Pamela Sharon's killer: 'I'm a person that's never gonna hurt another human being again'

A man who fatally clubbed and tried to rape a young file clerk in her Great Neck Estates home more than three decades ago told parole officials who signed off on his scheduled release from prison he was “a safe bet” and would live a quiet life on the outside.

“I am never gonna let you down when you give me that release date. I will be the person that you will see be a success, and you’ll never hear about me again,” Bruce Haims told the state Parole Board in April.

“I am a safe bet,” the 61-year-old prisoner also declared on a video conference hookup from a Poughkeepsie prison.

The Woodbourne Correctional Facility inmate went to prison in 1984 for 25 years to life after a Nassau jury convicted him of murder, attempted rape and manslaughter in the death of Pamela Sharon, then 21.

Haims insisted while speaking to the Parole Board that he’d reformed himself in the years since the deadly beating he carried out with a 20-pound shillelagh — an Irish walking stick.

“I am a person that’s never gonna hurt another human being again. I’m the person that's  gonna go home and try and live my life as quietly as possible,” he also told board commissioners.

A transcript of Haims’ interview with the board, which Newsday obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request, shows that he told the board he had rediscovered his Jewish faith behind bars.

He also said he took part in every program corrections officials asked him to participate in while in custody — sparking one parole commissioner to say Haims appeared to have developed “a level of insight.”

Haims said one program involved “behavioral modification” and “confrontational reality therapy” during which he talked about his crimes and learned why he behaved the way he did.

After that, Haims said, he served as a peer counselor in the same program for 15 years.

“Wow, that’s impressive,” the same commissioner told him.

But Lisa Sharon, the sister of the woman Haims murdered, said Thursday she was repulsed by Haims’ claims to the Parole Board.

“This is so full of lies, deceit and a Parole Board who ate it up,” the 60-year-old out-of-state resident said of Haims’ interview transcript.

The grieving sister wrote in a February letter to corrections officials while trying to block Haims' release that he was “unable to be rehabilitated" and had “potential to cause harm, even to kill again.”

Haims was a bookkeeper who worked at the same Northern Boulevard office as the victim and one of her close girlfriends, whom he was dating at the time of the killing.

Lisa Sharon also said that the sister of Haims' former girlfriend got an anonymous letter in the mail after news of Haims' upcoming release became public last month.

The letter was mailed from Long Island, included a Newsday article about Haims' impending release and said Haims' former girlfriend should be "aware" of the development "in case she has not already been notified," Sharon said.

She got a copy of the letter, which she also shared with Newsday, and said it was turned over to authorities.

A state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesman said Thursday the agency "is aware of a letter" and its Office of Special Investigations "has an ongoing investigation."

Haims "is still scheduled to be released" pending the outcome of a court hearing to determine his sex-offender risk level, according to the spokesman, who said the prisoner has "refused to participate" in the proceeding.

Records show the Parole Board decided a day after Haims' interview to release him, saying it could happen by May 26.

But the board's decision also detailed numerous release conditions that included a judge first deciding Haims' sex-offender risk level — which will determine legal restrictions he will have to follow.

"I have dedicated 37 years to protecting his next victim and now the Parole Board is opening up the prison door and letting him out and there is nothing I can do," Lisa Sharon said.

Pamela Sharon was an extremely social and attractive young woman who graduated from Great Neck South High School and went to cosmetology school before taking a job doing administrative work, according to her sister.

But on Aug. 20, 1983, Haims beat Pamela Sharon with the shillelagh he took from her family’s den, causing what her death certificate called “extensive skull fractures and brain lacerations.”

Police said after Haims’ arrest that the Great Neck man attacked the victim after she let him inside her family’s Oak Drive home, but then turned him down for a date.

The victim went upstairs to shower to get ready for a date with another man before Haims followed her and bludgeoned her.

At Haims’ trial, his lawyer told jurors they shouldn’t convict him of second-degree murder because he was mentally ill and not legally responsible.

The defense said Haims lived in a bizarre dream world filled with perverse fantasies and had been planning to murder a woman for some time, rehearsing by taking a bat hidden in a bag to other women’s apartments.

In April, Haims also told the Parole Board the woman he murdered was a friend “of the girl I was seeing.” 

He said he had thoughts before his attack on Sharon about raping a woman, which he called “twisted and sick" and a “coping mechanism” for “not dealing with my issues of inadequacy.”

The killer also revealed that right before the killing, he was thinking that Sharon was just another person who had abused, ridiculed and taken advantage of him.

“I used that as a horrible excuse and I started to hit her,” he added.

Haims said he knows he caused the victim “tremendous pain and suffering” and called himself “a coward” who panicked and ran after the slaying.

“I live with this every day,” Haims said at another point. “I’m not laughing because it’s funny, it’s a horrible — it’s a terrible, horrible thing that I placed on myself and because of that she’s gone and I killed her. I can never forgive myself.”

But “a remorseful person,” the victim’s sister said Thursday, “doesn’t laugh about how he murdered his victim.”

The transcript shows one Parole Board commissioner called it “outstanding” that Haims “only received one misbehavior report” in prison and that a resume detailing his accomplishments behind bars “was really impressive.”

Haims, a prison library clerk, told the board he had found housing at a facility where he could comply with sex-offender restrictions and a job where he would work in accounts receivable or online sales.

“I know in my heart of hearts that no amount of time that I can ever be in prison will ever serve justice to what I have done,” Haims said.

But he insisted: "I have changed as a human being."

The victim’s sister said a parole official told her Haims will have to stay within New York City’s limits after his release.

“I slept soundly the night Bruce Haims was convicted," Lisa Sharon added, "but now I lie awake at night fearing for the family who has no idea that a monster is soon to be lurking right outside of the home they think is safe."