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Family Murders and Tortures by Jehovah's Witnesses
or Why It Might be Unsafe to Marry a Jehovah's Witness
related: JW murderers
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Man's life offers little to hint at explosion of violence
By Fredrick Kunkle and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 25, 2010
APPOMATTOX, VA. -- Christopher B. Speight lived in two starkly different worlds.
Court papers indicate that he was quietly preparing for a violent siege. He stockpiled firearms, hand grenades, pipe bombs, ammunition, body armor and paramilitary gear such as night-vision goggles and Vietnam-era Claymore mine components. He spent hours firing semiautomatic rifles on a 200-yard range behind his place on Snapps Mill Road. He cached food, provisions and sleeping bags. He booby-trapped the house and the woods around it with explosives.
Outwardly, however, Speight showed few signs that anything was terribly wrong. He never married and kept mostly to himself, but he was usually cheerful and calm around other people. He was quick to lend a hand and proved to be a reliable security guard at businesses for Old Dominion Security. With co-workers who drew him out, he spoke of his faith and attendance at a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall in Rustburg, his reluctance to settle down with any woman and a passion for firearms that began when he was a boy.
His mother's death in 2006 from brain cancer had plunged him into despair for a time, but it also made him closer to his sister and her husband, who returned from Georgia last year to live with him. To many who knew him, he seemed like an ordinary person whose troubles appeared no worse than anyone else's.
The enormous divide between the man people thought they knew and the one who saw dark plots on all sides was never obvious until Tuesday. Sometime before noon, authorities say, Speight exploded in violence, killing eight people with a high-powered rifle, firing shots when a sheriff's deputy and EMT arrived at the home after a body was reported there, and shooting a Virginia State Police helicopter from the sky. The 19-hour rampage came to a close after a damp, all-night standoff in the woods near his home when Speight, unarmed and wearing a bulletproof vest, peacefully surrendered to police.
The dead included the people in his life who were closest to him: his sister, Lauralee Dobyns Sipe, 37; her husband, Dwayne S. Sipe, 38, who went by his middle name, Shannon, with close friends and family members; and his sister's 15-year-old daughter, Morgan Leigh Dobyns, and 4-year-old son, Joshua T. Sipe. Authorities say Speight also killed four acquaintances: Ronald "Bo" Scruggs II, 16, and Emily A. Quarles, 15, both friends of Morgan's; and Jonathan L. and Karen Quarles, both 43, Emily's parents.
Four victims were found inside Speight's house, and three others as if shot while sitting in a car or immediately outside it. Law enforcement sources said Jonathan Quarles had been able to reach the road, despite being shot in the torso, and lay face down, fighting for life, when passersby found him.
Speight, who has been charged with murder, is in custody without bail at the Blue Ridge Regional Jail Authority in Lynchburg. On Friday, investigators filed court documents cataloguing firearms, explosives and other items seized from Speight's home, including a Colt AR-15 assault rifle, a BFI Bushmaster assault rifle, two Chinese-made Norinco semiautomatic rifles and other military arms.
Soul mates
People are trying to make sense of a killing rampage that defies understanding. The people Speight is charged with murdering were trying to help him, yet he thought they would bring him harm. He'd gone his whole life proud of avoiding violence to resolve disputes.
Speight's uncle, Thomas Giglio, 61, of South Boston, Va., said no one in the family ever hinted that tensions were brewing inside the neatly kept, two-story brown house behind the split rail fence. Giglio said Lauralee was looking out for her elder brother's best interests, and Sipe, a Navy veteran and successful entrepreneur, treated him like his brother. Giglio said Speight, who suffered from a serious learning disability and bouts of severe depression tied to his mother's death, seemed to be getting on with his life just fine.
"I looked at Chris and Dwayne and I thought, 'This is really great. He's got a soul mate,' " Giglio said. "Those were the people who loved Christopher, who helped Christopher, who protected Christopher, who looked after him. I don't know how it got twisted."
In dozens of interviews with co-workers, friends, associates and members of law enforcement, a darker portrait has emerged of Speight as a deeply troubled man whose demons were kept so firmly in check that people who had known him for years now feel as if they might not have known him at all.
....... (read whole story here)
"He said he had a calling with the church," said Clarence "Scooter" Reynolds, 39, recalling a conversation that began about women. "He just said he wasn't interested in having a relationship with a woman. He was going the church way."
Yet members of the Kingdom Hall seldom saw him and said Speight was never baptized in the faith, Elder Richard Taylor said.
Speight's neighbors also did not see much of him. But most knew at least one thing about Speight: He had firearms, and he liked to shoot. Almost every weekend, the red clay hills and ridges of scrub pine echoed with the sounds of gunfire, often rapid-fire shooting that suggested someone was using a semiautomatic.
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Man Jailed for Life over Religious Killing Nov. 8, 2009
A man who murdered the mother of his 13 children by stabbing her 17 times did so to save her from sin, the WA Supreme Court was told today.
Kenneth Pickett was sentenced to life in jail with a minimum 20 year period behind bars after pleading guilty to the brutal murder of Andrea Pickett outside a North Beach house in January.
Pickett had been released from jail only two months earlier after twice breaching a violence restraining order taken out by Ms Pickett and also threatening to kill her.
The court was told Pickett was an extremely religious man who killed his former wife after the breakdown of their 23 year marriage because he thought she was in another relationship and that went against his interpretation of the bible.
Justice Peter Blaxell said Pickett who is a Jehovah's Witness continued to justify the killing by saying he saved his former wife from sin.
The court was told on the night of the murder Pickett broke into a house in North Beach and chased his former wife outside the home before beginning to stab her as she held her three-year-old child in her arms.
Outside court members of Ms Pickett’s extended family criticised the system that allowed multiple VROs to be broken and ending up in the tragic death.
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Jarka trial: Murrieta man sentenced to life in prison without parole for murder of wife (Nov. 6, 2009)
Read more:
http://www.swrnn.com/southwest-riverside/2009-11-06/news/jarka-trial-murrieta-man-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-without-parole-for-murder-of-wife#ixzz0WORdnxAd
A Murrieta man convicted of murdering his longtime wife and making the killing look like it was done by an intruder will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled Friday.
Kelle Lee Jarka, 41 at the time of his trial, showed no reaction as Judge Timothy Freer confirmed the sentence indicated by Jarka’s conviction for first-degree murder. A jury deliberated about two hours in September before deciding Jarka murdered his wife, Isabelle, and that the killing was for financial gain, a finding that made him ineligible for parole.
Jarka showed no reaction as Judge Freer sentenced him to the maximum penalty. He called Jarka “evil” and said the evidence was overwhelming.
The sentence followed statements from Jarka’s brother-in-law and those of Isabelle’s family. Jarka continued to deny his guilt and told the judge he misses his wife.
He told the judge that one day he will be exonerated.
Prosecutors successfully argued Jarka, who was having financial problems, wanted to collect $1.3 million in life insurance on a policy he had taken out on his wife of nearly 20 years. The prosecutor described Jarka as a man so enamored with his upper-middle-class lifestyle and position within his congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, that he was willing to sacrifice the life of his loving wife to maintain it.
Defense attorney Erin Kirkpatrick told jurors Kelle Jarka was a peaceful man and a loving husband who did not kill his wife. Kirkpatrick said the Jarka’s finances were unstable, but their fiscal picture was not dire. Despite the best efforts of Murrieta police, she said, there was no physical evidence linking her client to Isabelle’s brutal death.
Isabelle Jarka suffered almost a dozen blows to her head with a blunt object resulting in a fracture to her skull and injuries to her brain, Dr. Joseph Cohen testified.
Read more:
http://www.swrnn.com/southwest-riverside/2009-11-06/news/jarka-trial-murrieta-man-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-without-parole-for-murder-of-wife#ixzz0WORI9AT0
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Texas woman accused of beheading, eating infant son Tuesday, July 28, 2009
By ROBERT CROWE, MICHELLE MONDO and NANCY PREYOR-JOHNSON
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
The 33-year-old woman who police said decapitated her infant son and ate parts of his body had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and postpartum psychosis before the slaying at a North Side home this weekend, the family said Monday.
Otty Sanchez confessed to killing Scott Wesley Buchholz Sanchez on Sunday with a steak knife and two swords before mutilating the corpse and eating body parts that included the brain, nose and toes, police said.
She has been charged with capital murder and remained under 24-hour observation Monday at University Hospital, where she was treated for self-inflicted knife wounds.
The father of the baby now is asking that she "pay the ultimate price."
"She was a sweet person and I still love her, but she needs to pay the ultimate price for what she has done," said Scott W. Buchholz, who referred to his child as "baby Scotty." "She needs to be put to death for what she has done."
Sanchez's relatives, however, are hoping authorities will take into consideration her history of mental illness, which included a recent diagnosis of postpartum psychosis.
"It's just tragic and unbelievable what happened," said Greg Garcia, Sanchez's first cousin who considers her a sister. "She was a good, hard-working person, but she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia last year."
The crime happened at Sanchez's mother's home in the 300 block of Wayside Drive sometime between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m. When officers arrived about 5 a.m. to find baby Scotty's mutilated body, Sanchez quickly confessed to the macabre crime, police said.
"She was hysterical, screaming, 'I killed my baby. I killed my baby,'" said Police Chief William McManus.
Child Protective Services officials said that Sanchez had never been investigated by the agency prior to the killing. The agency on Monday was at the home investigating conditions, because Sanchez's sister's children, ages 5 and 7, also live there.
Police said the sister, the two children and Sanchez's mother were in the home at the time of the slaying. The adult women had each taken turns caring for baby Scotty at night so they could sleep in shifts. Sanchez's shift began at 1:30 p.m. Her sister discovered the baby's body about 4:30 a.m. and called police about 5 a.m.
The crime scene was so disturbing that the San Antonio Police Department has provided counseling services for some officers who entered the home.
"Normally you don't see a scene of this magnitude in terms of the atrocity," McManus said. "When you do, it certainly leaves a lasting impression."
Sanchez told detectives that she was "hearing voices" and the devil made her kill the baby boy she had given birth to June 30.
The Bexar County District Attorney's Office will soon review the homicide detectives' recommended capital murder charge, which is punishable by the death penalty.
"You can still be prosecuted if you have some form of mental illness," said First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg. "The test is if you understand the difference between right and wrong. The question is whether or not you know your act is wrong."
Defense attorneys can request competency hearings to determine whether Sanchez is fit to stand trial.
Dr. Lucy Puryear, a Houston psychiatrist and author, said mothers who experience postpartum psychosis often have a history of other mental disorders, but in some cases childbirth triggers the psychosis.
"It's usually really severe," said Puryear, who wrote the book, "Understanding Your Moods When You're Expecting."
She testified as an expert witness in the case of Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in Houston in 2001. While postpartum depression affects one in 10 mothers, Puryear said, the more severe condition of postpartum psychosis -- which includes hallucinations -- affects 1 in 1,000.
Puryear said postpartum psychosis includes delusional thoughts, hallucinations and an altered state of reality.
"The scary thing is that the delusions are usually always about the baby," she said. "In all of the (high profile) cases, the thinking involves the babies: The mother had to kill the baby to protect it, or God has spoken to the mother and there is a mission to kill the baby or sometimes the baby is the devil who needs to be gotten rid of to save the world," she said.
Relatives said Sanchez's mental health had severely deteriorated in the week before baby Scotty's death. On July 20, she moved out of the home she was living at with the baby and his father near Windcrest on the Northeast Side.
That same day she checked herself into a hospital after hearing voices, but she soon checked herself out, according to a source familiar with the investigation but unauthorized to speak to the media. She then took the baby to stay at her mother's home in the 300 block of Wayside Drive.
Buchholz called her every day to convince her to return to their home, to no avail.
"We were all trying to get her to come back," said Buchholz best friend, Matthew Maher. "She wouldn't answer her phone."
She finally reappeared about 2 p.m. Saturday at Buchholz's parent's home on the Northeast Side.
"We were so happy to see Scotty again," said his father.
She was at the home for about 15 minutes when Buchholz told Sanchez that he needed a copy of baby Scotty's birth certificate and Social Security Card. The request seemed to "set her off," Buchholz said.
"She grabbed the baby and just said, 'I gotta go. I gotta go. I'm out of here.'"
The mother ran out of home with Scotty in a car seat. She left behind the baby's diaper bag and her purse, along with her medication. Buchholz said Sanchez threw the child's car seat -- with Scotty inside -- into the front passenger area of her car and sped away without buckling Scotty into the vehicle's front seat.
His mother called 911, and a sheriff's deputy arrived to investigate the incident as a disturbance, court records show. Later on Saturday night, while Buchholz was attending the Judas Priest concert, he received a cell phone call from Sanchez.
"She told me she had found someone else and she never wanted to see me again," he said.
Police think she killed the baby about six hours later.
Sanchez and Buchholz met in 2003, while they were enrolled in the San Antonio College of Medical and Dental Assistance. The couple's volatile relationship was on and off for the past six years, but they became dedicated to making it work after learning she was pregnant last year, relatives said.
"She took really good care of herself during the pregnancy," said Buchholz, who also has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. "We were excited about having a baby."
But Sanchez's mental health deteriorated soon after the child's birth. Her recovery was complicated by an infection, which required the use of a catheter for a week. Irritability progressed to a darker psychological state, and a postpartum depression diagnosis soon followed.
"She kept telling me she needed to see a counselor all the time," Buchholz.
During the pregnancy and first two weeks after baby Scott's birth, the couple lived together in a rented house on the Northeast Side.
The couple paid for the residence with his monthly disability checks and her job as an in-home health care provider for senior citizens. She worked until about two weeks before she gave birth. Acquaintances described Sanchez and her mother as devout Jehovah's Witnesses."They would come up to our door every so often, but I told them I was Catholic, so they left," said Elaine Calchin.
Buchholz's mother, Kathleen, said she had no idea that Sanchez had been diagnosed with the same mental illness her son had. She thought that baby Scotty was the best thing that could have happened to the troubled couple.
She is not sure what should happen to the baby's mother.
"I have mixed emotions," she said. "She needs to stay under psychiatric care. I love her. She was like a daughter. I don't want her out at this point, but that may change."
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Murdered woman left 5-pg letter disassociating herself. Husband on Trial
http://www.stthomastimesjournal.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1588079
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/176202/1/Murdered-woman-left-5-pg-letter-disassociating-herself-Husband-on-Trial
http://www.stthomastimesjournal.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1586180
Decision is final: slain wife
Posted By KYLE REA, Times-Journal
Eugena Smith expected "wagging tongues to flutter with delight" after they read the letter she wrote saying she was leaving the Jehovah's Witness church.
That comes from a five-page draft of the missive, read aloud to a trial jury on Wednesday and addressed to the Watchtower Bible Society of Jehovah's Witnesses. It was found by investigators lying among a pile of clothing on the floor of Eugena Smith's bedroom, shortly after the 33-year-old St. Thomas woman was found murdered in her 9 Balaclava St. home in June, 2007.
Her estranged husband Michael Smith, 37, is on trial for first-degree murder in the city's Superior Court of Justice.
The couple's daughter, who was three-and-a-half years old in June, 2007, wasn't home at the time.
Justice Peter Hockin is hearing the case, which is expected to last five weeks.
The Crown argued in an opening statement Tuesday that Eugena Smith was trying to leave both her husband, and her church, just days before she died on June 7, 2007. Michael Smith, the Crown says, thought she was having an affair.
Among a mountain of evidence presented in court on Wednesday, Eugena's draft letter stated "I no longer wish to associate myself with the (Watchtower) organization" and urged people not to persuade her to come back.
"My decision is final."
Wednesday also saw testimony from Const. Terri Hikele and Const. Marc Vaughan, two St. Thomas identification officers who investigated, photographed and video-taped both Eugena Smith's home and Michael Smith's Talbot Street apartment. The court heard cellphones, computers, medication and clothing were seized by police.
Some objects, such as a black woman's shirt cut from neck to waist, a pair of thong underwear, stained bed sheets and wads of toilet paper with a red substance on it, all found in Eugena Smith's bedroom, were sent to the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto for testing.
Swabs taken from Michael Smith's penis and a sexual assault test kit with samples taken at Eugena Smith's autopsy were also sent away to be tested, the court heard.
Photos, video and items seized from Michael Smith's apartment were also presented to the jury. One of those items included a letter from Michael Smith's father, Joseph, addressed, "To my son."
Read aloud for the jury by Vaughan, the letter asks forgiveness for a "previous outburst," and talks about a heated argument involving Eugena Smith and her inlaws. In the letter Joseph Smith worries he won't get a chance to see his granddaughter again.
"Don't make (her) pay for a few words."
The trial continues today.
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Calgary Herald - 2-26-2009
Man who killed wife, two kids denied parole
Kostelniuk chronicled the murders of his two children and ex-wife in his book Wolves Among Sheep: The True Story of Murder in a Jehovah's Witness Community
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Man Strangles Wife, Calls Elder to Confess
http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl011909tpstrangle.d6a7c0c.html
WWLMan strangles wife, calls pastor to confess
WWL, LA - Jan 19, 2009
Ortega is the member of a local Jehovah Witness congregation, police said. Ortega and his wife, San Juana Isabel Ortega, 32, argued throughout the early ...
Man strangles wife, calls pastor to confess
03:38 PM CST on Monday, January 19, 2009
Matthew Pleasant / Houma Courier
WWLTV.com
HOUMA – After strangling his wife during a Sunday morning argument while their young children slept nearby, a 47-year-old welder called his pastor to confess the slaying, according to police.
Rodolfo Ortega, 320 Coach Court, Houma, is charged with second-degree murder.
At 10 a.m., police arrived at Ortega’s trailer after receiving a call from Ortega’s pastor, said Houma Police Lt. Jude McElroy. Ortega is the member of a local Jehovah Witness congregation, police said.
Ortega and his wife, San Juana Isabel Ortega, 32, argued throughout the early morning without waking their four children, who were sleeping, McElroy said.
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New details in murder of 12-year-old girl 3/15/08
______________________________________________________
It was all in the name of God
Squalid ... sadistic foster mother Eunice and bedroom and bathroom in her home
By JOHN COLES
March 21, 2007
AN evil foster mother was yesterday convicted of horrifically abusing three children — to raise them “in accordance with her faith”.
Fanatical Jehovah’s Witness Eunice Spry, 62, believed the two girls and a boy were possessed by the Devil and wanted to “purify” them.
She beat them with sticks and metal bars, forced them to drink bleach and eat their own vomit and faeces, and starved them naked in a locked room for a month.
She also kicked them, pushed sticks down their throats, strangled them, forced their hands on a hot cooker and rubbed their faces with sandpaper, a court was told.
The kids were banned from listening to pop or wearing trendy clothes — and were punished if found with sweets or music mags.
One punishment saw the trio, identified only as Victims A, B and C, forced to stay totally still for long periods. If they moved they would be beaten as a further deterrent.
The abuse went undetected for almost 20 years as Spry pulled the youngsters out of school and taught them at her two rat-infested homes in Tewkesbury, Gloucs.
Council inspectors also failed to spot the horror despite regularly visiting to check on the kids’ education.
Scarred ... one child victim
But it finally came to light in December 2004, when Victim A — one of the two girls — ran away from home.
Victim B and Victim C, the boy, made statements to police and Spry, estranged from her second husband, was arrested in February 2005.
Doctors called the kids’ injuries “extraordinary”. They also had depression. Both girls had attempted suicide.
Spry, described as chilling and cold, denied abusing the three and said she was only trying to bring them up according to her faith.
She told a jury at Bristol Crown Court: “I sweated blood for those children. I went to great lengths to protect them from immorality.
“From a Christian point of view we expect our children to be obedient. As it says in the Bible, ‘Children, be obedient to your parents and make the Lord proud’.”
But after a five-week trial, jurors convicted her of 24 counts of abuse between 1986 and 2005 — plus two of intimidating witnesses.
Judge Simon Darwall-Smith remanded Spry in custody pending reports before she is sentenced next month.
Her three victims — now young adults — went to live with Spry as youngsters with social services approval.
But Victim A said they were treated as “slaves”, rarely allowed out and told to lie about their bruises . She said: “We were beaten, starved, drowned in the bath and kicked down the stairs.
“Mum had an array of sticks, and would beat us with them and kick us till we were collapsing with pain.
“If we screamed she’d push the sticks down our throats.”
Victim A said the family’s homes were infested with rats and the children would often sleep on the floor.
At one point she said Spry made her wear a sign on her back at her local Jehovah’s Witnesses church, reading: “This child is evil. Do not look at her or talk to her.”
The girl said her earliest memory was of Spry making her eat dog food and, when she was sick, eat the vomit.
Victim B said Spry had a system of punishments for lying — heavily prohibited by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
She said: “She’d pour washing-up liquid down our throats and say, ‘Don’t throw up or you’ll have more’. We were told not to speak to anyone. She believed other people were worldly as they didn’t believe in her religion.” Victim C said: “I can only describe mother’s punishment methods as torture.”
Last night the Gloucestershire Safeguarding Children Board said lessons had to be learned from the case. A spokesman said: “These children were seen by many different professionals, but few were a consistent presence. Information was not shared.”
The Jehovah’s Witnesses said the faith did not condone abuse. A spokesman said: “We don’t tolerate physical cruelty.”
from:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007130269,00.html
Baby Found Dead In Yard
Slaying Result Of Possible Religious Sacrifice
from:
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/9077272/detail.html
POSTED: 4:47 pm EDT April 28, 2006
A 9-month-old boy who was found dead in a neighborhood on Detroit's eastside Friday morning, may have been killed as a form of religious sacrifice.
According to police, Raphael Thomas and his live-in girlfriend, Betty Jenkins, were involved in a Bible study in their Detroit home when Thomas and his girlfriend began to argue.
The two exchanged words and Thomas grabbed hold of a can of red spray paint and wrote the word "revelations" on the walls throughout the home. He tossed his Bible outside along with other items that may be linked to a Jehovah Witness, according to police.
Thomas then grabbed his son and left the home, Local 4 reported.
Jenkins phoned police, but help didn't come in time. Thomas was found walking along Gratiot Avenue in Detroit stabbing himself. He inflicted more than 30 knife wounds on his body, according to police.
The baby was not with Thomas, but was found dead a short time after in the back yard of a home. Police said the baby had been mutilated from the inside out.
Thomas told police he freed his baby from the evils of the earth, leading investigators to believe the slaying of the baby was a form of religious sacrifice.
The man was taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital and treated with nearly 200 stitches. He remains in the psychiatric ward of the hospital.
Police said they didn't receive the 911 call until about 2:20 a.m., but a neighbor of the family said he phoned police at 10:30 p.m.
The child's mother is not in custody and not involved in the death of the baby.
The father is facing charges of murder.
Police continue to investigate, and the issue of the 911 call remains uncertain.
Previous Story:
April 28, 2006: Infant Found Dead In Yard On East Side
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Questions hover at funeral for man accused of burning girlfriend
from:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbcnorth/content/local_news/epaper/2006/04/30/s3c_funeral_0430.html
By Rochelle E.B. Gilken
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 30, 2006
RIVIERA BEACH — The man they called "Big L" lived for 49 years as a nice, quiet, easygoing guy.
A truck driver with a big family, he was laid to rest in a silver casket Saturday in a distinguished suit and hat, his graying beard neatly trimmed.
This is how about 200 people remembered Lester Parson. At a Jehovah's Witnesses ceremony in the gymnasium at John F. Kennedy Middle School, they sat in bleachers and chairs in front of a casket under a basketball net.
They paid respects to a man who they said didn't get into trouble, didn't drink or smoke or talk much. The son of a carpenter, he was a 1974 Suncoast High School graduate who loved trucks and drove one for the Serta mattress company. A man who suddenly snapped — then died with charges of attempted murder and arson on his mind.
On April 4, the man with no criminal record, with no history of violence, was suddenly accused of doing something cruel.
Parson visited his girlfriend as she worked an overnight shift at a Mobil gas station in Riviera Beach. He bought some gas and doused Tanya Hughey, 38, with it. He lit a match.
On April 22 he was in the Palm Beach County Jail infirmary with severe burns on his hands and arms from the attack. He developed a blood clot that traveled from his leg to his lungs, and he died.
Hughey is still alive, with third-degree burns over 90 percent of her body.
Parson — a son, brother and friend — died despite his relatively minor injuries.
"Life is uncertain," said Walter Embry, who delivered the service at Parson's funeral, "because you never know what's going to happen to you the next day."
In the funeral program, Parson was memorialized with a trucker's poem:
Come on and join our convoy BIG "L"
Ain't nothing gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this convoy across the FLA
This is Big "L" on the side we gone Bye-Bye
We'll catch you on the Flip Flop
Ten-Four Good Buddy
In the more than six years that Parson dated Hughey, their families grew close. Hughey's siblings and younger children planned to attend Parson's funeral — not out of hate, but out of respect for Parson's mother and family and even Hughey.
"That is what Tanya would want if she was here," said her brother, Andre Cohen, of Riviera Beach.
But none of them made it. Hughey's kidneys failed Friday night and she was put on dialysis. The last of her siblings flew in from Chicago to say goodbye. She was still holding on Saturday night.
"I didn't want to leave my sister," Cohen said. "I want to spend every minute I can with her while she's still here."
Cohen said he would've wanted the chance to ask Parson why he did it. He wanted to tell him that his sister didn't deserve what happened to her.
After the burial at Royal Palm Memorial Gardens in West Palm Beach, Embry said: "The only thing I can dwell on is what he was. There are some questions you can never answer."
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Girl's brother testifies father fatally beat her
By Jeff Coen
Tribune staff reporter
Published April 26, 2006
Testifying against his father, Leon Slack whipped a piece of electrical cord across a bed frame in the courtroom. The cord, he said, was like the one his father used to beat Slack's sister to death.
Jurors watched as Slack repeatedly slapped the cord, demonstrating how he said his father struck his sister more than 100 times after she was tied to the same frame in November 2001.
Laree Slack had screamed out, her brother said, but their father, Larry Slack, stuck a towel in her mouth to muffle her.
Leon Slack, now 21, testified in Cook County Criminal Court on the first day of Larry Slack's trial in the murder of 12-year-old Laree. Leon Slack said his father routinely beat him and his five brothers and sisters with electrical cords.
"You felt it not only in your back, but in the front of your chest," Slack said. He then described the force his father used--like "you were hammering a nail into wood."
Larry Slack and his wife, Constance, were charged in the case after paramedics responded to a 911 call from the house in the 7900 block of South Brandon Avenue, Chicago. Prosecutors have said the couple were strict Jehovah's Witnesses who practiced corporal punishment.
Constance Slack has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is expected to testify against her husband, who faces the same charge.
On Tuesday, Assistant State's Atty. Meg Blade told jurors the facts of the case are so horrible that justice demands a guilty verdict.
Assistant Public Defender Denise Streff urged the panel not to let sympathy sway them. Larry Slack did not intend to kill his daughter, Streff said.
The couple loved their children but did whip them as a form of discipline, just as their own parents had, Streff said. Larry Slack worked as a Chicago Transit Authority machinist and Constance Slack worked as a nurse.
"It got out of hand," Streff said of the discipline. "It absolutely got out of hand."
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jcoen@tribune.com
UPDATE on Slack:
Jury convicts dad of whipping girl to death
April 28, 2006
BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-beat28.html
After flogging his 12-year-old daughter to death with an electrical cable, a somber Larry Slack told investigators he was disgusted with what he'd done.
On that point at least, a Cook County jury appeared to agree with the man prosecutors called a "sick and sadistic" tyrant. In less than three hours of deliberating Thursday, the jury convicted Slack, 46, of first-degree murder in the death of Laree Slack on Nov. 11, 2001, at the family's South Side home.
"When they showed the autopsy pictures of [Laree's] body after she was dissected, that was enough to really turn your stomach," said juror Tom Sullivan.
Slack, sitting with his elbows on the table in front of him and his fingers interlocked, bowed his head when the verdict was read but otherwise displayed no emotion. The jury also found Slack guilty of aggravated battery to a child in the beating of Laree's younger brother, Lester Slack.
During closing arguments, prosecutors told jurors that Larry Slack was someone who would inflict pain on a whim and was eager to beat Laree Slack the night she died.
"The penalty for crossing this guy -- no matter for what silly thing -- was torture," Cook County assistant state's attorney Ted Lagerwall told the jury.
When he beat Laree -- who was tied to a bare metal futon frame and gagged -- he did so "over and over and over again," Lagerwall said.
The beating started because Laree and her five siblings had been unable to find a lost credit card. The beating continued because Larry Slack was furious that Laree wouldn't take the beating quietly, prosecutors say.
"Ladies and gentleman, that isn't discipline," Lagerwall said. "That isn't corporal punishment. That's murder."
Denise Streff, one of Slack's attorneys, argued that what her client had done was wrong, but he isn't a "sadistic killer."
"Mr. Slack did not intend to kill his daughter," Streff said. "He knew it was bad . . . but he had no idea Laree wasn't going to get up and be OK."
Faces 20 years to life in prison
She reminded jurors that Slack was so upset when he realized he'd killed his daughter that he tried to commit suicide.
In his videotaped statement to prosecutors played in court Thursday, the corpulent Slack said, "I bought [a knife] for the purposes of killing myself. I hid it under the fat folds of my stomach."
But prosecutors asked jurors not to be distracted by the suicide attempt, calling it self-serving.
Cook County assistant state's attorney Rick Cenar told jurors they only had to find Slack intended to inflict "great bodily harm" to convict him of first-degree murder.
"This was a crime involving torture," Cenar said. "This was a house of pain. This was a house of torture. The king of pain is right over there."
Sentencing is set for June 1. He faces 20 years to life in prison, Cenar said.
sesposito@suntimes.com
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Man slaughters family - Update
April 13, 2006
from :
http://www.ogrish.com/archives/man_slaughters_family_update_Apr_13_2006.html
We recently ran a series concerning the slaughter of a family by the father / husband. More information has since become available. You can see the images here :
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE PART FOUR
Eloy Leon Kings was, apparently, a well liked and respected man in his local community. A devout Jehovas witness, he was a regular churchgoer and apparently a loving husband and father. There were no obvious signs to the outside world that something appeared to be going wrong with Mr Kings.
After awaking early one Thursday morning he read from his bible, took a knife, and set about trying to murder his family. His first victim, 8 year old Lucia, dies from having her throat cut. As she lay bleeding to death he then went after his wife, also named Lucia, whom he repeatedly stabbed. He then cut the throats of his remaining two daughters, 5 year old Dana and 6 year old Light. Light survived the attack but is, as of this writing, still under critical care for severe neck wounds.
Following his rampage Mr Kings turned the knife on himself, sawing into his throat. However, he suffered only minor damage to the skin and subcutaneous layers . The frantic Mr Kings had to be heavily tranquilised by doctors before they could treat his self inflicted injuries.
Investigators have been trying to piece together why Mr Kings would suddenly attempt to murder his whole family. Under interrogation Mr Kings would only reply with religious verse about Satan and how he wanted to “Take his family to paradise”.
Eloy Leon Kings
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http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-canambrose0203.artfeb03,0,7510368.story?coll=hc-headlines-local
Injured Woman's Husband Arraigned
By TOM PULEO
Courant Staff Writer
February 3 2006
CANTON -- Joseph V. Ambrose smashed his wife's face and skull with a pipe early Monday and told her she was "going to die tonight" before he left her outside a hospital and drove away, court records released Thursday state.
But the police report offers no reason Ambrose - a self-employed carpenter and elder in the Canton congregation of the Jehovah's Witnesses - attacked his wife inside their rented home.
She is recovering from her injuries. He was arraigned Thursday on attempted murder, first-degree assault and first-degree kidnapping charges and held with bail set at $750,000.
He was ordered to have no contact with his wife or their four children should he make bail. He is due back in Superior Court in Hartford on Feb. 16.
Court records state that the couple had separated, but still was living at 93 Old Canton Road and sleeping in different bedrooms.
Ambrose, 55, lured his wife out of her room early Monday by telling her she had a phone call, then pummeled her, leaving multiple lacerations on her face and head, the report states.
Robin Ambrose, 41, remains at Hartford Hospital and the couple's two youngest children who were living at home are now in state custody, authorities said.
Ambrose eluded police for more than a day but was captured Tuesday morning, walking near the Canton-New Hartford line and carrying a loaded gun.
Robin Ambrose gave police the following account: She remembers her husband striking her hard on the head, saying he had a pipe and was going to "kill her." The next thing she remembers is waking up alone in her minivan outside the house, her blood "everywhere."
Robin Ambrose opened the minivan door, triggering the alarm, causing her husband to run out of the house to the van. At this time, Ambrose told his wife she was "going to die but I have to take you away from here."
Robin Ambrose asked her husband to take her to the hospital. The next thing she remembers is waking up inside Hartford Hospital, the report says. She doesn't remember walking into the building.
In 2003, police went to the Ambrose house during a "physical altercation" between Ambrose and his young son, the police report says.
Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant
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New York Daily News -
http://www.nydailynews.com
Jehovah's Witness shoots wife, self
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005
A Bible-thumping Bronx man gunned down his estranged wife and then killed himself after accusing her of straying from their faith and sleeping with another man, police and neighbors said yesterday.
The victim's 21-year-old daughter found the bloodbath at 10:30 a.m. yesterday in her mother's Soundview apartment after the woman failed to show up to work as an Avon sales representative, neighbors said.
Sharoll Medina, 39, was sprawled on her bed with a gunshot wound to her head. Her estranged husband, Julio Lopez, 45, lay dead nearby with a revolver beside him, police said. "My mother! My mother!" her daughter screamed as she walked out of the Watson Ave. building.
Lopez and Medina, both Jehovah's Witnesses, separated about 18 months ago. But Lopez would often show up unannounced at Medina's fifth-floor apartment, neighbors said.
She routinely refused to let him inside, but rather than go away he would sleep in his truck. Their fighting got worse when Lopez found out Medina was dating another man - and he later argued with her about it, neighbors said.
Rich Schapiro and Alison Gendar
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/361673p-307958c.html
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Victim's family dresses down murderer
By Laurel J. Sweet
Saturday, July 16, 2005 - Updated: 09:20 AM EST
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=94081
Thomas Gillespie addresses his sister's
murderous husband Kevin Hensley during
victim impact statements.
(Staff photo by Ted Fitzgerald)
A bitter brother-in-law of the mild-mannered monster who pinned his sister face down while he strangled her with a necktie wanted to see Kevin Hensley off to prison in style yesterday.
``I notice you don't have a tie on,'' Thomas Gillespie, his voice crackling with sarcasm, told Hensley, 49, who once attempted suicide. ``You know what? I brought one for you.''
Hensley - who was a tow truck driver for the Boston Transportation Department when he murdered his wife, Nancy Hensley, 45, in their East Boston bedroom Jan. 31, 2002 - had planned to speak at his mandatory sentencing to life behind bars. But crushed by the weight of his family's grief, he backed down.
After deliberating only two hours, a jury convicted Hensley of first-degree murder Thursday - the same day his daughter Candace Hensley turned 14.
The Hensleys had four children during their 22 years of marriage: daughters Candace and Kerry, 24, and sons Pat, 22, and Kevin, 10.
``They're beautiful kids,'' Maryann Gillespie, the aunt who took them in, told their father in her gut-wrenching good riddance. ``They deserve the best, and we'll have that for them.
``I wish you had come to us for help,'' she told Hensley, whose slain wife was her husband Robert Gillespie's sister. ``We would have been there for you, but there's nothing we can do now.''
Kevin and Nancy Hensley, Jehovah's Witnesses, had been separated only a couple of weeks when he beat and choked her to death and then dumped her body beside a toilet in the basement - what prosecutor Dennis Collins called the ``final indignity.''
The couple's religion teaches that men run the home and women are to be subservient, but while Kevin Hensley was a homebody, family members said Nancy, a working mom, wanted to spread her wings.
``My sister lived for her children. She loved them dearly,'' Karen Nolan told Hensley. ``She would have been proud of each one of them for how they've handled this.
``Unfortunately, this state doesn't have the death penalty yet for animals like you, Kevin, so the best I can hope for is that you live a long and miserable life.''
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March 26, 2005
Sexual Abuse, Armageddon and Drugs
A powder keg ignited by P
New Zealand Herald - New Zealand
... The only remaining father figures in Dixon's life were Jehovah's Witnesses, one of whom on several occasions took Dixon on outings and sexually abused him
A powder keg ignited by P
Antonie Dixon's long but small-time criminal career culminated in a frenzy of violence and death.
26.03.05
by Louisa Cleave and Bronwyn Sell
From the age of 4 or 5, Antonie Dixon was dragged by his mother to Jehovah's Witness meetings. He was forced to sit for hours in meeting halls, go door-to-door with her as she preached, read the Bible every day before school.
He grew up with tales of fire and brimstone, of demons and devils, of a new world order, of Armageddon and how the sinners of the world would be wiped out.
At the age of 34, after a month-long P binge, he started his own Armageddon. He sliced off the right hand of his girlfriend Renee Gunbie and the left hand of former girlfriend Simonne Butler with a samurai sword in the Hauraki Plains village of Pipiroa, and then shot dead a stranger, James Te Aute, in Pakuranga, later raving to police, witnesses and psychiatrists that the women were immoral and Te Aute was the devil.
He claimed to have drunk blood from Gunbie's severed hand. He claimed his father was the offspring of angels. He claimed to see dancing goblins and hanging vampires.
Butler says Dixon yelled during the ordeal at Pipiroa, "that his God had told him he had to sacrifice me and we were all going to die and the New World was taking over".
Whether they were the ramblings of an insane man or a cynical- and ultimately unsuccessful - strategy to secure a trial verdict of not guilty by insanity, it wasn't hard to trace his inspiration.
"It was pretty intense," his sister, Carla Dixon-Foxley, says of their late mother's beliefs. "There was a lot of talk of demons and being possessed by the devil, Armageddon and not being good enough to obtain ever-lasting life."
Dixon had been involved in crime since he was 15. By the time he picked up the samurai sword, he had 160 convictions. It was mostly petty stuff - stolen cars, theft and driving offences - and a few assaults.
Police officers who had dealt with him for two decades had suspected his crime spree might escalate. But they hadn't expected something so extreme.
"I always thought he had the potential to kill but not in this way. This was quite out there," says Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Gutry, who was working in the Howick criminal investigation branch while Dixon was living in Beachlands in his 20s and early 30s.
While Dixon was a career criminal, one police officer said he was also likeable and charming. He'd had at least two serious, albeit tumultuous, relationships, which survived several prison terms. He had two children with his former partner for 10 years, Wendy Ross.
Ross and Simone Butler both say Dixon was charming. Ross says he had a "contagious personality". But both became aware of a darker side as their respective relationships progressed.
Butler and Dixon split in March 2002 but remained friends. Dixon took up with Gunbie, Butler's childhood friend and a P cook. Gunbie moved into the Pipiroa property in October that year.
Police who dealt with Dixon are confident they know exactly what turned him from a troubled petty criminal who aspired to notoriety into a homicidal madman: the drug P, a pure form of methamphetamine.
He wasn't crazy, a former police officer told the Weekend Herald. He just "lost it one night on P".
Dixon, who was a cannabis user, had drifted into P through his associations with gangs, says Detective Sergeant Darryl Brazier.
Brazier said Dixon phoned him three or four times a day in the months leading up to January 21, 2003, and admitted he was "fried" - a common term for regular P users.
Police say it changed his behaviour. It ignited his long-held paranoia and drew out the violence that had characterised his childhood.
In the 1970s, Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn, wasn't the trendy, upmarket street it is now. It was rough, especially inside Dixon's childhood home, which doubled as a boarding house for psychiatric patients released from Oakley and Carrington Hospitals.
Their mother, Isabelle, ran the house, administering medication to the boarders and the rod to her children, Dixon's sister says.
"She beat us. We were all scared of her. She used to lock Tony in the toilet for hours at a time. She would sit him on the potty with no pants on and leave him in the cold."
Dixon was tied to the washing line, chained up with padlocks and locked in his room with bars on the windows.
Dixon-Foxley, who is nine years older than her brother and now lives in London, remembers him as a child sitting on the couch and banging his head for hours, rocking. "He was always a bit strange."
Their father, Ronald, was violent to their mother. When Dixon was 7 they separated and he was forbidden by the courts from coming near the family. He died in Wellington three years later from heart problems, at the age of 53.
The only remaining father figures in Dixon's life were Jehovah's Witnesses, one of whom on several occasions took Dixon on outings and sexually abused him, Dixon-Foxley told his High Court trial.
He was forbidden from playing with other children because his mother didn't want him associating with non-believers.
Dixon rebelled. He would get frustrated and throw tantrums. And he was no longer a small boy who could be locked in the toilet.
"He had to be held down," Dixon-Foxley says. "It was uncontrollable, not unlike my father's temper. He'd get very angry. Unreasonable. Illogical. He would hit out. He grew up in an environment of violence and that's all he knew."
By 10 he was wagging school, and had to be dragged home from spacies parlours. Around that time he started to turn the violence back on to his mother.
"He was constantly in trouble," Dixon-Foxley says. "Once he started the truancy he was basically in homes. Home after home after home."
Their mother gave up. She made him a ward of the state. He lived in halfway houses, boys' homes, foster homes, institutions, borstals. About then he started breaking the law.
At 15 he was convicted of burglary and receiving property, although he was admonished and returned to state care. Thus began his 20-year crime spree.
Most police officers the Weekend Herald spoke to said he was not known as a violent offender. He craved notoriety but it proved elusive - until January 21, 2003.
Dixon seemed to enjoy dramatic run-ins with police - especially car chases. Before the samurai attacks his biggest claim to infamy was slipping out of a prison van in Auckland in 1994 after being charged with orchestrating a major car theft ring. He was on the run for more than a month. He called the New Zealand Herald while in hiding to say he expected the police would catch him.
A few years later he climbed through a skylight at the Tauranga police station after being arrested for a crime spree involving high-speed car chases in four stolen vehicles.
"I think he loved the whole car chase, almost a Dukes of Hazzard type," Gutry says.
Brazier says Dixon always wanted to be somebody more important, but the gangs considered him risky, probably because of his big-noting.
"As much as he wanted to be accepted in the criminal scene, a lot of the upper-echelon criminals didn't want him. You would mention his name and they would roll their eyes and say 'He's a would be if he could be'. He wanted to be the big man around town."
Detective Inspector Bernie Hollewand, the officer in the charge of the inquiry, says Dixon used violence "instrumentally" within the criminal scene.
Dixon had a "coterie of henchmen". His "business" was disposing of high-performance vehicles and he associated with several gangs, from the Headhunters to the Mongrel Mob.
"He wouldn't have wanted to be associated too closely with any one particular gang ... his business was best served by being in contact with all the gangs and knowing who was doing the business around the place," says Hollewand.
He agrees that Dixon wanted to be big. "He wants to be top dog, he wants to be doing Tony's business not anyone else's business."
His campaign for notoriety involved regular contact with police. A former police officer says Dixon would drive to the Howick police station, park his car alongside patrol cars and wander inside to chat.
"He's a friendly guy - very confident, very cocky. He had no problem talking to cops, because he thought he was too clever for us and was never going to get caught."
It seems a contradiction, but while Dixon was actively courting police, he was also paranoid they had him under electronic surveillance. He would beg Brazier to call off this imagined surveillance.
Brazier said Dixon's paranoia was a symptom of heavy P use - as was the violence that erupted.
"It is common for a heavy user to believe people are out to get them, whether it be police or other people in the drug scene."
In the months before his violent explosion, Dixon seemed convinced that the authorities were using 747s, bugs and satellites to monitor him.
He had painted slogans on the walls of his house and the road, saying, "my life is in danger" and "home of the satellite 747 and every other thing in the sky".
Detective Senior Sergeant Richard Middleton said Dixon's P use exaggerated his paranoia and made him more grandiose.
Brazier advised Dixon in the months before January 21, 2003, to seek help for his addiction.
"[Dixon's crime spree] is a result of P," says Gutry. "The levels of violence are so much more extreme.
"We're just seeing a lot of people who, when they get addicted to P, become extremely violent, unpredictable; who were otherwise not really violent people."
On January 21, 2003, Dixon finally lost control. Everything that had been haunting him for the past 34 years came to a head - the paranoia, the violence, the drugs, the two decades of crime, the run-ins with police, the cravings for notoriety.
"His personality was the powder keg and P was the match that lit it," Crown prosecutor Simon Moore said in court.
Things didn't go to plan for Dixon on January 21, 2003. He didn't want to go back to jail. He wanted to "go down in a blaze of glory", shot dead by police.
"I've gone too far," Dixon told Brazier that night, after mutilating the women and before killing Te Aute. "I've chopped them both and I'd have killed them if the sword hadn't broken." But in his warped mind, there was one consolation.
He told police: "Everyone will be taking notice of me now."
24 hours of violence
8.30am, January 21, 2003 Renee Gunbie prepares a cocktail of orange juice, cocaine and methamphetamine at the Pipiroa home she shares with boyfriend Antonie Ronnie Dixon. He drinks most of it.
2pm. Dixon breaks Gunbie's arm. His violent spree has begun.
7pm. His former girlfriend Simonne Butler arrives. Gunbie has been badly beaten. Dixon attacks the women with a samurai sword.
7.30pm. He calls an ambulance and drives to Hamilton, where he steals a car. He speeds erratically to Auckland. He taunts police over his mobile phone. "I'm not going to go to jail. This is going to be another Aramoana."
Midnight. He drives into Dunrobin Place, Highland Park, and finds three men in a car. He taunts them, draws them closer, then shoots dead James Te Aute. Dixon drives away, pursued by the men's friend, Steven Matthews, who was parked nearby. Dixon raises his gun at Matthews, who ducks and loses control of his car. Dixon threatens staff and customers at gunpoint at a Mobil station in Highland Park and a Shell station in Pakuranga.
12.30am. Dixon picks up a stranger, Bradley Kukard, in Howick and tells him he has killed a man. He drops him off and is chased by two police officers but escapes.
1am. A police officer spots Dixon's car in Rialto Court, Botany Downs, and chases him to Inchinnam Rd, East Tamaki. Dixon bursts into the house of Ian Miller, taking him hostage.
5.30am. After long conversations with Miller and police negotiators, Dixon releases Miller.
6.15am. Dixon leaves the house and lies on the lawn, surrendering.
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03/17/2005
Greist speaks out at hearing
R. JONATHAN TULEYA , Staff Writer
http://www.dailylocal.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14164496&BRD=1671&PAG=461&dept_id=17782&rfi=6
WEST CHESTER -- Richard L. Greist ended decades of silence Wednesday when the institutionalized killer took the witness stand during his annual recommitment hearing.
The former East Coventry resident found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity lamented killing his wife and unborn son in 1978, quoted verses from the Bible and apologized to his two daughters.
But his daughters’ own testimony overshadowed Greist’s -- recounting in explicit detail their father’s rampage that nearly killed them.
"My sister and I love him very much, and we forgive him," said Elizabeth Ann Butts, 32, Greist’s older daughter. But they asked the court not to release Greist, "not now or ever."
Angela Dykie, 31, the killer’s other daughter, agreed her father should remain committed to a mental hospital for the rest of his life.
Dykie described Greist’s "searing slaps" and the "screams of terror" as he beat and stabbed the members of his family.
"He had fiery orange and green swirling eyes," Dykie testified. "They were empty and the most evil thing I’ve ever seen."
Greist, now 53, stabbed his wife, Janice, to death and mutilated their 8-month-old unborn fetus -- which he said he has named Christopher -- in the family’s home on May 10, 1978.
He also attacked Butts, who was 6 at the time, Dykie, who was 5, and the girls’ 71-year-old great-grandmother, Anna Gresko.
Two years later at trial, Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas A. Pitt Jr. ruled Greist not guilty by reason of insanity.
He was committed to Norristown State Hospital, where he remains today.
By law, Greist is entitled to a recommitment hearing every year. For years, Greist has attempted at these hearings to gain his release from the mental hospital.
Wednesday he tried again before Common Pleas Court Judge Edward Griffith. The judge will make a ruling at a later date.
Greist and his attorney, Marita M. Hutchinson, seek to have Greist moved from Norristown State Hospital to a less restrictive facility known as community residential rehabilitation.
"I wish from my very soul that I could take back the time in the 1970s," Greist said, "and have my wife Janice and my children back."
The killer claimed he is "well and I have been for a long time." He apologized for the "pain" he caused Butts and Dykie, and recalled the "sweet smell of their hair after shampooing it."
"I only have a few photos of my daughters," Greist said. "They are among my most precious possessions."
He also testified remorsefully about not being able to teach Christopher how to "sail my yacht, like I had taught the girls."
Dr. Sudhir Stokes, the psychiatrist in charge of Greist’s treatment at Norristown, has treated Greist for three years and supported the patient’s appeal for more freedom.
"All people, including Mr. Greist, have to be given the chance to move to the next level," Stokes said.
Greist’s privileges at the hospital have progressed to the point where he is now allowed to roam freely on the hospital’s 40-acre compound.
Since the slayings, Greist has become a Jehovah’s Witness. He is allowed to leave the hospital for three hours every week to attend services in West Norristown.
The man also is granted one 12-hour leave every three months, which he has used to go shopping at the King of Prussia Mall, and he often travels alone using public transportation to visit physicians located off the hospital property.
Greist holds a job at the hospital as manager of the facility’s cafeteria, and on Nov. 29, he married his third wife, Frances Greist, a New Zealand woman he met on the Internet through a Jehovah’s Witness Web site.
Assistant District Attorney Peter Hobart argued against any change to Greist’s commitment status.
Hobart called upon Dr. Barbara E. Ziv, a forensic psychiatrist, and psychologist Steven E. Samuel, to testify the man still posed a risk to the community.
"Richard Greist has talked in very concerning ways about all the women in his life," Ziv said. She concluded he has demonstrated a "high degree of misogyny and anti-female resentment."
Samuel examined Greist twice during January.
"He has not developed any insight into the basis of what happened in 1978," Samuel said. "I think he is bothered by intense emotional feelings, he is frightened by them in a way. He consciously covers over his problems to minimize his weaknesses."
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Posted on Thu, Mar. 17, 2005
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/11156681.htm
At hearing, a killer's daughters relive horror
The children of Richard Greist, who slaughtered family members in '78, say he should not be released to a group home.
By Kathleen Brady Shea
Inquirer Staff Writer
The brutal horrors that befell an East Coventry Township family on May 10, 1978, were painfully relived yesterday by two witnesses to the bloodshed: the daughters of Richard Greist.
Greist, 53, was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1980 of crimes that included fatally stabbing his pregnant wife, ripping his unborn son from her womb, mutilating the fetus, gouging the eye of his 6-year-old daughter, slashing his grandmother's throat, and butchering the family cat.
Because a judge ruled that Greist could not be held responsible for his crimes, he can never be incarcerated for them.
The daughters, both of whom are married, came