I couldn’t wait to lay into the man named Joe. I mean, I was really looking forward to it. This is a guy who helped terrorize, beat and rob elderly people five years ago. This is a guy who absolutely horrified a community with his violence.

A paragraph from the March 16, 2000, issue of the Sun Journal: “An elderly man was beaten so severely in one invasion that he required surgery to repair his hip. A Lewiston woman was dragged by her feet by her attackers who threatened to cut off her toes. Her husband was choked until he was unconscious while the suspects ransacked their home.”

It was not Joe who administered the worst of the beatings. But he and five others were convicted of breaking into three homes and robbing victims by beating and scaring the hell out of them. Joe and his cohorts are the kind of people who make many of us wish for the days of public stockades.

He tormented an old man in order to steal easy-to-haul trinkets. He did this in front of the elderly man’s wife who screamed for mercy. Sweet Joe burst into the home of a couple who had worked their entire lives for comfort and peace. He and his goon pals frightened and flogged the terrified couple in order to satisfy their need for fast loot.

I absolutely despise people like this. He and his primate friends could have beaten and robbed my mother during that springtime spree. He could have beaten and robbed your mother.

Fiends like this take what they want and somehow convince themselves they are entitled. They are jungle creatures who have not evolved. They should be in zoos, getting mauled by gorillas. People who commit acts of violence against others are felons. People who commit violence against the young or the old are pestilence in a class by themselves.

So, when Joe came into the newsroom, whining to an editor because he was having trouble turning his life around, I was not sympathetic.

I don’t care if a person like that is repentant. I keep thinking about the old man getting beaten in his own cozy home. I keep envisioning his terrified wife, looking on but unable to help. I keep imagining that pain and fear.

My blood pressure was off the charts when I picked up the phone to call Joe.

“That is not me,” he said 30 seconds into our conversation. “That was me in the past, but it’s not me now.”

Lousy, rotten ex-con with the charm and the sad voice. I was feeling bad for him just minutes after all that self-righteous rage. Here was a young man with a young wife, two kids and a past full of shame. All he wanted was a second chance and a new start.

“I’d love to be an inspiration for other people,” he said. “I’d love to be an inspiration for those kids who are not doing well. Who are like I used to be.”

I wanted him to be an arrogant ass. I wanted him to be an unrepentant moron. I wanted to savor my outrage. In the face of heinous crimes like Joe’s, each of us who has never tormented and robbed an elderly person is entitled to that rage. That kind of naked violence makes us feel so good about our own well-mannered lives, it is almost divine.

I wanted to write a column about the likes of a despicable creature named Joe and make it sing. I wanted to fillet him and encourage all of you to hate him. But I can’t. Because half of me believes that Joe is sincere in his shame. Half of me wants to believe he deserves a measure of forgiveness from the society he once corrupted with violence and greed.

I go back and forth on this. Vile pig who tortured the elderly. Misunderstood wretch with a lifetime of repentance ahead of him.

The giant question before us is whether people like him can ever earn forgiveness. Can you someday absolve a person who has beaten Grandpa so badly that he walks with a limp and lives in fear through his remaining years? Is three years in prison and a haunted past enough for the culprit?

I could never be judge, nor jury. I’m too easily swayed. One moment, I want to beat the scoundrel. The next, I wish him peace.

Better to let you decide. You are Joe’s peers, after all. You are his neighbors, his employers, his landlords. You are the people who will ultimately decide his fate. You will decide if he can fly away from his miserable past, or if he is doomed to forever carry it around, like the character from “A Christmas Carol” carrying all those chains.

“They were brutal,” said a detective who investigated the crimes.

“It is absolutely terrible to have to watch my grandmother lock her doors five times in a row when she leaves her house,” said the tearful relative of a victim. “It is such a passionate pain and anger that we all feel.”

“That’s not me anymore,” said Joe, the redeemed. “That’s not me. I’ve changed.”

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.