Mark Serrano and Charles Gilleo Jr.

Charles Gilleo, Jr. was sentenced to 5 consecutive life sentences.

Fishkill WABC-Charles Gilleo Jr. was found guilty last month of killing Manuel “Tony” Morey, Tina Morey and the couple’s three sons in January 2007. Prosecutors say he and Mark Serrano went to the home to steal cocaine and cash from Tony Morey.

The two adults were shot, and the boys - 13-year-old Manuel, 10-year-old Adam and 6-year-old Ryan - were stabbed multiple times.

Gilleo was given the maximum sentences in Dutchess County Court Tuesday on each of 41 charges, including 20 counts of first-degree murder and 11 counts of second-degree murder.

Serrano was convicted in December and will be sentenced next week.

Such a sad story…particularly when these scumbags are now kept alive by the government on our tax dollars. What a waste.

See pictures of the murdered parents of these young boys at the Bonnie’s Blog of Crime.

The father was a low level crack cocaine dealer and user….which goes to show not all ‘lifestyle choices’ have good outcomes.

hallelujah!

Davis was sentenced to death in the slaying of MacPhail. The victim, working off-duty at the Greyhound bus terminal, was slain as he rushed to the aid of a man being beaten.

But of course Amnesty International and lovers of blacks who kill white cops have a problem with it.

Wife of poisoned Marine wants evidence excluded in retrial

Well of course she does.

SAN DIEGO – A woman convicted of fatally poisoning her Marine husband but granted a retrial will ask that all evidence relating to arsenic and her sexual behavior following his death be excluded, her attorney said Friday.

Cynthia Sommer, 34, was convicted a year ago of first-degree murder for the Feb. 18, 2002, death of Sgt. Todd Sommer, 23, at Miramar.

That’s because while he was getting sick…she was at the doctor’s office getting sized up for a boob job. After his death, she asked about money 4 times in the firs 5 hours. She was like ‘girls gone wild’…throwing money around and having sex with different partners. This is just about as bad as the behavior of Scott Peterson when he wanted to sell his wife, Laci Peterson’s car and the house before they’d even found out what happened to her.

We should never forget that Todd Sommer has a face and didn’t deserve to die.

This is a sad story, a strange story…of a woman who appears to have murdered her 23-year-old marine Sergeant husband with arsenic, for the insurance money.

The cowardly scumbag.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Gary Michael Hilton pleaded guilty Thursday to killing hiker Meredith Emerson, and was sentenced to life in prison.

He wore a bulletproof vest while he was facing sentencing. I guess he was afraid someone might try and hurt him!

He was charged with kidnapping with intent to harm and malice murder in Emerson’s January 4 death.

The 24-year-old University of Georgia graduate disappeared on New Year’s Day while on a hike in the North Georgia mountains with her dog.

Dr. Kris Sperry, the state’s chief medical examiner, concluded Emerson died of blunt force trauma to the head and was decapitated after death.

This is beyond the imagination. I can’t imagine the type of person who would do this kind of thing; and what’s worse, we don’t seem to consider the crimes they commit as serious enough to warrant protecting the public - sometimes we let them go!

Recently there was a memorial service for her and her dog was there.

This is heart-rending and pisses me off.

Mostly because we’re going to waste money keeping this piece of crap alive..when he not only took an innocent girl’s life, but..he is suspected of at least one other murder.

I don’t want my taxes going toward keeping murderers and rapists alive.

May God bless her boyfriend, all those who loved her, and her family.

Judge in Atlanta Resigns From Courthouse-Shooting Case - The Washington Post:

ATLANTA — The judge presiding over the murder case of the man charged with killing four people in a 2005 shooting rampage that began inside a courthouse said Wednesday that he is stepping down from the case.

Superior Court Judge Hilton Fuller cited recent media reports referring to a New Yorker magazine article quoting him as saying of the defendant, Brian Nichols: “Everyone in the world knows he did it.” The quote was made in the context that Nichols’s attorneys were employing an insanity defense.

Fuller, a retired DeKalb County judge who was asked to take the Nichols case after all Fulton County judges recused themselves, has been criticized for decisions in the case related to defense funding issues.

Cynthia Tucker at The Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Nichols escaped from the custody of a Fulton County deputy while he was on trial for allegedly raping an ex-girlfriend; authorities say he went on to kill four people — a judge, a court reporter, a deputy and a federal officer. After he was caught, he told police that he was a “soldier on a mission,” striking out against a criminal justice system biased against black Americans.

I can’t blame the judge for saying ‘everyone knows he did it’. He did it out in the open, there was no question that it was Nichols who killed the judge, court reporter, deputy and federal officer.

WJAC:

A reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was also injured during the incident, WSB reported. Authorities said the reporter, identified as Don O’Briant, was pistol-whipped and assaulted while the suspect was trying to get away. The reporter was taken to the hospital but his condition was not immediately available. The suspect apparently fled in the reporter’s car, described as a green Honda Accord with a tag of 658 4YN.

He was dumb enough to do all of this - and even beat up a reporter from the AJC.

There was a lot more to it than that; what sickened me was the fact that he was being held originally for the crime of raping and sodomizing his ‘fiance’ for hours. And as I recall he did something similar to his hostage, Ashley Smith, for seven hours. I thought this was a screaming example of political correctness because the officer who escorted him to court was a 100-pound grandma, and they had removed his shackles so it wouldn’t sway opinion in the courtroom to think he was ‘guilty’. He was guarded by a tiny little female - and he’s not only a criminal, he’s built like a linebacker and weighs 210 pounds.

But they assigned that little lady to “guard” him, anyway, which made no sense at all.

Previous, here and here.

About the video:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

What distinguishes Americans-what makes a person an American is not the luck of being born between the Atlantic and Pacific and N of Mexico/S of Canada. What makes a person an American are these defining beliefs that the nation’s founding fathers unanimously announced to the world.

Everyone is created equal
Everyone has a right to live
Everyone has a right to pursue their own happiness
And these rights are given to us all, by God.

Americans have risen to defend these rights for themselves and for dozens of nations over the past 200+yrs. It doesn’t matter if the people are Moroccan, French, Algerian, Tunisian, Sicilian, Italian, Belgian, British, Australian, Burmese, Somalia, Sudanese, Kuwaiti, Afghan, Iraqi, or otherwise. Americans are the defenders of freedom for all men.

The only thing that has ever stopped the American people from helping others has been political cowardice for the United States has never had a problem sacrificing blood, or treasure. The only thing that’s been too expensive to risk in defense of others has been political capital. It’s why American soldiers never declare that a cause is lost-only politicians and blinded partisans who follow them like lemmings offering words rather than deeds to hide or excuse their denial of those initial, unique, core American values:

Everyone is created equal
Everyone has a right to live
Everyone has a right to pursue their own happiness
And these rights are given to us all, by God

courtesy:
I Still Believe-The Call
The Patriot
Gettysburg
The Lost Battalion
Saving Private Ryan
Band of Brothers
We Were Soldiers
Rules of Engagement (less)

A great article by John Lott about the effectiveness of the death penalty is here at Investors Business Daily.

He talks about New Jersey dropping the death penalty when a Quinnipiac University poll found that by an overwhelming majority, 78% to 18% of New Jerseyans want the death penalty for -at the very least-cases involving serial and child killers.

The most recent Gallup poll shows that 69% of Americans favor the death penalty. Yet opponents continue to force a widespread public debate over its effectiveness using these arguments:

They say it’s ‘not a deterrent’, yet the numbers tell a different story.

states that reinstituted the death penalty after 1976 collectively saw a significantly bigger drop in murder rates (about 38% larger than in the 12 no-execution states) by 1998. Without executions, murder rates skyrocketed from 1968 to 1976.

That an innocent person might die.

They still can’t point to a single case in which an innocent person was executed. This is ultimate proof that our justice system works well — making due account, for example, for the fact that witnesses sometimes make misidentifications.

They claim the death penalty is racist.

Others, such as the American Bar Association, claim racial biases in how the death penalty is applied. In fact, while African-Americans have committed 53% of all murders since 1980 in which the killer’s race is known, they have accounted for only 38% of the executions.

I saw this the other day, but now that Michelle Malkin’s picked it up, it’s probably about time I weighed in on it.

State Senate, Assembly panel vote to end death penalty

The Legislature moved New Jersey closer Monday to becoming the first state to pass a law repealing the death penalty since it was nationally reinstated in 1976.

Naturally, democrats go completely contrary to ‘representative government’, and advance their mooning for murderers agenda, attempting to abolish the death penalty just like Europe.

A Quinnipiac poll shows 53 percent of New Jerseyans surveyed oppose ending the death penalty and 39 percent support eliminating it.

But who cares about pollaganda, anyway, it’s just about surveying to see how well propaganda has brainwashed the masses; it’s not about surveying how people feel about issues so you can represent their interests.

Anybody who comes to this blog knows I’m pro capital punishment, anyway.

There is no way that I want my tax dollars paying for some guy who is sitting in jail because he murdered someone-or a group of someones-or a child- to eat and live better than he ever has in his life - and that goes for terrorists, as well.

Photo Credit: Andy Clark/Reuters Family and friends of one the six women Robert Pickton is charged with murdering embrace outside the courthouse in New Westminster, B.C., on Jan. 22, 2007.

This is a composite of Pickton and all of the victims.

Robert Pickton was just found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. -Gasps were followed by muffled cheers as it was announced that Robert Pickton was found guilty today on six counts of second-degree murder.

Clockwise from top left: Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Angela Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marni Frey. Photo credit: CBC News

These six women lost their lives and their remains were found at his pig farm.

Family members of the six women fled the courthouse in tears, running into the courtyard to huddle near a Christmas tree hung with lace angels representing their loved ones.

Greg Garley, whose foster sister Mona Wilson was among Pickton’s victims, told the The Canadian Press in his first interview after the verdict that his whole family was ecstatic

“We knew it. We knew that he was guilty. And now the province knows it. And now the whole world knows it.”

Garley said he feels like a burden’s been lifted off his shoulders.

There are another 20 murdered women the Crown could pursue him for. Will there be another trial? I expect so, but we’ll see.

In some ways, the reduction from First Degree to Second Degree Murder is a disgrace; he could conceivably be out on parole in 10 years instead of the 25 that would be required for First Degree murder. I think it’s sickening that any society would keep a monster like this alive.

The 12-member jury completed this 10th day of deliberations delivering a verdict. The trial began on Jan. 22 and heard from 128 witnesses. ¹

Previous here, here, here.

A total of 70 women have disappeared in the Vancouver area from the late 80’s until 2001, and in the 90’s, people were complaining to the police that women in the sex trade were disappearing. At the time, police said there was no evidence of a serial killer. But by April 2001, they’d formed a task force. And by February, 2002, Pickton was arrested.

Many of Pickton’s victims were of First Nations ancestry.

1. Matas, R. & Mickleburgh, R. (December 8, 2007) Victims’ families upset over treatment, Globe and Mail/footnote>[back]

Previous, here.

Reginald Potts, 30, was being held on first-degree murder charges in the death of 28-year-old Nailah Franklin, said John Gorman, chief spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. Police confirmed the charges late Friday.

Potts was the former boyfriend.

From Margaret Lyons the True Crime weblog, the AP.

My heart goes out to her family, although some murder victims’ families never find out what happened to their loved ones, or who did it. So this is a step in the right direction for closure for everyone involved.

God bless the Franklin family and all those who loved her.

the anniversary of danny’s murder is on december 9. he wasn’t even 30 years old. but god forbid that anyone should be allowed to talk about the misery caused by a murderer; or the heartbreak of his widow. because in leftyloonyland, it’s the murderer we need to have sympathy for. i was reading at van helsing’s and elsewhere (here here here and here) about Mumia Abu-Jamal and his leftist adoring fans…when it should be the police officer, Danny Faulkner that we are thinking about as we approach another anniversary of his cold-blooded murder.

Mumia has the french crooning–he’s an honorary citizen in Paris, he’s even had a street named after him there.

Since being placed on death row a generation ago for murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, Abu-Jamal has given commencement addresses for UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Antioch College, Occidental College, and Evergreen State College. NPR even had plans to pay him taxpayers’ money for commentary on the execrable program “All Things Considered.”

In leftyland, cop killers are to be adored. (Actually murderers in general, don’t forget Tookie Williams and candlelight vigils…) We don’t need police, we need more teachers. But as long as murderers, child molesters and pedophiles are given sympathy and few if any consequences, they will continue to walk our streets and terrorize our neighborhoods so that people will not let their kids out to play alone. Behavior rewarded is behavior repeated. This is one of the reasons why people would RATHER have their kids inside playing computer games, IMO. Because there are monsters waiting in the dark.

There is another cop killer adoring story that I’m aware of…the one of Mark McPhail. Troy Anthony Davis’ supporters are acting similar to Mumia’s. You rarely see any cop’s face in the cop killer adoring stories the drooling media put forth.

The cold hard truth is this:

Abu-Jamal shot Officer Faulkner in the back from about a foot away, firing additional shots while he was unarmed on the ground. The one that killed him was a shot to the face. His guilt isn’t even in question.

He is not only a cold-blooded cop killer, but a virulently anti-American black Marxist with dreadlocks who took on a Muslim name (he was born Wesley Cook). All of this makes him so sacred to moonbats that they are threatening to storm Rockefeller Center, enraged that Faulkner’s widow Maureen is scheduled to appear on the Today Show Thursday.

On Thursday, Danny’s widow, Maureen Faulkner, will be appearing on the Today Show to promote her new book: “Murdered by Mumia: a Life Sentence of Pain, Loss and Injustice.”

The Today Show people have no official comment, but according to an obscene cult calling itself the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), they are negotiating with the moonbats. If true, this would set a new MSM standard for contemptible cowardice.

And they’d be setting a new standard for bad taste. Isn’t it bad enough that this poor woman has had to endure years and years without her husband? Isn’t it bad enough what she had to endure after her husband’s cold blooded murder and then seeing these crazies cry for his murderer?

I hope there are people around her to give her moral support.

Shame on the Today’s Show for giving them an ear. They should shut them down and tell them that Maureen should have her chance to speak, unfettered by leftist stormtroopers. But that won’t happen; the media is infested with them.

May God bless Maureen Faulkner.

As Michelle Malkin put it, buy the book. Keep Danny’s memory alive.

Ed Morrissey has an advance copy of the book; it doesn’t come out until tomorrow. He’s going to be interviewing Maureen Faulkner on the December 12th edition of Heading Right Radio.

Previous here and here.

Pig farmer prosecutor rejects ‘bizarre theory’

The trial which is proceeding now is about the murders of these six women. Clockwise from top left: Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Angela Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin and Marni Frey. Photo credit: CBC News

Jurors in the trial of a man accused of being Canada’s worst serial killer have been asked to use “common sense” in deciding how the remains of six women were found at his pig farm.

The evidence is vast and damning, if you can stomach it.

In its closing arguments at the trial of Robert Pickton, who is accused of killing 26 women, the prosecution said the evidence clearly pointed to him and rejected as “bizarre” defence claims that someone else was responsible.

When you consider all that was discovered, I would say there is really no other explanation.

Michael Petrie, prosecuting, told the trial in New Westminster, British Columbia: “Let’s have a reality check here. This case is about the police finding the remains of six dead human beings essentially in the accused’s backyard.”

“Could you accept that someone else snuck on that farm with a bunch of body parts, bones… all without him knowing it?”

It’s a huge leap of fantasy to think that someone else did it, but that’s what the defence would have you believe.

The prosecution has called 98 witnesses and 30 have appeared for the defence since Pickton went on trial in January for the first six murders.

He denies first degree murder in the deaths of 26 out of more than 60 prostitutes and drug addicts who disappeared from Vancouver’s poor Downtown Eastside area from the early 1990s until shortly before his arrest in 2002.

Police say Pickton, 58, lured the women to the ramshackle farm at Port Coquitlam where, after having sex with his victims, he killed them and chopped up their bodies in his slaughterhouse.

He then disposed of the bodies in the farm’s rendering plant or by feeding the remains to his pigs.

While the defence has acknowledged the remains were found on his farm, it argued that other suspects have been ignored and that the evidence - including skulls, hands and feet - was no proof of his guilt.

Riiight. We’ll see what the jury has to say.

A second trial for 20 more murders is expected later. The victims in the current trial are Georgina Papin, Marnie Frey, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury and Brenda Wolfe.

Pickton a Savvy Suspect: Crown

The Crown is likely to conclude its closing arguments on Monday and the jury will begin hearing final instructions from the judge.

Deliberations are unlikely to start until the middle of next week.

AJ and Patsy Cantrell

I already talked about this here, and now am in touch with the family. Fox23 has an article up about the delay in Eizember’s execution.

It is time the family members and the friends of all of his victims - got to see justice and were able to put this behind them.

The death penalty is not a deterrent if the people sitting on death row never see the day when they’re put to death for the terrible crimes they commit.

I’m sorry, I don’t particularly care if a murderer thinks lethal injection is ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment. Let’s put him in front of a firing squad, then.

Bush is really making a serious blunder on this.

I read it about it here originally, and here.

Bush Backs Mexico, Rapist Murderer, and also Murder case pits Texas against Bush

Basically, Jose Medellin, one of the perps in this horrendous crime, detailed in his signed confession in 1993-how he and five other gang members raped, sodomized and brutalized two young teenage girls before strangling them to death with their shoe laces. He even bragged how he kept a Mickey Mouse Watch as a souvenir and trophy.

Medellin and four others eventually were convicted of capital murder and sent to Texas’ death row. A juvenile court sentenced Medellin’s younger brother, who was 14 at the time, to 40 years in prison.

This week, Medellin’s case makes its second trip to the Supreme Court. The issue now is not his confession to the murders of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña, but something else he said during his arrest: He informed the police that he is a Mexican citizen. But officers didn’t inform him of his right to contact the Mexican Consulate for legal assistance.

Here we go again.

This is where the Bush administration has left the planet on reason, and has completely disconnected itself from the American people and public. I can’t imagine that anyone, reading through the horrendous details of this crime, would promote this young man getting off on a technicality, considering the callous cold-blooded viciousness of it all.

Michelle Malkin has been tracking the illegal immigration issue and has been reporting dutifully about the horrid crimes some of the illegals commit, and they don’t get deported for some mysterious reason. It raises awareness, and that is great. But cases like this one need to raise to the top of the fold; people need to take some action about this…Bush’s priorities are kissing Vincente Fox’s ass instead of looking out for our citizenry. Don’t these innocent young women deserve justice? Don’t their families? Doesn’t the American public deserve NOT to have foreign illegals running the streets participating in anarchist type violence, murder, and deviant sexual behavior on innocent children?

What I don’t understand is why they would completely dismiss the horrible facts of the case.

Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena were 14 and 16 years old, respectively. They were friends who attended the same high school in Houston, Texas, Waltrip High School.

On June 24, 1993, the girls spent the day together and then died together. They were last seen by friends about 11:15 at night, when they left a friend’s apartment to head home, to beat summer curfew at 11:30. They knew they would be late if they took the normal path home, down W. 34th Street to T.C. Jester, both busy streets. They also knew they would have to pass a sexually-oriented business on that route and so decided to take a well-known shortcut down a railroad track and through a city park to Elizabeth’s neighborhood.

The next morning, the girls parents began to frantically look for them, paging them on their pagers, calling their friends to see if they knew where they were, to no avail. The families filed missing persons reports with the Houston Police Department and continued to look for the girls on their own.

The Ertmans and Penas gathered friends and neighbors to help them pass out a huge stack of fliers with the girls’ pictures all over the Houston area, even giving them to newspaper vendors on the roadside. Four days after the girls disappeared, a person identifying himself as ‘Gonzalez’ called the Crimestoppers Tips number. He told the call taker that the missing girls’ bodies could be found near T.C. Jester Park at White Oak bayou. The police were sent to the scene and searched the park without finding anything.

The police helicopter was flying over the park and this apparently prompted Mr. ‘Gonzalez’ to make a 911 call, directing the search to move to the other side of the bayou. When the police followed this suggestion, they found the badly decaying bodies of Jenny and Elizabeth. Jennifer Ertman’s dad, Randy Ertman, was about to give an interview regarding the missing girls to a local television reporter when the call came over a cameraman’s police scanner that two bodies had been found. Randy commandeered the news van and went to the scene that was now bustling with police activity. Randy Ertman appeared on the local news that evening, screaming at the police officers who were struggling to hold him back,

“Does she have blond hair? Does she have blond hair?!!?”

Fortunately, they did manage to keep Randy from entering the woods and seeing his daughter’s brutalized body and that of her friend Elizabeth. The bodies were very badly decomposed, even for four days in Houston’s brutal summer heat and humidity, particularly in the head, neck and genital areas. The medical examiner later testified that this is how she could be sure as to the horrible brutality of the rapes, beatings and murders.

The break in solving the case came from, of course, the 911 call. It was traced to the home of the brother of one of the men later sentenced to death for these murders. When the police questioned ‘Gonzalez’, he said that he had made the original call at his 16 year-old wife’s urging. She felt sorry for the families and wanted them to be able to put their daughters’ bodies to rest. ‘Gonzalez’ said that his brother was one of the six people involved in killing the girls, and gave police the names of all but one, the new recruit, whom he did not know. His knowledge of the crimes came from the killers themselves, most of whom came to his home after the murders, bragging and swapping the jewelry they had stolen from the girls.

While Jenny and Elizabeth were living the last few hours of their lives, Peter Cantu, Efrain Perez, Derrick Sean O’Brien, Joe Medellin and Joe’s 14 year old brother were initiating a new member, Raul Villareal, into their gang, known as the Black and Whites. Raul was an acquaintance of Efrain and was not known to the other gang members. They had spent the evening drinking beer and then “jumping in” Raul. This means that the new member was required to fight every member of the gang until he passed out and then he would be accepted as a member.

Testimony showed that Raul lasted through three of the members before briefly losing consciousness. The gang continued drinking and ’shooting the breeze’ for some time and then decided to leave. Two brothers who had been with them but testified that they were not in the gang left first and passed Jenny and Elizabeth, who were unknowingly walking towards their deaths. When Peter Cantu saw Jenny and Elizabeth, he thought it was a man and a woman and told the other gang members that he wanted to jump him and beat him up. He was frustrated that he had been the one who was unable to fight Raul.

The gang members ran and grabbed Elizabeth and pulled her down the incline, off of the tracks. Testimony showed that Jenny had gotten free and could have run away but returned to Elizabeth when she cried out for Jenny to help her. For the next hour or so, these beautiful, innocent young girls were subjected to the most brutal gang rapes that most of the investigating officers had ever encountered. The confessions of the gang members that were used at trial indicated that there was never less than 2 men on each of the girls at any one time and that the girls were repeatedly raped orally, anally and vaginally for the entire hour.

One of the gang members later said during the brag session that by the time he got to one of the girls, “she was loose and sloppy.” One of the boys boasted of having ‘virgin blood’ on him. The 14-year-old juvenile later testified that he had gone back and forth between his brother and Peter Cantu since they were the only ones there that he really knew and kept urging them to leave. He said he was told repeatedly by Peter Cantu to “get some”. He raped Jennifer and was later sentenced to 40 years for aggravated sexual assault, which was the maximum sentence for a juvenile.

When the rapes finally ended, the horror was not over. The gang members took Jenny and Elizabeth from the clearing into a wooded area, leaving the juvenile behind, saying he was “too little to watch”.

Jenny was strangled with the belt of Sean O’Brien, with two murderers pulling, one on each side, until the belt broke. Part of the belt was left at the murder scene, the rest was found in O’Brien’s home. After the belt broke, the killers used her own shoelaces to finish their job. Medellin later complained that “the bitch wouldn’t die” and that it would have been “easier with a gun”.

Elizabeth was also strangled with her shoelaces, after crying and begging the gang members not to kill them; bargaining, offering to give them her phone number so they could get together again. The medical examiner testified that Elizabeth’s two front teeth were knocked out of her brutalized mouth before she died and that two of Jennifer’s ribs were broken after she had died. Testimony showed that the girls’ bodies were kicked and their necks were stomped on after the strangulations in order to “make sure that they were really dead.”

The juvenile, Venancio Medellin, pled guilty to his charge and his sentence was reviewed when he turned 18, at which time he was sent to serve the remainder of the sentence in prison. The five killers were tried for capital murder in Harris County, Texas, convicted and sentenced to death. See US 5th Circuit Court summary of this case.

But now we’re seeing how some of them are finding ways to completely circumvent the system…and the penalty for the crimes they committed against these two young women.

Derrick O’Brien was executed on July 11, 2006 for the murders of Jennifer Ertman, 14, Elizabeth Pena, 16, and Patrica Lourdes Lopez.

To me, the death penalty is too good for all of them; but should be implemented for all of the people who were involved in this. If you are in a foreign country, you should be held to the laws of that country. Those two Mexican nationals deserve the death penalty for this just as the people who were born here did. The reason I keep saying “they” is because if Jose is allowed to pull this maneuver and get away with it, I’m sure his brother will get the same treatment.

The moral inversion of the relativists who claim that the death penalty is equivalent to ‘human sacrifice’ is beyond comprehension. This was brought about as a result of the post on the convicted cop killer, Anthony Davis, and his victim, Mark McPhail along with McPhail’s surviving family members in Savannah, Georgia.

There are a lot more examples of elevating murderers to the status of heroes beyond the left’s turnout asking for clemency for Tookie Williams.

Let’s look at a few examples of the monsters that I’m aware of since I started blogging.

The Groene Murders

As a teenager in Tacoma, Wash., Duncan raped and tortured a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint. Convicted as an adult, he spent 18 years in prison and was afforded many opportunities to overcome—or perhaps constrain—his psychopathic sexual urges.

He was released on parole in 1994. When he violated his parole, he was sent back to prison in 1997, and was released again in 2000 at the end of his sentence.

Ultimately, all efforts to ‘rehabilitate’ this cretin failed.

After prison, Duncan enrolled in college in Fargo, N.D., registered as a sex offender and spent several years without any reported lapses.

But he just couldn’t contain his natural impulses. He was accused of molesting a boy on a playground in Minnesota which would certainly have led him back to prison, so Duncan vanished from Fargo in a stolen Jeep, just weeks before he was to graduate from North Dakota State University.

Duncan, 42, a convicted sex offender, was released in May, 2005, on $15,000 bail after being accused of molesting two boys. But the previous April of 2005, he broke into the home of Brenda Groene and killed her, her 13-year-old son and her boyfriend. He then kidnapped Shasta and Dylan. (I’m questioning this chronology of events, it seems to be - at the least - very odd.)

Joseph Edward Duncan III was arrested on July 2, 2005, for abducting Dylan and Shasta Groene, murdering their family, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. He had an extensive online presence on his blog, Blogging the Fifth Nail.¹

From Buzzle.com:²

First Duncan served 14 years in prison for violently assaulting a boy at gunpoint, then he violated his parole and had to serve the remaining 7 years, and then he was arrested for molesting a 6-year old boy—and they released him on a paltry $15,000 bond? There’s no question that Duncan should have to pay with his life for the crimes he’s committed and the nightmare he put tiny Shasta Groene through. But whoever the judge was that released him should have to pay too, not only by losing his job, but hopefully also by being plagued with his own nightmares for years to come.

The Murder of 9-year old Jessica Lunsford

There is John Couey, a convicted sex offender, who lived within sight of Jessica Lunsford’s parents’ house. Why he was running around is anyone’s guess, but he murdered little 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford after raping her and keeping her in his trailer. She was buried alive. He confessed to kidnapping, raping and murdering her, but the confession was thrown out because he didn’t have a lawyer present.

Funny how these technicalities allow these monsters to sidestep facing consequences for their actions. There are some interesting laws on the books that give protection to ’special groups’. One of the problems with the Couey case, which should be open-and-shut, is a Florida law which states a mentally retarded individual can’t be executed for any crime. Couey is ‘mildly’ retarded, according to the articles I’ve read, but that’s not true. He has an IQ of 78 and the judge said at his recent hearing that he ‘faked’ being mentally retarded.³ Mild retardation is considered an IQ of 60-70⁴. Crafty legal ploy, though. Might as well try it, right? Because there is no denying he committed this crime.

The man is guilty, he did it, and that should be the end of it in my opinion.

Jessica’s father, Mark Lunsford, took the witness stand and spoke directly to the man convicted of killing his daughter.

“I hope you hear her cries as you try to sleep at night,”

Lunsford said, wiping tears.

“I hope you see the tears run down her face as she asked you to go home. I hope you spend the rest of your life in fear of death. You will never hurt another child.”

Lunsford then asked Circuit Judge Richard Howard to sentence Couey to death.⁵

Sentencing has tentatively been set for Aug. 10.

The death penalty was recommended but Couhy has still not been sentenced.

John Evander Couey Still Not Sentenced
June 22, 2007
Three months after a jury recommended the death sentence, John Evander Couey has yet to be sentenced and is not scheduled back in court for a hearing until July 17.

I Haven’t been able to find out if this hearing took place, or if it was continued.

Jury Recommends Death for John Evander Couey
Mar. 14, 2007
A jury of his peers took less than one hour today to recommend a death sentence for John Evander Couey for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Jessica Marie Lunsford.

Justice for Jessica: Couey Found Guilty
Mar. 7, 2007
A jury in Miami deliberated for almost four hours today before returning guilty verdicts in all charges against John Evander Couey in the kidnapping, rape and murder of Jessica Lunsford.

Closing Arguments Set in Lunsford Trial
Mar. 6, 2007
Closing arguments are scheduled in the murder trial of John Evander Couey after the defense suddenly rested its case after calling only one witness.

From the Tampa Bay Tribute’s outstanding Lunsford site⁶:
# Transcript of Deposition of Gary Atchison, lead detective
# Transcript of Deposition of Kenneth Slanker, one of the jail guards.
# Transcript of Deposition of Dr. Steven Cogswell, Medical Examiner
# Transcript of Sworn Statement of John Read
# Couey’s Indictment
# Couey’s Pyschological Evaluation
# March 17, 2005 (PDF, 94 pages)
# March 18, 2005 (PDF, 50 pages)
# March 20, 2005 (PDF, 54)

The Murder of 5-year old Destiny Norton

To my knowledge, Gregerson had not committed a crime like this before, but other court documents point to a Craig Gregerson’s pattern of abuse.⁷ Craig Roger Gregerson, 20, was charged with capital murder in the July death of 5-year-old Destiny Norton, whose body was found in a storage container in Craig Gregerson’s house. His wife Catherine was not living with him at the time.

In December of 2006, the Salt Lake Deseret News reported on a case charging Catherine Gregerson, Gregerson’s estranged wife, with domestic violence stemming from an incident that occurred the April before Destiny’s murder. It really makes one question what is wrong with our justice system. In that incident, according to an article from Deseret News,⁸

Craig Gregerson grabbed the baby, yelled that his wife would never see the child again, and ran inside their home, locking the door. Catherine Gregerson kicked in a screen door, which Findlay said was in dilapidated condition anyway, to get the baby back.

“I don’t think a jury would convict her — not because her husband is Craig Gregerson, but because of the things that happened. I think they charged the wrong person,” Findlay said.

I should say they charged the wrong person! If the guy grabs the baby from her arms and locks the door, and she attempts to get the baby back, knowing that he’s violent and the police have been called on previous incidents, why fault the mother for trying to protect her child? Particularly in view of what we know about him now?

This is all ridiculous. He certainly shouldn’t be given all the chances that we’ve seen the courts give to convicted criminals like him. He should not be released so he can do it again.

The murders of Debra Evans and her children, baby cut from her womb

Fedell Caffey, Jacqueline Williams and Levern Ward

Deborah Evans is pictured above with her children, 10-year old Samantha, and 9-year old Jordan. Their murderers, Fedell Caffey, Jacqueline Williams are pictured underneath. Levern Ward was the father of Evan’s unborn baby and toddler son, not pictured.

Evans was pregnant, and knew the baby was a boy. She’d already named him Elijah. Her 19-month old child, also fathered by Ward, was found at his dead mother’s side when her body was discovered.

Caffey and Williams decided they wanted a baby. So they shot and stabbed Debra Evans to death in her Addison, Illinois apartment and cut her nearly full-term fetus from her body.

Deborah’s father, Sam Evans, said: “She was killed for her baby. They actually cut her unborn baby from her womb as she was dying.”

To eliminate witnesses, they also murdered Evans’ 10-year-old daughter, Samantha, and 8-year-old son, Joshua (pictured above with their mother). Both Jordan and Eli survived.⁹

All three of these vicious people had long criminal records. Williams’ includes convictions for theft and forgery; Caffey for attempted theft, domestic battery and unlawful use of a weapon. Ward had served a three-year sentence for striking a police officer while trying to enter the home of a former girlfriend, and had been released from a prison work camp that January. Ward also had beaten Evans in the past, according to her cousin, Fred Moody.¹⁰

Note: Before George Ryan left office, he commuted 167 death sentences, including those of Fedell Caffey and Jacqueline Williams.¹¹

———————————-
There are a lot more cases of this kind of thing…and the fact that society seems to believe that the murders of innocents are no big deal.

“If we execute murderers and there is in fact no deterrent effect, we have killed a bunch of murderers. If we fail to execute murderers, and doing so would in fact have deterred other murders, we have allowed the killing of a bunch of innocent victims. I would much rather risk the former. This, to me, is not a tough call.”

John McAdams - Marquette University/Department of Political Science, on deterrence

The benefits of a legal system in which judges and juries have the option of sentencing the cruelest or coldest murderers to death far outweigh the potential risk of executing an innocent person. And there is this added reassurance: The risk of an erroneous execution is infinitesimal, and getting smaller all the time.

The death penalty makes it possible for justice to be done to those who commit the worst of all crimes. The execution of a murderer sends a powerful moral message: that the innocent life he took was so precious, and the crime he committed so horrific, that he forfeits his own right to remain alive.

When a vicious killer is sent to the electric chair or strapped onto a gurney for a lethal injection, society is condemning his crime with a seriousness and intensity that no other punishment achieves. By contrast, a society that sentences killers to nothing worse than prison — no matter how depraved the killing or how innocent the victim — is a society that doesn’t *really* think murder is so terrible.

But there is more to executions than justice for the dead. There is also protection for the living.

A recent study at the University of Colorado, for instance, finds “a statistically significant relationship between executions, pardons, and homicide. Specifically, each additional execution reduces homicides by five to six.” A paper by three Emory University economists concludes: “Our results suggest that capital punishment has a strong deterrent effect. . . . In particular, each execution results, on average, in 18 fewer murders — with a margin of error of plus or minus 10.”

Comparable results have been reached by scholars at the University of Houston, SUNY Buffalo, Clemson, and the Federal Communications Commission. All these studies have been published within the past three years. And all of them underscore an inescapable bottom line: The execution of murderers protects innocent life.

(When Murderers Die, Innocents Live-Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe)

Bottom line is, you can see the trending of execution “stays” here, and I think this needs to stop.

The 635 killers who were executed between 1998 and 2005 had murdered at least 1315 people.
That is an average of 2.07 victims per executed killer.

1977 - 1997 Executions
There were 434 killers executed in this time period. They murdered at least 690 people.

1. Huff, S. (February 21, 2006). Revisiting Duncan, and Beaner… History’s Miseries.[back]
2. Orlando, L. (July 6, 2005) Idaho Girl Gives Disturbing Details of Her Abduction and Abuse: Shasta Groene, the 8-year old girl kidnapped from her home along with her brother six weeks ago, has told authorities the grim and nightmarish details of her ordeal at the hands of a convicted sex offender. Buzzle.com[back]
3. (July 18, 2007) Judge: Sex Offender Faked Mental Retardation kyw.com CBS3.[back]
4. Mental Retardation. Wikipeda.[back]
5. (July 18, 2007) Judge: Sex Offender Faked Mental Retardation kyw.com CBS3.[back]
6. Smith Law Offices (March 16, 2007). John Couey Indictment, transcripts and misc exhibits SexCrimeDefender[back]
7. Thomson, L. (December 2, 2006). Deseret Morning News “Domestic violence trial delayed for Gregerson”. Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Dec 2, 2006. FindArticles.com. 21 Jul. 2007.[back]
8. Thomson, L. (December 2, 2006). Domestic violence trial delayed for Gregerson FindArticles.com[back]
9. (September 29, 2006) Boy stolen from slain mother’s womb in 1995 is sweet, well-adjusted survivor. CourtTVnews[back]
10. Edwards, C. Couple Killed Mother To Get Her Baby. Associated Press. Kentucky Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s student production. [back]
11. Illinois - Outgoing governor empties death row of 167 killers. (2003). also on the same page, Veselenak, A. (undated). George Ryan: The Great Emancipator. Prodeathpenalty.com[back]