Should a serial killer be given the right to decide any part of his future fate? If they get life in prison should they be allowed to choose death instead?
I am a firm supporter of the death penalty, especially in the cases of serial killers, serial rapists and pedophiles. These people are not fixable, they can not be ‘saved’ and they will never become contributing members of society.
I can see no reason to keep them alive.
In my opinion if a serial killer says “kill me”, do it. Hell, if they don’t say it, do it anyway so that they can not hurt / kill other prisoners, guards, medical staff, visitors, maintenance staff and so on.
I have heard the arguments against it and I can not agree.
No, life in prison could be horrible, I do not care. Even if they do not ‘adjust’ they are a risk as I stated above and the risk is worse if they ever escape.
I do not want to make them suffer or “pay”, even if we could it would not be worth it. They are not worth it. Making them suffer while risking others is stupid and really most do adapt to prison. Some, many, come to enjoy the routine, the fact that they live on and they use their vivid imaginations to find pleasure even in prison. It is much better to just let them go, if it makes you feel better think of the afterlife they could endure.
It does not make us “like them” anymore than killing a guy running at you with a knife does. They are a threat to whoever comes into contact with them. Killing them could save many.
Anyway. Here is a decent documentary on Ian Brady and his fight to be allowed to die in prison. The video quality is not the best and I do not agree with some of the ideas but it is still very interesting.
PHILADELPHIA – January 17, 2011 – A man recently released from prison and believed to have been wandering the streets and staying in abandoned homes was arrested Monday night after being linked by DNA to the sexual assaults and strangling deaths of three women in a gritty, high-crime section of the city, police said.
Antonio Rodriguez, 21, was taken into custody on an unrelated bench warrant after someone phoned in a tip, police said. The arrest came shortly after a news conference at which Capt. James Clark said Rodriguez was being sought as a “strong” person of interest in the murders in the Kensington section, a few miles north of downtown.
The attacks, in what’s called the Kensington Strangler case, had left the neighborhood shaken – and police fearing that outraged residents might take matters into their own hands.
Rodriguez, known in the area as Black, had not been charged with any crime in the stranglings case, and police had not even obtained an arrest warrant for him, Clark said. But the link made by state police in their convicted felon database was “a major break,” he said.
Rodriguez, who was sought on a bench warrant from a missed court appearance in an unrelated case police wouldn’t discuss, was in custody Monday night and couldn’t be reached for comment.
Rodriguez recently had been released from prison, Clark said, but he declined to say for what he had been incarcerated or to detail his criminal history. He said state police had contacted Philadelphia police about the DNA match earlier in the day.
A state police representative was not immediately available for comment Monday on why Rodriguez was in their database.
Clark said it appeared Rodriguez was wandering around Kensington alone.
“Right now, the information we’re getting is he’s homeless, he’s wandering in the area, he’s frequenting abandoned houses, sort of just walking around in the Kensington area, so right now we do not believe anyone is helping him out,” Clark said.
Police described Rodriguez as 5-foot-9 and 155 pounds with a large scar running from his left ear to the middle of his throat and two tattoos: “Kiera” on his left arm and “Scorpio” on his right arm.
Police investigating a string of assaults in the area dating to early October said last month that through DNA they had linked the deaths of three women: Elaine Goldberg and Nicole Piacentini, both of Philadelphia, and Casey Mahoney, of East Stroudsburg, about 100 miles north. The women, all in their 20s, had struggled with drug addiction.
The bodies of the three women were found between early November and mid-December in vacant lots within a 10-block radius.
Three other women reported surviving sexual assaults in the area. Two of them said they were choked into unconsciousness. None of the surviving victims had been shown Rodriguez’s photo, but Clark said that would be done.
The attacks took place in a stretch of Kensington known for open prostitution and drugs, although an influx of artists and young homebuyers has made parts of the neighborhood a bit trendier in recent years.
Earlier, authorities had only a composite sketch and grainy surveillance photo of a possible suspect in the Kensington Strangler case.
One of the hundreds of posts on a Facebook page titled “Catch the Kensington Strangler, before he catches someone you love” falsely identified a suspect, drawing an angry crowd to his house. He called police, who cleared him and scolded residents.
A year earlier in Kensington, a man suspected of raping an 11-year-old girl was severely beaten by angry neighbors who recognized him from a police photo. He later was charged and pleaded guilty.
In the stranglings case, Mayor Michael Nutter offered a $30,000 reward sponsored by the city and Citizens Crime Commission for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator. Separately, the local Fraternal Order of Police and Councilman Frank DiCicco offered $7,000 for help simply leading to an arrest with a DNA match.
UPDATE, 6:45 p.m.: Police just announced that they have taken into custody Antonio Rodriguez, identified tonight as the Kensington Strangler. Rodriguez was picked up in a home on Mutter Street near Westmoreland in Kensington.
Police said they received a tip about his whereabouts just a few moments after a press conference announcing he was a suspect.
Why am I not surprised that he was just released from prison?
We have to start re-evaluating our criminal sentencing and release programs. Stop letting people out if they are still considered high risk, I don’t care if they “did the time”.
The 73-year-old convict “wishes the world ill” and expresses no remorse for killing five children with his lover Myra Hindley between 1963 and 1965. If he had the opportunity, he would be likely to shoot people he had a grudge against.
The conclusions emerged from an unprecedented six-year dialogue between Brady and Dr Chris Cowley, which provide the clearest insight into Brady’s mindset since he was imprisoned in 1966.
In letters and in interviews carried out at Ashworth high-security hospital in Merseyside, Brady:
* Dismisses the Moors murders as “an existential exercise” with their own ‘value’.
I would love to know what frigging value he puts on these horrific acts!
* Compares himself favourably to statesmen including Tony Blair, claiming they have committed worse crimes than his.
* Says he turned down several opportunities to escape shortly after his arrest in October 1965.
Brady – who has been told that he will never be released – emerges from the study as a sociopath with few redeeming features, showing no compassion or feeling for anyone other than himself.
He has been confined to Ashworth since 1985, when was declared criminally insane after spending twenty years in normal prisons. He and Hindley were sentenced to life for the killings of Lesley Ann Downey, 10, and Edward Evans, 17; Brady was also convicted of killing John Kilbride, 12.
Later the pair admitted two additional murders, of Pauline Reade, 16 and Keith Bennett, 12.
For the past eight years Brady has been on hunger strike, insisting he wants to die and surviving only by being force fed twice a day by staff at Ashworth. In 2000 a judicial review refused to overturn the decision to keep him alive.
IMO, this is one guy that should be allowed to off himself.
Dr Cowley, who runs courses for police officers and social workers, began writing to Brady six years ago as part of his research on the profiling of serial killers.
After gaining Brady’s trust Dr Cowley held a number of face to face meetings with him at Ashworth, from which he wrote a book published this month, Face To Face With Evil.
I want to read this book. If anyone has read it I would love to hear your comments on it.
In it he concludes that if Brady was ever released from custody – something no Government has been prepared to countenance – he would “probably” resume killing.
I am willing to bet that Brady would kill as long as he was physically able. He states above that he would likely shoot people, makes me think that even as he sits in an institution he is wanting and planning on the next kill. His fantasies still playing in his mind.
In the interviews, Brady told Dr Cowley that paintballing is “no substitute for the real thing”, that ”at least Columbine [the massacre of US high school students by two fellow pupils] demonstrates that there is some spine left in America” and that “I wish this place and this country and this world ill.”
He seems to be connecting killing with bravery? I wonder if he actually followed the killings or if he only heard that there were shootings. I also wonder if knowing the details would change anything in his mind?
On one unsettling occasion, Brady suggested that Dr Cowley should kill his own boss over a minor bureaucratic dispute. At another point he stated: “There is no great gulf between the criminal and others except the will to enact.”
Dr Cowley told The Sunday Telegraph: “Ian Brady is a sociopath who shows no remorse and no compassion. He will only do things for other people if he has something to gain. He intellectualized his murders, calling them his ‘existential exercise’ – which he planned in advance in careful detail – or ’that Moors business’, as if they were a glitch in his great criminal career.
“His only thought for the victims or their families is what he can get out of it. He would kill again without a thought for anyone who gets in his way.
For him it’s like swatting a fly, which is how he regarded the children he murdered.“
In his letters to Dr Cowley, Brady repeatedly dismisses the scale and significance of his crimes in comparison to the killings carried out by Governments and political leaders.
Justifying and trying to excuse his brutal child murders by comparing them to political issues and wars. I hope that people do not buy into this. I don’t believe he believes it.
In one letter he states: “The politically chosen establishment judge for the judicial review [of his force feeding] was the one who, weeks prior, allowed [Chile's General Augusto] Pinochet to flee the UK and escape charges of war crimes.
“He found Pinochet unfit to stand trial for the torture and murder of 4,000 political prisoners, and me not fit to die by voluntary starvation, refusing to halt Ashworth force feeding me.”
I am all for allowing him to starve to death! I do want to add that if he decides the last minute to not die, tough. Let him make his own bed the allow him to lie and die in it!
When Dr Cowley asked Brady about his murders his frequent response was that British forces had killed far more people than he had during the invasion of Iraq.
Does not matter, one does not, can not, will never cancel out or excuse the other.
Asked during one conversation why he does not publicly express any remorse for the Moors murders Brady says he does not see the point, stating defiantly: “It is just bringing up ancient history and revives, openly, old wounds and sores.
“Nobody is going to gain by it, nobody.”
The only remorse he appears to feel is for Hindley’s capture and imprisonment until her death in 2002.
Dr Cowley believes Brady still “carries a torch” for his former lover, despite the fact she blamed him for the murders in an attempt to win parole from prison.
At one stage Brady tells him: “The line between remorse for the victims and remorse for being captured can be somewhat blurred.”
I think that is one thing that is true and common among serial killers. Often what their friends, family and sympathizers think is remorse for the murders is actually just remorse over being caught, it is a form of self-pity.
Dr Cowley states that the only regret felt by Brady for his crimes is “because of the consequences that have to be endured [by him] not because they were truly wrong in themselves from any kind of moral perspective”.
Brady and Hindley were eventually arrested at his home following a tip-off to police.
Brady, who turned 73 earlier this month and is suffering from cataracts and severe weight loss, told Dr Cowley he would have shot his way to freedom when police arrested him – had he not left his handgun in an upstairs room because it was getting in the way of moving the body of his last victim.
Farcically, Brady forgot to destroy lists reminding himself to destroy any telltale evidence of the murders. One list even included a note reminding himself to destroy such notes.
These were subsequently found by police in his car and formed a key part of the evidence against the couple.
But, intriguingly, Brady told Dr Cowley he had several opportunities to escape immediately following his arrest.
While at Hyde police station in Manchester he was left alone in a canteen with an unbarred window, while his police guard took a phone call.
A second opportunity presented itself when he was escorted on foot, without handcuffs or police dogs, to the women’s section of Risley remand centre for an interview with his solicitor.
Thick fog meant all he had to do was step sideways to disappear from sight.
“It was a cinch,” said Brady.
Dr Cowley suspects that loyalty to Hindley and the hope of acquittal, or even the delusion they might only receive a normal ‘life’ tariff, prevented Brady seizing his opportunity.
Again, not uncommon. Serial killers often consider themselves much smarter than the police, juries, judges and all other people in general. They get sloppy and get caught as much due to their own arrogance as due to police work and forensics.
His study of Brady leads him to argue that the criminal profiles of killers drawn up to aid their capture are frequently too one-dimensional.
According to Dr Cowley profiling is usually attempted too late, when police have exhausted other lines of inquiry, rather than from the start of an investigation, when evidence is fresh on the ground.
He told this newspaper: “Profiling should begin at the very start of an investigation, not when everyone else has trodden all over the evidence.”
Dr Cowley is forgetting that profiling is a tool, just one tool of many that police use. Profiling is not THE biggest part of any investigation, it is just a part of it.
Also, evidence is needed to make a profile, the more evidence the better and more defined the profile can be.
Furthermore, Dr Cowley says that with both contemporary and present-day profiling techniques, someone like Brady would probably have been excluded from the Moors murders inquiry, as he did not match several of the characteristics regarded as central to any suspect.
While there are ‘starting’ points in any profile those points are not set in solid stone. Yes, we hear white male late 20′s to early 30′s very often, especially in popular television shows and novels but that is not a set profile. If crimes happen in a primarily all black area a white person would stick out so you start with a Black male and using the victims and the evidence available you build from scratch based on what we know.
He did not have a history of mental illness or of failed relationships, and he was not a loner uncomfortable in social settings.
There have been many serial killers without the traits above and profilers know that. Also, MOST serial killers do not have a history of mental illness.
“Brady would probably have been quickly eliminated from the possible suspect pool if his data had been included in an investigation using the above criteria,” said Dr Cowley. “Hindley would have been eliminated at the very first step.”
Dr. Cowley is assuming that had a profile been made it would have stated those things. He obviously doesn’t understand profiling at all. He does not seem to understand how a profile is made, what it is based on or even how it is supposed to be used in an investigation. Most people don’t, but usually they do not write books that seem that they do!
As it was, the couple were caught because they allowed Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, to watch the murder of Edward Evans. On leaving the scene Smith simply turned the two killers in.
* Face to Face with Evil: Conversations with Ian Brady, by Chris Cowley is published by John Blake and is out now.
I do not think that Dr. Chris Cowley really understands the law enforcement side of things, but I still want to read his book. Not for what he says but for what Ian exposes about the mind of a serial killer.
I hate to just copy articles but I think this article says it all and this case and all these women are important enough to forget opinions and focus on facts only.
LAPD investigates 4 missing persons cases as a result of Grim Sleeper photos
Authorities say two of the women appeared in the photographs found in a search of Lonnie Franklin Jr.’s property. The two other cases surfaced as a result of the publicity surrounding release of the photos.
Los Angeles police detectives said Thursday they are investigating at least four missing persons cases as a result of publicizing photos seized from the South Los Angeles property of Lonnie Franklin Jr., the Grim Sleeper serial slaying suspect.
The Los Angeles Police Department received hundreds of phone calls, e-mails and other tips last month after releasing about 180 photographs of unidentified women that were found in a trailer and garage belonging to Franklin.
Franklin, 57, is charged with 10 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder — crimes that occurred in South L.A. and spanned three decades, prosecutors said. Franklin has pleaded not guilty.
Thus far, at least 53 women depicted in the photos have been identified by LAPD Robbery-Homicide detectives.
At least 79 photos have been removed from the LAPD website after relatives, friends or the women in them contacted police to confirm their identities.
LAPD officials would not discuss details of the four missing persons cases other than to say they dated back to the early 1990s. Two of the missing women appeared in the photographs found in Franklin’s possessions, and the two other missing person cases surfaced as a result of the publicity surrounding release of the photos, police said.
“We know who they are. They can’t be located. They haven’t been seen in a substantial amount of time,” said Det. Dennis Kilcoyne, who is spearheading the investigation.
In addition to the missing women, police are examining at least 30 unsolved killings for any links to Franklin.
At the time of Franklin’s arrest in July, authorities found about 1,000 photographs and hundreds of hours of video of women.
Some of the images appeared to have been innocent snapshots, but many showed women in more risque poses. The materials spanned several decades, dating back to the 1980s, and included video and digital camera images, Polaroids, conventional prints and even undeveloped film.
The primary motivation for releasing the images was to find out whether the women were alive and well, Kilcoyne said. But detectives also have received more than 200 tips that ultimately could prove important to prosecuting Franklin, he said.
Franklin’s attorney, Louisa Pensanti, was critical of the LAPD for releasing the photos and said more than a dozen of the women were relatives or friends. Pensanti returned a call but did not immediately comment on the case.
I remember when Adam Walsh disappeared, I think most people who were alive then still do. I also remember when his head was found and the investigation that followed. The news reported on the search for the body, for clues, for the killer. The press showed the parents and extended family on the news almost every night. I think many people began to feel that they ‘knew’ this family.
Then John Walsh became a figure-head in the rights and search for missing kids and eventually he became a ‘face’ for all victims, not just children. I have watched AMW from the start and I have great respect for this family, for them turning such a tragedy into something that helps all of society. I can not imagine their pain, what it di to each of them individually or as a family.
I watched over the years as the suspects were looked at and I smiled when the police finally named Ottis Toole the killer. I was even happy that it did not happen until after his death, Ottis never got to be the ‘Walsh Kid Killer’. He died as a loser, known best as Lucas’ gay lover, a known liar and at most a mere arsonist in many’s eyes. (Not that I don’t take arson as a serious crime, but in the caste-system of criminals it is nowhere near serial killer status.)
It’s like how no matter who Lucas did kill he will forever be the one who did not kill Orange Socks, no matter how much wanted to have been her killer.
They both confessed to so many killing, for causing so much pain that they never did they became jokes. I know that they did kill people, but in the mind of the public in general they are wanna be serial killers, no matter what they actually did. They tried to be the scariest monsters and ended up dismissed by most.
Serial killers get off on being the biggest monster in the closet. They like to dangle possible information in front of the police, the public and the families of those that they have killed. All to often I have read how Bundy, Lucas, Shaffer, Olson and so on tried to make deals for bodies! They like to almost confess, just to keep attention on themselves. It is sickening.
Toole did that with Adam. He used that poor baby’s pain and the family’s (and societies) pain for attention. He mentioned it to other prisoners, to the guards and to detectives. He always said just enough to gain attention but never enough to give any closure to the family or to the world. He would confess then retract. It was a game, a sick game that he played to get attention.
Some might think that the game gave Toole ‘something’ even if it only gave him some of the attention he craved, but I do not think so. His claims went largely ignored. He did not get what he wanted.
Toole could only get the occasional glimmer of a spotlight but he could never hold it or have it full force.
So why am I writing about this now?
Seems that there is a new book coming out that has stirred some debate. The book supposedly has new information (or at least information not released to the public before) that proves Toole was the killer. I think that the book is actually about the entire case, but in pointing out all that the police missed, messed up, forgot and overlooked the author pulls out some new information including the fact that some photos of the carpet from Toole’s trunk show what might be Adam’s facial outline in a Luminol glow. (An article about the controversy here, no real information on the book though.)
There is a lot controversy going on about the upcoming book. I am not going to spend too much time trying to disprove or prove something that I have not even seen. I can not do that. Maybe after I read it I will have an opinion, I’m funny like that.
What I do want to write about is the other controversy that was stirred back up by this book.
The battle of the monsters.
Of course there are some things that point at Jeffery. He was Florida at the time. He was later found to be a killer that dismembered his victims. Some of his victims were just teens. There were a few eye witnesses that said they saw Jeffery at the mall that day. There was a blue van at the mall and Jeffery had access to a blue van.
My issues with these things:
Jeffery wanted a companion. Yes, he was attracted to younger looking guys but Adam was a little guy and only 6 years old. He was not what Jeffery was looking for. Jeffery had already killed a man his age so he knew that he could do ‘get what he wanted’ and would not have needed to kill a helpless child to gain courage to do what he really wanted to do. I doubt he would have went after a 6-year-old in a mall.
Jeffery was not the abduction type. He lured and drugged and seduced his victims. It was part of the game to him, his fantasy. The witnesses report a boy screaming and fighting and resisting. That was not how Jeffery operated and in my opinion that would have scared him, he would have known the attention he was getting and he (not all would, I am just referring to Jeffery’s personality) would have stopped.
The eye witnesses came forward AFTER seeing Jeffery on the news for his other killings. They were associating him with the crime. One of the witnesses gave a description, then said it could have been the security guard until they saw Jeffery on the news, then they said it was him. They swear that it was him even though it was 10 years later when they saw him on the news. I have serious doubts, I am not saying that they are lying I am saying I think they are probably mistaken.
The blue van at the mall was illegally parked. Jeffery was not stupid, if he was going into a mall to find a victim he would not have parked in a way to attract attention. Also, it has been reported that the van at the mall was a different make than the van that Jeffery had access to.
Also, in 1992, Florida police interviewed Dahmer in a prison in Wisconsin. At the request of John Walsh who had heard that some thought that Dahmer could be his son’s killer the Broward County district attorney took the death penalty off the table. They figured that that would increase the odds that Dahmer would confess if he did kill Adam.
Jeffery denied it. He admitted to so many other killings in great detail but denied this one.
There are more things that people say point to Jeffery Dahmer and things that contradict those things.
I agree with the police and with John Walsh, Jeffery Dahmer did not kill Adam. Jeffery was a monster and the world is safer and a better place without Jeffery but not because he had anything to do with the awful crime against Adam Walsh.
Well the new book coming out, as I said, is supposed to prove Toole killed Adam and this has greatly upset those that think that Dahmer did it. It has upset some of those people enough that they are suing the authors and the Hollywood, Florida police department to make them release documents and photos from the book and from the case records.
I find that suspicious. I can not help but think that the man doing this, a man who is one of the witnesses that says that he saw Dahmer at the mall that day, is up to something. I wonder if he has own book that he was going to have released that could be hurt by this. I mean if there is indisputable proof in the book he could be left looking like an ass.
I think that I am more interested in why Mr. Morgan is so upset about all this than I am in the actual book.
I just hope that Adam’s family can ignore this. I think if I am going to read a book about this case now though, it will be Tears of Rage by John Walsh.
Here is the made for tv movie Adam based on this story. I only the link for part one as this post is long enough. It is easy enough to follow the links to watch the whole thing.
This video is a little dated but it does offer an insight into the minds of a few serial killers.
The doctor, Dr Orne, is very well informed. It is nice to see a doctor who admits that serial killers are not mentally ill, deserving of treatment and a serious risk if they are ever released.
So just where did the pictures come from? The Chief wouldn’t say. He did go back and forth on whether police seized the photos from someone or if they were turned over voluntarily. At one point answering, “Yes” when asked which one of the ways was right.
I have looked at the photos and they are disturbing. Some of the women look dead.
It is not unusual for serial killers to take photos of the victims.
A message, written in black marker on the wall of one of the buildings, reads: “2/2010 Mom, you are missed, Love, Nikki.”
It could have been written for either Laquetta Gunther or Julie Green.
Laquetta Gunther, a 45-year-old construction day laborer and occasional prostitute was killed first. Her body was found on 12/26/2005 and she was last seen 12/24/2005 at Chubby’s bar at 650 N. Beach St.
Her body was discovered stuffed between the two buildings in a space not even 3 feet wide. She had been shot in the head, execution-style, with a .40-caliber bullet. A passerby found her half-nude corpse between the two buildings across the street from the former Chubby’s.
Over the next two months, two more women met a similar fate.
Then there was the shooting of 34-year-old Julie Green in January 2006 and 35-year-old Iwana Patton in February of that year. Green and Patton were also shot in the head with a .40-caliber weapon and both were naked as well when they were found.
The suspect also left behind an unmistakable calling card. His semen was on both Gunther and Green, police said.
Stacey Gage, 30 years old, was found two years later in January 2008. She had been shot in the head in a wooded area near a former church off Hancock Boulevard. Investigators have never said whether the caliber of weapon used on Gage was a .32-, a .40-, or a .45-caliber gun. But Police Chief Mike Chitwood has repeatedly said that Gage’s death was “eerily similar” to the other three.
There was no DNA found on Gage’s nude body because she had been exposed to the elements for about a month before she was discovered by a Daytona Beach policeman on patrol.
Although the killer’s DNA is stored in a database kept by the FBI, it has not yet matched others kept in the national listing.
Florida did begin testing many men arrested but no leads have come from that yet.
On Christmas Eve night this year and every year since Gunther was murdered, her friend, Stacey Dittmer has held a candlelight vigil at the murder site with people who knew Gunther. This year, Gunther’s 70-year-old mother, Barbara Rurak, planned to join the group.
In a telephone interview this week from her home in Sarasota, Rurak asked the same question everyone here is asking: “Is anything being done?”
While the time has passed, none of the women is forgotten. Dittmer planned to make a poster with the names of all the murder victims so she could leave it at the site where Gunther was shot.
Children playing in a ravine south of Seattle this week found the skull of a young mother who vanished nearly three decades ago and has long been thought to be a victim of Green River serial killer Gary Ridgway.
The King County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday that dental records identified the remains as those of 20-year-old Rebecca “Becky” Marrero, who was last seen Dec. 3, 1982, as she left a motel room on Pacific Highway South.
Ridgway, a commercial truck painter, is one of the nation’s most prolific serial killers, having confessed to 48 murders and been suspected in dozens of others. He preyed upon women and girls at the margins of society – runaways, prostitutes and drug addicts strangled in a spree that terrorized Seattle and its south suburbs in the 1980s. Several victims were dumped in or posed along the Green River.
He was arrested in 2001 after advances in DNA technology enabled authorities to link a saliva sample he gave authorities in 1987 to some of the bodies. He pleaded guilty two years later, agreeing to help authorities locate as many remains as possible in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, and is now serving life without release.
Marrero, who had a 3-year-old daughter, was believed to be one of Ridgway’s early victims, but he was not charged in her case because her body wasn’t found and because Ridgway couldn’t provide investigators with enough information about her to prove he killed her.
Marrero’s skull was found Tuesday by children playing in a ravine in Auburn, about 25 miles south of Seattle. It was the same area where the remains of another Ridgway victim, Marie Malvar, were found in September 2003.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the King County prosecutor’s office planned to charge Ridgway with Marrero’s death.
“With the discovery of Ms. Marrero’s remains, detectives and prosecutors will now review the investigation into her disappearance and death,” the office said in a written statement. “Investigators will examine all aspects of the case including any potential involvement of Ridgway.”
One of Ridgway’s attorneys, Mark Prothero, was out of the office and could not immediately be reached for comment.
He couldn’t remember the details of where he left her? Even though he had left another girl there at a later time?
I call B.S.!
He did not want her found. He liked her being there, unknown, his little secret.
Or, if he really could not remember he cared that little and that is even more disturbing.
Maybe now they will seek death penalty. Another victim means another possible trial and I hope that means the prosecutor does not have to stick to the original deal.
I mean really. Is anyone really delusional enough to think that Gary Ridgway is ‘fixable’? That he can become a part of society again? That one day he might not be a threat? That he can contribute and not just be a leech?
I hope not!
Rebecca’s daughter should be in her early 30′s now. She lived almost her whole life without her mom because of him.
Rights of accused under review in wake of Tobin case
ROBBIE DINWOODIE, CHIEF SCOTTISH POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
21 Dec 2010
The ancient right of Scots to be judged purely on the evidence before them in court rather than their past could be about to go the way of other defences such as double jeopardy.
Parliament is considering an end to double jeopardy, the rule that someone acquitted of an offence cannot then be charged again of the same offence.
Now there is to be a fresh look at two other rights of the accused in the wake of the case of serial killer Peter Tobin.
Currently a Scottish jury must not know whether someone on trial has previous convictions but at the trial in England of serial killer Tobin the jury was told about his previous conviction in Scotland for the murder of Vicky Hamilton.
There are also strict rules in Scots Law requiring two witnesses to corroborate prosecution evidence, but this can be relaxed under the so-called Moorov doctrine allowing cross-corroboration of evidence in different cases to show a pattern of behaviour, and that too could now be formalised in law or extended.
The Scottish Law Commission is publishing a discussion paper asking whether the blanket ban on revealing past convictions should stay, and whether the rules on corroboration should be formally reformed.
Patrick Layden QC, the lead commissioner on the project, said: “The rules of criminal evidence should help ensure that innocent people are not convicted but they should not stand in the way of convicting the guilty. All relevant evidence should be admissible, unless there is some good reason for excluding it. Sometimes evidence of previous convictions would be highly relevant, but the prosecution is not allowed to refer to it.
“We ask whether this blanket rule remains appropriate, or whether it should be possible, in some cases, to refer to the accused’s record in proving the present charge.”
SNP MSP and Justice Committee member Stewart Maxwell asked the Lord Advocate to review the situation following last year’s Tobin case. Tobin’s conviction for the murder of Vicky Hamilton was introduced as evidence, helping to explain the crime scene and establishing a pattern of behaviour which led to Tobin’s conviction for the murder of Dinah McNicol. In Scotland a jury would not have known that Mr Tobin had prior convictions for murder.
The SNP has already introduced legislation which would reform the law of double jeopardy allowing someone to be retried for a serious crime they had been cleared of if new evidence emerged.
Mr Maxwell said: “The trial and conviction of Peter Tobin in England last year for the murder of Dinah McNicol exposes the problems of the law in Scotland.
“In recent cases like Peter Tobin or Angus Sinclair, these killers have a clear modus operandi that could be valuable to a jury. In Scotland, Peter Tobin’s previous convictions would not have been known to the jury – despite them directly relating to the case.”
I am all for them changing the laws. Criminals change and grow. Criminals learn the laws and use them to their advantage. Laws should protect society and should not be kept if they are being used and abused by predators.
SocialVibe