Jan. 24
TEXAS:
Death penalty protester does jail sentence
Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to jail.
"It's just like Monopoly," said a visibly exhausted David Atwood on
Thursday afternoon from a visiting booth at the Walker County Jail. "What
time is it? Only 2 o'clock? I thought it was more like 5 or 6."
Atwood is the founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty,
and because he did a little more than take a stand for his beliefs, he
will have to get used to at least a few more days at that pace.
Atwood will spend the next few days in jail as punishment for his actions
on the night of Nov. 17, 2004.
The execution of Anthony Fuentes was taking place inside the Huntsville
"Walls" Unit, and Atwood was outside with members of the Fuentes family.
Yellow caution tape warned protesters of their boundaries, but in an
instant, the 63-year-old Atwood decided to cross the line.
"I had known the family for quite a long time," Atwood explained. "I had
visited Anthony on death row, and we all had some real questions as to
whether or not he was guilty.
"I was outside with his grandmother that night and she was just trembling.
I had never done anything other than stand there - I'm a pretty peaceful
guy. She wanted to go up to the yellow line and stand there. I had no
plans to do what I did, but I just crossed over. I just did it."
Atwood was warned about possible arrest, and decided to stand his ground.
That night, he spent 3 hours in county jail before his wife bailed him
out.
Thursday morning, more than 2 months later, Atwood was given an option of
a fine or jail time. Although having never served time before, the husband
of more than 40 years and father of six chose to tough out the 5-day
sentence.
"I wanted to do a protest, and that's just what I'm doing," he said. "I
think it's really something - sitting here. I have nothing to do, and I'm
usually a very active person.
"I'm thinking about why I'm here. It's long and tedious, but I've known so
many guys on death row that have been executed, and compared to that, this
isn't anything like what they experienced."
In court Thursday morning, Atwood's attorneys from the Texas Civil Rights
Project were joined by members of the TCADP, Amnesty International,
Fuentes' grandfather, members of his church, his wife and a few friends to
support him.
"I had a wonderful group of people there with me," Atwood said. "I would
do it again - I think. I'm not through it yet, but if I can help people
think about the death penalty even a little bit, I'm happy."
The Dominican Sisters of Houston, a Roman Catholic community of women,
were also represented Thursday morning. In a press release issued before
Atwood's court date, the group expressed its support.
"As partners in preaching, we stand with Mr. Atwood during his current
court hearing. While we in no way condone breaking the law, we applaud Mr.
Atwood's courageous move to risk his freedom to uphold Gospel value of the
sacredness of human life," the statement read. "Single acts of nonviolent
protest such as Mr. Atwood's seldom change the course of events, but they
are often the beginning of the awakening of human conscience."
In June 2001, Atwood was recognized by the Dominican Sisters as a partner
in preaching because of his work to abolish the death penalty.
"Our mission statement proclaims that we assume the risks inherent in
preaching and teaching the Gospel," read the release. "As a partner in
preaching, Dave Atwood has assumed those risks well. His Dominican family
stands in solidarity with him in his quest to remove the death penalty as
a punitive option in the state of Texas."
Atwood explained his hopes for the future of the death penalty from the
county jail.
"There have been up to 337 executions (since the reinstatement of the
death penalty), but I don't see that it's accomplished anything," he said,
removing his glasses to rub his tired eyes. "It's not a perfect system,
and there are problems. If anything, it should be studied in detail.
Former Illinois Gov. (George) Ryan is scheduled to speak at our (TCADP)
annual conference Jan. 29 in Austin. He became concerned with the death
penalty in his state and came up with 85 different recommendations for
improvement.
"I know people get worried about crime, and all murders are horrible, but
they're fearful and look at the death penalty as the only solution, when
the reality is there are alternative solutions, such as long-term
incarceration. You don't have to in turn take human life - you don't have
to repeat it." Atwood said also violent crime prevention should begin with
programs for children and the mentally ill.
"When we don't fund Child Protective Services, there are consequences for
all of us," he said. "Violence manifests itself. Mental health services in
Texas are extremely poor. The answer is not to wait until they do
something to get them help."
Atwood said the death penalty is too much of a state identifier, and by
moving toward a moratorium, Texas can come out of its stereotype.
"I hope I can, in some way, help Texas move beyond the death penalty," he
said. "I think the state would be much better without it. I don't think
Texans are blood-thirsty. They need options, like life without parole. I
think most people would choose that if it were there."
(source: Huntsville Item, Sat. Jan. 22)
OHIO:
A cold-blooded liar
It's no surprise that John George Spirko Jr. landed in a Toledo- area jail
cell in early October 1982 . . . just months after being paroled from a
Kentucky prison for murder . . . just days after getting the snot beat out
of him in a bloody bar fight by a gang of bikers . . . and just hours
after waving a sawed-off shotgun in Theresa Fabbro's face in a failed
attempt to track down and take revenge on his attackers.
Nor was it especially remarkable that, once again behind bars, Spirko
cooked up a pair of exotic schemes -- contrived in the volatile psyche of
a lifelong liar -- to wriggle his way out of this new patch of trouble.
That's the way the 36-year-old ex-con had lived his entire life.
Thirteen years earlier, while in custody in Flint, Mich., after another
barroom brawl, a 23-year-old Spirko embarrassed a veteran homicide
detective by concocting a detailed, convincing and altogether phony
confession to a series of coed murders then filling the local newspapers.
Spirko simply wanted to get out of his jail cell for a few hours of coffee
and conversation, he later admitted. Further investigation showed that he
had nothing to do with what came to be known as "The Michigan Murders."
So, it's little wonder that Spirko's imagination sprang to life again in
October 1982, as he faced a felonious-assault charge for the
shotgun-waving incident.
But this time, his elaborate flourishes produced far more ominous results
- for himself, and possibly for the citizens of Ohio.
In just 6 weeks, John Spirko talked himself right onto Ohio's death row.
And unless the U.S. Supreme Court or Gov. Bob Taft intervenes, the
citizens of Ohio are likely to face the prospect later this year of
executing a man for a murder that he very possibly had nothing to do with.
Spirko, now 58, evokes little sympathy. His life of crime and record of
spectacular mendacity leave him virtually without credibility. "I'm
convictable," he said from death row with a shrug.
But a months-long Plain Dealer examination of the evidence in his case --
prompted in part by an extraordinary decision last May by the Van Wert
County prosecutor -- leads to two conclusions:
John Spirko's mercurial imagination -- and not much else -- has brought
him to the brink of execution.
Spirko wasn't the only player in this case to display a casual regard for
the truth.
In late 1982 and early 1983, in more than a dozen jailhouse interviews
intended to buy himself a short sentence on his new assault charges,
Spirko spun for authorities a series of tall tales about the 1982
abduction and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, the postmaster in Elgin,
Ohio, a hamlet of 96 souls not far from the Indiana border.
Spirko's graphic, detailed stories attributed the crime to an
ever-changing troupe of vaguely identified dopers, barflies and bikers
that he said he knew from Toledo-area taverns. The stories -- laced with
contradictions, fabrications and factual errors -- were almost totally
discredited.
Police argued that they contained bits of truth, however. And the stories
eventually formed the nucleus of a criminal prosecution that over the next
two years got Spirko convicted of kidnapping and aggravated murder in the
Mottinger case, making him only the 2nd man sentenced to death in Van Wert
County in more than a century.
But the robbery of the Elgin post office, and the abduction and slaying of
its postmaster, almost certainly didn't happen the way police and
prosecutors said it did, either.
Compelling evidence that they presented to the jury about a mysterious
stranger in Elgin on the day of the crime -- information that had all but
clinched their case against Spirko -- almost certainly was wrong. And they
knew it.
Some of the least ambiguous evidence they collected during nearly 2 years
of investigation contradicted key elements of their case.
But prosecutors did not reveal that evidence to Spirko's lawyers.
Nor did they share it with the jury.
In fact, it stayed buried in a file drawer -- until legal action forced it
into the light -- for more than a dozen years after Spirko was condemned
to die.
Someone kidnapped Betty Jane Mot tinger and robbed her tiny post office at
the start of business on Aug. 9, 1982 -- a crystal clear Monday morning.
All of western Ohio was shocked by such news coming from Elgin, a burg so
quiet and remote that old-timers remembered no crimes at all being
reported there since World War II.
Elgin is little more than a crossroads in the vast agricultural flatness
of John Deere's America. 22 miles due west of Lima, it's on the way to
nowhere. Blink twice along Ohio 81 and you're already through it.
The post office is even easier to miss. Housed in a squat, metal-sided hut
about 60 yards south of the two-lane highway, the operation was so spare
at the time that it had neither a telephone nor running water. It's tucked
in the shadow of the grain bins and silos of what in the summer of 1982
was the Elgin Grain Co., the village's sole reason for being.
On the morning of Aug. 9, residents reported seeing a dark-haired stranger
standing outside the post office beside a brown, 2-tone sedan -- possibly
a Monte Carlo or a Buick. But nobody witnessed the crime.
Few promising leads had developed by Sept. 19, when shock turned suddenly
to horror.
Authorities found Mottinger's skeletal remains wrapped in a
paint-splattered curtain and dumped in a soybean field 50 miles from Elgin
near the banks of the Blanchard River, just outside Findlay. The body was
so badly decomposed from the summer heat that dental records were required
to identify the slain postmaster.
Investigators concluded from cut marks to the front of her clothing that
Mottinger had been stabbed 13 to 17 times in the chest.
Dozens of postal inspectors -- agents of the U.S. Postal Inspection
Service, which investigates crimes against post-office employees or
property -- had descended on the small towns and villages around Elgin
right after the kidnapping. They redoubled their efforts now.
But the story of John Spirko's journey onto death row didn't start there.
Despite weeks of searching, investigators didn't find a single clue
pointing in his direction.
No, Spirko's saga began in the Toledo suburb of Swanton -- 105 miles north
and a world away from Elgin -- on Oct. 9, 1982. That's the night Spirko
was arrested and jailed after harassing Theresa Fabbro with a shotgun in
the parking lot of the Longbranch Saloon, one of his favorite watering
holes. It was 2 days after his bloody whipping at the hands of the gang of
bikers.
Out of prison for just 2 months, Spirko now faced a felonious-assault
charge that almost certainly would send him back. His swaggering
imagination set to work. And it eventually led to his undoing.
First, Spirko talked his girlfriend, Luann Smith, into hiding $500, a
change of clothes and a new 12-gauge pump shotgun inside her 1974 Cutlass
and leaving the car around the corner from the jail.
Then he persuaded her to smuggle in 2 tungsten steel hacksaw blades. And
on Oct. 26, after luring a guard to his cell and smacking him in the head
with an 8-inch section of iron sawed from his jail bars, Spirko got caught
trying to escape. Suddenly, he faced another felonious-assault charge.
Only this time, his girlfriend faced prison time for helping.
Spirko's calculating mind continued to churn. As in Michigan a dozen years
earlier, crime stories in the local newspaper apparently helped to spawn
another bright idea.
That very week, The Blade in Toledo was publishing story after story about
developments in what had been a futile effort to solve the Elgin
postmaster's murder.
Investigators had been pinning most of their hopes on an obvious suspect.
At the time of the crime, Marion "Sonny" Baumgardner was on parole for a
similar post-office robbery seven years earlier in Dupont, Ohio, just 30
miles from Elgin. The postmaster in that robbery -- also a woman -- had
been tied up during the crime but had not been seriously injured.
Baumgardner bore an uncanny re semblance to an artist's sketch of the
stranger seen in Elgin on the morning Mottinger disappeared, and one
witness thought his photo looked like the man.
But Baumgardner had eluded police for weeks.
Then, on Oct. 29, on its front page, The Blade reported a crushing blow to
investigators. Baumgardner had been arrested, but he had an ironclad alibi
for Aug. 9. Witnesses saw him at work that day -- in Pasadena, Texas.
Baumgardner was cleared of all involvement in the Elgin case.
And after nearly 3 months, with the trail now cold, investigators were
back to "square one."
But to Spirko, then weighing his legal options in the Lucas County Jail,
the news served as inspiration.
Investigators weren't looking for him; they had no reason to. He called
them. On Oct. 31, just two days after the Baumgardner news.
Spirko got word to federal authorities that he knew something about the
Mottinger case. He wanted to cut a deal: Information in return for
leniency. For himself and his girlfriend.
His call was like a thunderbolt. Investigators had never heard of Spirko.
But that doesn't mean he didn't inspire suspicion. His credentials were
perfect.
In 1982, Spirko was tall, lean and heavily tattooed -- with a dagger on
one forearm, the Grim Reaper on the other. He had a rap sheet that
stretched back to the 2nd grade, when records in Toledo show that he ran
away -- the 1st of many times -- and started a fire at a school.
His father, a 300-pound autoworker with an artificial leg, had a violent
tem per and a tendency to pummel his wife and children during alcoholic
rants. Spirko was tagged early on as an incor rigible child with a growing
reputation for vile language, impulsive violence and serial lying.
He was convicted of arson, theft, breaking and entering, forgery, inter
state transportation of a stolen car and murder -- all by the age of 24.
And at 36, he had spent all but a few years of his adult life behind bars.
Spirko was paroled from the Ken tucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville just
13 days before the Mottinger kid napping. He had served 12 years of a life
sentence for strangling 72-year-old Myra Ashcraft in her Covington, Ky.,
home while he and his then-girlfriend were stealing her jewelry.
The vote of a single juror reportedly had spared him the death penalty.
On top of all that, Spirko was cocky, fancied himself uncommonly clever,
had a big mouth and wasn't very care ful about using it.
The new tipster laid out the condi tions for his deal right from the
start.
First, Spirko demanded probation for his girlfriend, Luann Smith, who had
never been in legal trouble until he dragged her into his doomed es cape
attempt.
Next, he wanted kid-glove treat ment for himself.
If he couldn't get his 2 felonious- assault charges dropped -- unlikely,
he was told, because a jail guard was among the victims -- Spirko insisted
on doing no more than 5 years.
And he demanded placement in the federal witness-protection program so he
could serve his time in a federal prison.
In return, Spirko would tell author ities everything he knew about the
Mottinger case.
The feds agreed.
They promised to recommend probation for Smith and to meet his other
demands. And within weeks, as a newly protected witness, Spirko was
transferred to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan.
For his part, Spirko started to lay out for investigators a shifting,
contradictory, ever-evolving but consistently horrifying series of
accounts of what might have happened to Betty Jane Mottinger 4 months
earlier - accounts he said he heard about at several Toledo-area parties.
Spirko attributed the crime to a vividly drawn cast of characters - a band
of dope-shooting, whiskey-guzzling, obscenity-spewing bikers, barflies and
slackers with colorful but hard-to-verify street names like Rooster, Dino
and Dirty Dan.
His stories featured detailed scripts - reminiscent of drive-in slasher
flicks - studded with coarse dialogue and detailed descriptions of
sickening brutality.
Spirko started spinning his tales Nov. 29, 1982, in the first of at least
15 interviews with Postal Inspector Paul Hartman, who was based at the
time in Cleveland. The players often changed from interview to interview,
and their roles in the drama shifted from one account to another.
But, in essence, Spirko's narrative boiled down to this: A band of vicious
losers snatched Mottinger from her tiny post office during what was either
a robbery or the botched pickup of a package of mailed drugs, depending on
the version. They shoved her into the trunk or the back seat of a car and
whisked her off to a "safe house" in the country.
There, they held her prisoner for several hours or several days - bound on
a couch in the living room, confined to an upstairs bedroom or tied to a
pole in the basement. They taunted her, beat her up, dragged her around by
the hair, forced her to perform oral sex and took turns raping her.
Then, as she screamed and flailed and kicked in self defense, they stabbed
her to death so furiously that blood sprayed onto the door jambs and
ceilings and gathered in thick, drying pools on the floor.
Finally, they wrapped her body in a curtain, drove off and dumped it in a
soybean field.
Spirko started off telling Hartman that he first heard about the robbery
and murder at a party - and that he'd seen the loot in a bag.
But Hartman grew increasingly impatient with his inability to confirm any
of the accounts. Spirko responded by changing them around and adding still
more detail - putting himself closer to the action with each new story.
At first, he had simply heard about the crime from others. Later versions
had him witnessing various atrocities and even the murder itself. And, in
one account, he even had himself holding Mottinger down (in a cornfield in
this version), trying to keep her quiet, when Rooster suddenly stabbed her
to death.
The rationale behind the evolving accounts was simple, at least in
Spirko's contorted logic. With his girlfriend still not sentenced, he had
to keep investigators interested long enough to get what he wanted -
probation for her.
"I didn't really care because I didn't do nothin'," Spirko testified
during his 1984 trial. "So I didn't figure I'd get indicted."
Spirko said he kept feeding Hartman new versions because "he wouldn't
settle for nothin' else. I would tell him one story and . . . the next
day, he would come back for another story. And the more I told the more
deeper I got into it, you know. And finally he told me one time, he said
'either you did it,' or, he says, 'or you know who did it.' I don't know
if those were his exact words, but it was something to that effect."
Spirko's stories are horrifying, even to an emotionally detached reader
more than 22 years later. But they are also shot through with
contradictions, fabrications and what appear to be wild guesses - many of
them wrong - about the facts of the case.
For one thing, virtually all of the characters in Spirko's dramas were
either fictitious or not involved - with either Spirko or the crime.
(Spirko said he made up the names, based on people he knew from prison.
Investigators maintain they were able to identify several, but eventually
cleared them all.)
And there's not a shred of evidence that any of the stories ever happened.
Except for the fact that Mottinger had been stabbed more than a dozen
times and that her shroud-wrapped body had been dumped in a Hancock County
beanfield - details that were known to anyone in western Ohio who had read
a newspaper or watched TV - Spirko's stories easily could have been
fiction.
It's possible, for instance, that Mottinger was sexually abused. It's just
as possible she wasn't. Her body was so badly decomposed that the
prosecution's forensics experts didn't even test her clothing for bodily
fluids.
And while it's possible she died in a bloodbath at an isolated farmhouse,
investigators could find no evidence of that either.
At one point, they thought they had identified the "safe house" that
Spirko had spoken of - a vacant farmhouse near Interstate 75 in Cygnet,
Ohio. Postal inspectors descended onto the place in December 1982 and
spent 3 days taking it apart from stem to stern.
They hauled out bedsheets, pillowcases, napkins, trash, magazines, work
gloves, matchbooks and drapery cords. They lifted fingerprints from
throughout the house, pulled up carpet samples and dug for bloodstains in
the weatherstripping around the back door.
They found nothing. Not a drop of blood, not a workable print, not a
telltale hair. Not one piece of evidence suggesting that a homicide
happened there. All they got for their trouble was a $600 bill for damage
from the angry owner.
Investigators failed to verify much of anything in Spirko's tales.
Prosecutors argued during Spirko's 1984 trial that his stories contained
several morsels of information that only the killer could have known.
Notes of the conversations Spirko had with Hartman leave considerable
doubt about that.
But what's striking is how much Spirko didn't appear to know about the
crime, or somehow failed to mention to Hartman.
Things, for instance, like the loot: Spirko apparently knew nothing about
the most obvious items taken during the abduction and robbery.
In addition to $43.86 from the cash drawer and a few money orders, the
Elgin post-office robbers took virtually every stamp in the place - more
than $700 worth.
And yet during his interviews with Hartman, Spirko specifically said - at
least twice - that he never saw any stamps among the stolen items.
Spirko also told Hartman that Mottinger was wearing a gold watch and a
gold necklace when she was killed and that he had seen both in the bag of
loot.
But in their testimony, Mottinger's family and a co-worker didn't recall
her wearing either. When asked about her jewelry, they said that she
typically wore three rings - a wedding band, something they described as a
"mother's ring" and a tiny pinky ring which, aside from her clothing, was
the only personal item found on Mottinger's body.
Spirko said nothing to Hartman about any rings being taken from the
victim.
Spirko also seemed ignorant about what Mottinger looked like, about how
she died and about how her body was prepared for disposal.
Despite hours of interviews over six weeks, no evidence exists that
Hartman ever asked Spirko to describe the victim. If he did, it's not
reflected in his notes.
On two occasions, however, Spirko spontaneously referred to Mottinger as a
"fat bitch."
But it's hard to imagine how "fat" would come to mind for someone who had
actually seen her. Mottinger was just over 5 feet tall, weighed 104 pounds
and was described by friends as "tiny" or "petite."
Spirko also told Hartman that Mottinger's hands were bound behind her back
with duct tape when she was killed. But her hands were not bound - with
anything - when her body was found.
And he twice told investigators that Mottinger had been stabbed in the
back, something her killer would surely know was wrong. She was stabbed in
the chest. Investigators found no evidence of wounds to her back.
But that's not all they failed to find.
Investigators found no Spirko link to Mottinger, no connection to Elgin or
to the Findlay area, where her body was found, and no reliable evidence
that he had ever been to either place.
Nor did they find a convincing motive. Prosecutors never tried to explain,
for instance, why a fresh parolee looking for a place to rob would leave a
treasure chest of possibilities like Toledo just after dawn on a Monday
morning to scour an unfamiliar rural countryside for a one-room post
office that did less than $3,000 in business a year and never kept more
than $50 in the safe.
And they never produced a more logical explanation than Spirko's for why
he came forward in the 1st place. Why would a man who was guilty of
murder, but had escaped even the hint of detection, voluntarily reach out
to police - and risk the death penalty - to bargain down his sentence on
an assault charge?
Finally, investigators found no physical evidence linking Spirko to the
crime.
No prints.
No murder weapon.
No loot.
And no car for kidnapping and transporting the victim.
In fact, through all his hours of interviews, Spirko gave investigators
virtually no evidence in the Mottinger case that they didn't have before
they met him.
Except for 2 things:
The stories, which Hartman recounted for the jury - without regard to fact
or fiction - in gruesome detail, and to devastating effect.
And Delaney Gibson Jr.
That may well have been enough.
Gibson and Spirko became best friends while sharing a Kentucky prison cell
in the late 1970s.
Although he never set foot in the courtroom, Gibson gave prosecutors an
even more delectable suspect than Spirko himself.
And Gibson provided them a critical key to cracking the case - the only
strong evidence they ever developed that appeared to link Spirko, albeit
indirectly, to Elgin on the day Betty Jane Mottinger disappeared.
Both men were indicted on charges of kidnapping and stabbing the
48-year-old mother of 3.
An "eyewitness" testified that she saw Gibson in Elgin on that clear
August morning 22 years ago.
No ifs, ands or buts.
9 men and 3 women convicted Spirko on Aug. 22, 1984.
But they never heard the whole story.
Justice For John Spirko http://www.johnspirko.com/
(source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)
