Here's a few...I'm sure with a little effort I could find dozens of more such cases. Perhaps even hundreds.
Murders That Could Have Been
Averted By Capital Punishment
thenewamerican.com
- Some 80 years ago, Charles Fitzgerald killed a deputy sheriff and was given a 100-year prison sentence as a result. He was released after serving just 11 years, and in 1926 murdered a California policeman. He was given "life" for that killing, but was paroled in 1971.
- In 1931, "Gypsy" Bob Harper, who had been convicted of murder, escaped from a Michigan prison and killed two persons. After being recaptured, he then killed the prison warden and his deputy.
- In 1936, former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported the case of a Florida prisoner who committed two murders, received clemency for each, and then murdered twice more. On March 17, 1971 Hoover told a congressional subcommittee that 19 of the killers responsible for the murder of policemen during the 1960s had been previously convicted of murder.
- In 1951, Joseph Taborsky was sentenced to death in Connecticut for murder, but was freed when the courts ruled that the chief witness against him (his brother) had been mentally incompetent to testify. In 1957, Taborsky was found guilty for another murder, for which he was electrocuted in May 1960. Before his execution, he confessed to the 1951 murder.
- In 1952, Allen Pruitt was arrested for the knife slaying of a newsstand operator and sentenced to life in prison. In 1965, he was charged with fatally stabbing a prison doctor and an assistant prison superintendent, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. In 1968, his 1952 conviction was overturned on a technicality by the Virginia Supreme Court. He was re-tried, again found guilty, but given a 20-year sentence instead of life. Since he had already served 18 years, and had some time off for "good behavior," he was released. On December 31, 1971 he was arrested and charged in the murder of two men in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
- In 1957, Richard Biegenwald murdered a store owner during a robbery in New Jersey. He was convicted, but given a life sentence rather than death. After serving 17 years, he was paroled. He violated his parole, was returned to prison, but was again paroled in 1980, after which he shot and killed an 18-year-old Asbury Park, New Jersey girl. He also killed three other 17-year-old New Jersey girls and a 34-year-old man.
- A man convicted of murder in Oklahoma pleaded with the judge and jury to impose the death sentence, but was given life instead. He later killed a fellow inmate and was executed for the second killing in 1966.
- In 1972, Arthur James Julius was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 1978, he was given a brief leave from prison, during which he raped and murdered a cousin. He was sentenced to death for that crime and was executed on November 17, 1989.
- In 1976, Jimmy Lee Gray (who was free on parole from an Arizona conviction for killing a 16-year-old high school girl) kidnapped, sodomized, and suffocated a three-year-old Mississippi girl. He was executed for that second killing on September 2, 1983.
- Also in 1976, Timothy Charles Palmes was on probation for an earlier manslaughter conviction when he and two accomplices robbed and brutally murdered a Florida furniture store owner. Palmes was executed for the killing on November 8, 1984. An accomplice, Ronald Straight, was executed on May 20, 1986. (The other accomplice, a woman, was granted immunity for testifying for the prosecution.)
- In 1978, Wayne Robert Felde, while being taken to jail in handcuffs, pulled a gun hidden in his pants and killed a policeman. At the time, he was a fugitive from a work release program in Maryland, where he had been convicted of manslaughter.
- In 1979, Donald Dillbeck was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for murdering a Florida sheriffs deputy. In 1983, he tried to escape. In January of this year he was transferred to a minimum-security facility. On June 22nd, he walked away from a ten-inmate crew catering a school banquet. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with stabbing a woman to death at a Tallahassee shopping mall.
- In 1981, author Norman Mailer and many other New York literati embraced convicted killer Jack Henry Abbott (who had murdered a fellow prison inmate) and succeeded in having him released early from a Utah prison. On July 18, 1981 (six-weeks after his release), Abbott stabbed actor Richard Adan to death in New York. He was convicted of manslaughter and received a 15-year-to-life sentence. Mrs. Adan sued Abbott for her husband's wrongful death and her pain and suffering. On June 15, 1990, a jury awarded her nearly $7.6 million.
- On October 22, 1983 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, two prison guards were murdered in two separate instances by inmates who were both serving life terms for previously murdering inmates. On November 9, 1983 Associate U.S. Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen told a Senate subcommittee that it is impossible to punish or even deter such prison murders because, without a death sentence, a violent life-termer has free rein "to continue to murder as opportunity and his perverse motives dictate."
- On December 7, 1984 Benny Lee Chaffin kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old Springfield, Oregon girl. He had been convicted of murder once before in Texas, but not executed. Incredibly, the same jury that convicted him for killing the young girl refused to sentence him to death because two of the 12 jurors said they could not determine whether or not he would be a future threat to society!
- Thomas Eugene Creech, who had been convicted of three murders and had claimed a role in more than 40 killings in 13 states as a paid killer for a motorcycle gang, killed a fellow prison inmate in 1981 and was sentenced to death. In 1986 his execution was stayed by a federal judge and has yet to be carried out.
- When he was 14, Dalton Prejean killed a taxi driver. When he was 17, he gunned down a state trooper in Lafayette, Louisiana. Despite protests from the American Civil Liberties Union and other abolitionist groups, Prejean was executed for the second murder on May 18, 1990.
. 5/23/89 - Houston Chronicle
Paroled killer accused of pen pal's murder
A paroled murderer allegedly killed a north Houston woman who had visited and corresponded with him while he was in prison and even gave him a place to stay for a few days upon his release. A second suspect also was charged Monday with capital murder in the strangulation of the woman who was found tied up in her home last month. Charles Joseph Pacholsky, 45, had been jailed earlier on an unrelated charge. Robert Stadler Mitchell, 30, of 902 Gatecrest, was arrested Sunday night at his home by Houston homicide detectives. Both are charged with capital murder and being held without bond in the death of Barbara Dobson, 58, of 1305 Enid north of downtown. Homicide Detective John Swaim said Pacholsky and Mitchell were suspects from the beginning of the investigation because Pacholsky had corresponded with Dobson while he was in prison. "He was paroled from prison in October of last year," Swaim said. "He had been serving a murder sentence from a 1974 case in Polk County." Pacholsky received a 30-year sentence for the murder of Daniel Curtiss Mueller who died of asphyxia due to suffocation. He was found with a plastic garbage bag tied around his neck with a steel cable. Swaim said he had no other details about that killing. Swaim said Dobson had written to several inmates in Texas prisons over the years and had even visited Pacholsky in prison. Swaim said Dobson became involved with prisoners through her participation on a weekly radio show dealing with inmates. The show on KPFT, a non-commercial station, provides a forum for friends and relatives to give messages to inmates. When Pacholsky received his parole he lived for a few days at Dobson's home. Swaim said other parolees also had stayed at her home in the past. "I guess she felt sorry for these guys. He lived there for nine or 10 days in April," Swaim said. "He was a suspect from the first, but we had a lot of things to do before we could file on him," he said. Police said the motive for the slaying was robbery. Swaim said Mitchell is on parole for a forgery charge and that he met the other suspect while they were both in prison. Swaim said Pacholsky was arrested May 12 on an unrelated auto theft charge. During questioning he provided information that led to Mitchell's arrest. Dobson's nude body was found in the bedroom of her home by her daughter about 8:15 a.m. April 28. Police said she was killed the night before. She was last known to be alive about 10 p.m. on the night before her body was found.
9/3/88
Man jailed in motel murder/Convicted killer accused in attacks
MINEOLA, N.Y. - (UPI) - A convicted murderer was accused Friday of killing a woman whose body was found stuffed under a Long Island motel room bed. Cornelius Walls, 49, of Hempstead, N.Y., who had been identified as the prime suspect in the slaying of Mary DeOliviera, 29, was holding another kidnapped woman when he was arrested Thursday, Nassau County police said. An employee at the Oceanside Motel recognized Walls when he checked in with DeOliviera on Aug. 23, police said. DeOliviera's body was found Monday inside the wooden frame of a platform bed after the motel room had been used by several guests, at least one of whom complained about a bad smell in the room. Acting on a tip, police said they arrested Walls as he drove through nearby Garden City in a borrowed car. At the time of the arrest, Walls was holding a 26-year-old woman captive in the back of the car, police said. Walls had repeatedly raped and sodomized her since kidnapping her three days earlier, police said. Walls was arraigned on charges of second-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy in 1st District Court in Hempstead Friday. The suspect was convicted of murder in Nassau County in 1959. He served 15 years of a 20-year-to-life prison sentence and was paroled in 1974. Since then, he was arrested numerous times on charges of promoting prostitution, assault and rape, said Sgt. Dennis Barry of the Nassau County Police. Walls was returned to prison for convictions and parole violations and was freed most recently on July 12. "He has a long history of abuse and violence and degrading acts against women," Barry said. "The ultimate act of degradation was against Mary DeOliviera at the Oceanside Motel." An autopsy showed DeOliviera of Elmont had been beaten in the head and chest, police said. It was not yet determined whether she had been sexually abused.
1/16/88 - Houston Chronicle
Convicted rapist-murderer accused in woman's death
A 36-year-old convicted rapist and murderer Friday was charged with murder in the death of a popular Clear Lake-area waitress whose charred body was found in her Bacliff mobile home last June. Mike O'Lee Hefflin, unemployed and who is in the Harris County Jail charged with attempted capital murder in an unrelated case, Friday was charged with murder in the June 17 death of Simone Fleming, 58. Bond was set at $100,000. Fleming, found lying on her bed, had been killed prior to the fire which destroyed her master bedroom, according to the Galveston County Medical Examiner's office. She died of cerebral anoxia, or lack of oxygen from strangulation or suffocation, said a spokeswoman in the medical examiner's office. The body had been burned too badly to determine if there were any wounds, she said. "Whether her head was covered, she was strangled, choked or smothered, we don't know," said Richard Branson, first assistant in the Galveston County District Attorney's office. Hefflin had rented a house from Fleming and had argued with her over rent, according to a spokeswoman for the organized crime unit. Investigators found gas jets on in the mobile home after the fire was extinguished and have said the fire was set. Fleming, a waitress at the Sheraton Kings Inn restaurant on NASA Road 1, had hesitated to buy a mobile home because of her fear of fire, friends said. Hefflin, a parolee, is scheduled to be tried Jan. 25 on a charge of attempted capital murder in the Aug. 18 stabbing of a 48-year-old Harris County woman during an alleged attempted sexual assault, said Lee Coffee, chief prosecutor for 180th State District Court. He is being held in the Harris County Jail without bond. Hefflin was paroled from the Texas Department of Corrections in October 1985 after serving nine years of a 45-year sentence for a 1976 murder conviction in Dallas County, according to a TDC spokesman. He was paroled in October 1974 after serving five months of a two-year sentence for a June 1974 rape conviction.
11/13/86 - Houston Chronicle
No `hard feelings' / Ex-convict thanks judge for death penalty in cabbie's slaying
An ex-convict thanked the judge and prosecutors after he was given the death penalty for the June robbery and killing of a Houston cab driver. "I want you all to know that I don't have any hard feelings in the case," Jerome Butler, 57, said Wednesday. "I feel satisfied. You did the right thing." Butler was found guilty of the June 16 shooting of Sky-Jack cab driver Nathan Oakley, 67. Oakley had been a Houston cab driver for 30 years. The jury, which found Butler guilty of capital murder Tuesday after 45 minutes of deliberation, returned Wednesday to deliver the death sentence for Butler in state District Judge Ted Poe's court. Visiting Judge Wallace C. "Pete" Moore replaced Poe on the bench for the trial. In an unusual twist to the case, it was revealed half way through the trial that a man Butler was convicted of killing in 1973 had been a friend of Oakley, said prosecutor Jim Buchanan. Buchanan speculated that the reason Butler killed Oakley after he robbed him was that Oakley may have recognized Butler from the 1973 murder. Oakley was shot, execution style, three times in the head. Buchanan said Butler called for a cab at a Circle K one block from his home in the 3800 block of Arbor. After Oakley picked him up, he pulled a gun and shot him as the car was moving in the 1300 block of Sampson near Dallas at the edge of downtown. A witness who was driving behind the cab saw the shooting and followed Butler after he ran from the car. The witness then returned to the cab and used the radio to call police. Butler had an extensive criminal history, including a 1959 conviction on two counts of robbery and assault in New York City. He came to Houston in December 1972 after being paroled in New York, and five months later was charged with the slaying of A.C. Johnson, 69. Butler served about 10 years of a 30-year sentence he received after pleading guilty to that murder. Johnson had been friends with Oakley, Buchanan said. After he was sentenced to death Wednesday, Butler spent about 10 minutes talking to Judge Moore, admitting he was guilty of the killing and saying he, too, believed in the death penalty. After talking to the judge, Butler was led out of the courtroom in tears. Oakley's widow also professed satisfaction with the sentence. "I hurt, I ache, I cry. I don't want anyone else going through this," said Robbie Oakley. "We got this murderer off the street." |
