BERLIN — In the wake of incomprehensible loss, Jerry Evers has emerged almost whole — almost, he said.

At age 17, Jerry, now the new Berlin police chief, married Diane and quit school to join the Army to provide for a new family. That family came a little later with the birth of twin girls, Carrie and Sherrie, and two years later, Mandy.

Six years later his world would be ripped asunder with him left alone, clinging for dear life.

Late afternoon New Year’s Day, 1980, in Leesburg, Diane closed the bathroom door to give the girls a bath, and one by one drowned them. Later, she came out and told her uncle and cousin who were in the house calmly what she did. In shock, her family tried to save the children. They were able to revive Carrie.

There was no phone in the house, so Diane’s uncle ran to a neighbor to call for help. Somehow, Diane got back into the bathroom, put Carrie in the tub and drowned her again.

“She was bent on killing them,” Jerry said.

Diane was committed to a Florida mental hospital in a nonjury trial. She is there today, medicated for paranoid schizophrenia, he said.

Jerry only talked to Diane once more. The call was brief. He asked her why. She said she killed their children because she hated him and wanted him to suffer the rest of his life.

“That’s one thing that’s echoed in my mind for years,” he said.

Before killing her babies, Diane had been committed twice to a mental institution. Doctors felt she was better treated at home, but she became worse when a man she was having an affair with rejected her. She began hallucinating and calling herself the Virgin Mary and at other times displaying overt promiscuous behavior, Jerry said.

Although she hadn’t been violent toward the girls, the family was going to again commit her the very next day, he said. Her family had taken turns watching her and the girls after Jerry, then 23, moved out of the house a month earlier to ease tensions. He spent Wednesdays with his daughters and took Diane to therapy. Though they were the best arrangements they could come up with, he has tormented himself with regret since.

Through the interview, he would look over to his daughters’ only portrait and wipe the tears from his face. The photo is yellowing after 25 years, but his love and pain after all this time hasn’t faded.

“It’s one of those things that are hard to deal with, but at the same time, you want to help people. My little girls were my world, and my world was literally destroyed. You try to go on in life to be normal, but you’ll never be normal. There’s not a day you don’t think about it,” he said.

Turning to God for strength, he clawed his way back into the world.

“A lot of times people when a tragedy takes place either turn to alcohol or drugs. I didn’t. I did the opposite,” he said.

Jerry went on to Bible college and pastored several Baptist churches in Georgia and Florida. Later, he admitted, he became disillusioned with smaller churches.

“I really prayed hard for another direction in my life. The door opened for me to go into law enforcement,” he said.

He created another family with his wife, Dorrie. They have three loving children, Jerry Jr., Jessica and Rebecca.

“I can’t think of a bad day in our lives. She just has a special gift about her. I can’t say enough good about her. She’s compassionate. They say that your wife’s your best friend, she definitely is,” he said. “… My kids I’ve got now, I overprotect them I guess. They’re good kids. They know for a fact their daddy loves them.”

In his work as a policeman, his is a sympathetic ear to crime victims and to others in need, he said. Diane was found not guilty by reason of insanity. As a young father, that was hard to comprehend, he said.

“I left from the trial thinking that nobody cared about my little girls but me,” he said.

Later that galvanized his conviction to protect and to serve.

“When I get information about a child being abused, I’m like a bear, I attack. I try to do what I can from a law enforcement standpoint, what realms I can use to enforce what I can enforce. A little child looks to grownups for protection. When that grownup violates that child or harms that child, that destroys that child. I try to do just the opposite. I go out of my way to speak to the kids to let them know that I’m a policeman. I’m here to help them, not scare them,” he said.

He’s active in advocacy for victims’ rights. He admires the fire Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor had in toughening victims’ rights, particularly in crimes against children.

“That’s something in the State of Georgia, we need to protect our kids. It seems like society gets to the point we’re not protecting our kids. They abuse them — everything from sexual abuse, physical abuse or emotional abuse. Some parents try to justify their actions, but there are no justifications beating a child,” he said.

He’s sought out often for national interviews. When Susan Smith drowned her two sons in South Carolina in 1994, CNN and other news agencies called Jerry, he said. In 2001 when Andrea Yates drowned her five children in Texas, he was called again. Each time he recounted the murders, he reopened the wound in his heart. It became so unbearable at times that he would decline interviews, he said.

He’s told his story many times over the years, but he’s writing a new chapter. He’s been speaking to congregations again — more so, he said, than in his preacher days.

“When I started talking about it and sharing it with churches, it made a whole place in my life — like I had been asleep and I woke up and realized what happened. You have to come to a point in your life where you forgive the person that’s done it, and that’s the hardest thing for me to ever do. But I was able to do that and make peace with it and go forward with my life,” he said.

“You can learn to move forward with pain. Even if the pain is still there, you can move forward and you can help others,” he said. “It’s a learning process. You learn different ways to deal with the pain. My way is that I share my testimony with churches. The bad thing that happened to me, good things are coming of it, because it’s bringing strength to others.”

Meanwhile, Diane remains in the mental institution. Her last attempt at getting released was in 1995. She’s tried to kill someone and attacked staff members during her time there, Jerry said.

“I don’t think she’ll ever get out,” he said.