DES MOINES, Iowa  —  “I love him,” said Bill Carter. “I still love him. He’s my son. You know how hard that was for me to watch him be handcuffed and shackled?”

Seventy-one-year-old Bill Carter says it was so hard to watch his son Jason Carter be taken away in custody that it brought him to his knees.

“We got a call and they said you need to get to the sheriff’s office as quick as you can, and I watched him go in the sheriff’s office and that was hard for me,” said Bill Carter. “I went to my knees in their lot. He is my son yet.”

Despite the fact that a Marion County jury in a civil wrongful death lawsuit found 45-year-old Jason Carter responsible for the death of his mother, Bill’s longtime wife Shirley, Bill still wants to have communication with Jason.

“I told him I’d like to talk to him sometime,” said Bill Carter. “I really would and I’d love to see my grandchildren. I haven’t seen them since three days after the funeral. They won’t let me see them.”

But while Bill still has love for his son, he says he does not forgive him.

“No, I do not forgive him,” said Bill. “She was a fine lady. She and I had 52 good years together. I mean good years, and she was not only my lover and I did love her very much, but she was my partner.”

Bill says he and Shirley did everything together.

“She’d run the equipment ahead of me and I planted,” said Bill. “She hauled in while I harvested. We didn’t have hired men. We didn’t need it. She and I worked as a team, and when I lost her I meant it I lost a big part of my life.”

Shirley Carter was shot to death on June 19, 2015, at her Lacona home. She was 68 years old.

Bill says the verdict ordering his son to pay $10 million to Shirley’s estate does bring some semblance of closure.

“There was some semblance with the wrongful death suit,” said Bill Carter. “A small, it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulder, because it’s been terribly expensive and I’m not a wealthy man, whether they say I am or not, and I didn’t want to have to start selling off land.”