The first words out of Brian T. Shaw’s lips on March 24, 2005, when he met his mother Celeste Shaw face-to-face, were those of regret.

‘Ma, I love you, and I would never want anyone to take you away from me. And I have taken Chiarra away from her mother and her own children. I don’t know what happened, Mom. I don’t know what happened,’ he said as they sat with a pane of glass in between them at the Onondaga County Jail.

Just hours before their meeting, then-23-year-old Brian, a former student at Syracuse University, was charged with the second-degree murder of Chiarra Seals, the mother of his 4-year-old daughter Essence.

Four days earlier, Celeste Shaw said she spoke with both Seals and Shaw on the phone to tell them she was planning on coming up from Philadelphia to visit a few days later.

Celeste Shaw said everyone was preparing for a happy visit, where she would help her son and the mother of his daughter work out some of the issues, financial and otherwise, between them.

But on March 23, Celeste Shaw’s sister Marie saw a familiar face on the evening news. It was 4-year-old Essence.

Chiarra Seals was missing.

Celeste Shaw said she and Marie spoke on the phone for more than two hours, realizing they had to find Brian. It wasn’t until Marie went to the Sigma Phi Epsilon house on Comstock Avenue, the fraternity to which Shaw belonged, when she discovered he had been taken to the police station.

Police interviewed Shaw into the early hours of the morning of March 24. When Celeste Shaw discovered her son was being arrested and charged with the murder of Seals, all she could think was, ‘Oh my God.’

‘I said that all the way up here on the bus,’ she said.

After Celeste Shaw came for the arraignment, Brian told her not to stay in Syracuse too long. She went to Seals’ wake to comfort her family, gave the Seals’ flowers and then returned home to Philadelphia.

Now, almost a year later, Celeste Shaw is trying to grapple with the reality of the events of March 23, 2005, which she refers to as a ‘horribly terrible mistake.’

Celeste Shaw said she does believe ‘most’ of what her son is saying happened the day of Seals’ death.

‘Things just really went bad,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to understand but people do things.’

She said she tries to look at all the ways her son and Seals could have gotten into the situation they did almost a year ago next month.

‘She was unable to fight him off. The wrath that was taken out was directed at her,’ Celeste Shaw said. ‘Neither one of them could stop themselves.’

While Defense Attorney Thomas Ryan is building many arguments in Shaw’s defense, the most recent is that Shaw suffers from mental duress.

But Celeste Shaw said she isn’t so sure her son’s mental state is really at the heart of his problems. Instead, she said she believes the cause of the events of March 23 is the combined effects of the financial burden, responsibilities and emotional stress being placed on Shaw.

‘We have a limit; we all do,’ Celeste Shaw said.

From observing the trial, Shaw seems to recognize what went wrong in his life that led to the alleged killing on March 23. Celeste Shaw said on March 24, 2005 when she saw her son for the first time since he was charged with murder, he immediately expressed his regret and sorrow.

‘I let everyone down. I disappointed everyone,’ Celeste Shaw said Shaw told her.

As for her, Celeste Shaw said feeling none of what is happening to her son or the Seals’ is fair, but then again, nothing in life is.

‘We’re still at the stage where we say, ‘No, not Brian,” she said. ‘We’re stuck there.’

She and her son, who is currently in an isolation cell due to two paperclips and a ring box found in one of his suits, have been able to see each other face-to-face a few times since the trial began, most notably after court recessed Friday afternoon.

‘He was pretty good,’ Celeste Shaw said, saying Brian cried for the first few minutes and then the mother and son were back to laughing and talking. ‘His spirit was good after he said the things he wanted to say (in court).’

With the second half of Shaw’s cross-examination scheduled for today, Celeste Shaw said both she and Brian accept that he will most likely have to do some time in prison, but are willing to accept the verdict, whatever it may be.

‘We realize now we are all exempt from nothing,’ she said. ‘(Brian) just wants to get it all over with so he can move on to the next phase of his life.’

‘In all this, we have a right to keep going,’ she said.

Published on February 6, 2006 at 12:00 pm