Picture that same child, at age 11, walking 77 blocks nude and at night from downtown Cleveland to his home and not remembering what happened. His mother, who had ignored his complaints of abuse from his baby sitter's family, makes no inquiries.
Picture him with a speech impediment so severe that until he reaches early adolescence only his sister can fully understand him. That impediment, coupled with his crossed eyes, makes him the subject of ridicule and frequent beatings from other kids.
Picture him being told by a doctor treating him for a serious lung disorder that he's a "corpse looking for someplace to lie down and die."
Picture him repeatedly trying to take his own life - now at the age of 18 - after being raped in a psychiatric ward in a Texas prison.
Picture "one of the most pitiful, most sympathetic human beings that you could come across" who had a childhood "very few people could survive," and you have the picture painted by the Ohio Public Defender's Office of Wilford Lee Berry Jr.
But it's not the whole image of Berry.
There's another moment of violence in Berry's life that became the most dominant one - the one that has placed him on a schedule to become the first person executed by the state of Ohio in 35 years.
Picture him in 1989 standing in the Charles Bakery in Cleveland, where the owner has just recently given him a job. Berry, now 26, cradles a sawed-off, .22-caliber rifle in his arms. Store owner Charles Mitroff Jr., having just been shot by an accomplice of Berry's during a robbery, crawls across the floor, begging for his life.
Picture Berry, the man who had failed miserably at taking his own life, calmly and fatally shooting Charles Mitroff in the head.
Days later, Berry is arrested in Kentucky and restates the pleas he's been making since childhood: He wants to die.
Whether the government should grant that request has been the subject of legal debate, psychiatric discussion and public discourse for nearly a decade. Central to the argument is whether Berry is mentally sound enough to make decisions regarding his fate.
While the federal courts continue to consider the legal issues in Berry's case, Gov. George Voinovich will also be reviewing numerous documents to determine if he should spare Berry's life with a commutation.
Those records contain these conflicting pictures of Berry: a tormented person, abused all of his life, and a cold-blooded killer who not only lacks remorse for his crime but says he would kill again.
S. Adele Shank, a Columbus attorney who prepared the overview of Berry's life for the Ohio Public Defender's Office, calls it a pathetic case.
His suicide attempt at age 9 came after repeatedly being raped and sexually abused by his baby sitter's family, molested by a man in a social service program and subjected to physical abuse by his mother, who took psychotropic drugs for bipolar disorder. His father had a degenerative brain disorder and died in an asylum for the criminally insane when Berry was a year old.
His mother, who would exclude him from the family Christmas gift list, was involved in the occult. She conducted seances and sought guidance from an Ouija board. Berry's lawyers suggest that he became a victim of abuse from his mother because he bore a strong resemblance to his father.
He was not sent for psychiatric treatment until age 15 and then was nearly rejected by a center for the severely emotionally disturbed because his "degree of pathology was so great."
He did not receive the recommended outpatient treatment. Several years later he moved to Texas and was sentenced to 15 years in prison for car theft. He served six years. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, he was placed in a psychiatric ward, where he was raped and made numerous attempts to take his own life.
Prison officials termed some of the attempts serious and others probable attempts to be placed in confinement to avoid physical attacks. He sought and received four years in solitary confinement.
"While normal people may go mad from this type of solitude, it was Mr. Berry's sickness itself that made him welcome it as a refuge from the world his illness makes him unable to function in or understand," his clemency appeal states.
Greg Meyers, head of the death penalty section for the Ohio public defender's office, says Berry has developed a personality over the years that allows him to be "cooperative and friendly" toward those he believes are helping him in his death quest. But when discussion turns to the possibility that he could have his death sentence commuted, he "shuts down."
"It's been difficult for some doctors to diagnose him and for his lawyers to represent him, because he just shuts down," Meyers said.
In the days leading up to his possible execution Tuesday, Berry remains "shut down." He has declined to be interviewed and has not contacted the attorneys and judges meeting in ornate courtrooms far removed from his cellblock, the tough Cleveland streets of his childhood and the neighborhood bakery where he took a life.
The legal briefs contain complex interpretations of law and psychiatric examinations, but to some the case is simple.
"Wilford Berry is too sick to make the decisions facing him," Meyers said.
But Deputy Ohio Attorney General Simon Karas says, "Mr. Berry has rights. We certainly believe he has the right to die."
* CONTACT Tim Miller at (614) 224-1608 or e-mail him at tim_miller@coxohio.com