and his Dad had told her to lighten up. Text messages accessed from Mary’s cellphone show her frequently ordering him to do the laundry and other household chores. But it also shows them ending chats with “I love you.” She also took away his cellphone a week before the murders, a punishment, according to DA Brian Jones is tantamount to “cutting off the right arm” of a 14-year-old who could no longer talk to his girlfriend.

Mary formally adopted Mason in 2018, a year before he shot her in the face and his baby brother twice in the head. He told Blakely he “just couldn’t take it anymore.” He said his parents were always fighting and at one point five months before the murders, his father came home drunk and took off his wedding ring and threw in on the floor and said he was leaving. While Mary Sisk pleaded for her husband to stop because of what he was doing to the children, Mason held Kane and Rory in his arms on the sofa to comfort them.

Could Mason have an altered sense of reality? A girlfriend testified that he was bullied in school and abused by his father at home. He had few, if any friends. He spent most of his days and nights playing violent video games in the basement.

Defense attorneys Michael Sizemore and Shay Golden say they will mount an appeal after Judge Wise’s July 25, 2023, sentencing of Mason, saying there are truths yet to come out. By law, Wise has the choice of sentencing him to life in prison without parole and “life and 30,” meaning he must serve at least 30 years on each of the four counts of capital murder before he is eligible for parole.

District attorney Brian Jones said those possible sentences are for each count. It will depend on whether Wise sentences him to serve his sentences consecutively or concurrently. If concurrently, he might take his first steps outside prison walls when he’s 48.

When Blakely and Morrell were using standard interrogation tactics on Mason, Blakely promised he would “get help” for Mason if he was truthful. That promise remains to be seen. Will he be thrown into general prison population to linger for 30 years, or is there somewhere else for those curious enough to try to get into his head and find out what could have led a 14-year old to commit such heinous crimes in the hopes it might lead to more understanding of troubled teens who could possibly commit violent acts in their futures?