August 24 ARIZONA: Man Arrested in Ariz. Wal - Mart Killings 2 Wal-Mart employees were shot to death Tuesday as they gathered shopping carts in the parking lot of one of the retail stores in suburban Phoenix, and police later arrested the suspected gunman. The shootings occurred in the middle of the parking lot, about 75 yards from the store entrance. At one point, a body could be seen in one of the corrals used for collecting shopping carts. Hours later, police spokesman Mike Pena said a suspect had been arrested without incident in a retirement community in nearby Peoria. Investigators initially sent a robot to Ed Lui's door, fearing he could still be armed. The man came out with his hands up and was booked on 2 counts of 1st-degree murder, Pena said. Authorities did not have a motive for shootings. It does not appear Lui knew the victims or had a vendetta against them or Wal-Mart, Pena said. The gunman did not appear to have been under the influence of any substance. "We don't know why he did this. This was barbaric," Pena said. Lui drove into the parking lot, got out of his car and shot each victim several times with a handgun. It does not appear Lui spoke with the victims, he said. The gunman then drove away but was followed by two witnesses who were able to provide license plate numbers that police used to track Lui's car. After he was captured, Lui was calm at the police station, answering 'yes' and 'no' questions, Pena said. He did not know whether Lui had a criminal record. The victims were identified as Anthony Spangler, 18, and Patrick Graham, who was either 18 or 19. Both were from Glendale. Delia Garcia, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman on the scene, said the 2 young men were collecting shopping carts when the gunfire broke out. She said the store would be closed at least until Wednesday. "This is an extremely tragic situation," company spokeswoman Sharon Weber said from Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Authorities initially kept customers inside the store, but they were later allowed to leave. Lisa Crider said the store was filled with screaming people who were trying to get out. "It was just pure chaos," she told The Arizona Republic. Crider said she initially tried to stay inside the store but later fled. Late Tuesday, police had cordoned off the suspect's neighborhood about 2 miles from the Wal-Mart. Plainclothes officers roamed through the area of stuccoed homes with red-tile roofs and desert landscaping. At the scene of the shooting, police also cordoned off much of the store's parking lot, telling anyone whose car was within a perimeter that they would have to leave their vehicles there. Some of the store's 450 employees could be seen leaving the business Tuesday evening. The company planned to offer help for workers upset by the shootings, Garcia said. The scene of the shooting was about 20 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix. (source: Associated Press) ALABAMA: Mobile judge: Jurors can hear purported confession of Jones Jurors in the first trial of a man accused of killing women in at least three states will be allowed to hear his alleged confession in the slaying of an Alabama woman. Mobile County Circuit Judge Charles Graddick on Monday denied a defense bid to suppress statements that Jeremy Jones, 32, made to detectives. Sheriff's officials have said Jones gave them at least three confessions following the discovery of the mutilated body of Lisa Nichols, 45. She was found dead inside her home last September. Besides Nichols, Jones is charged with killing a teenage girl in Georgia and a woman in Louisiana. Authorities have said Jones confessed or is being investigated in the deaths of a couple and the disappearance of 2 teenage girls in Oklahoma, plus the killing of another woman in Georgia. Jones, a native of Oklahoma, is set for trial in Alabama beginning Oct. 17. He could be sentenced to death if convicted. Jones' lawyers have fought to prevent prosecutors from presenting the alleged confessions to a jury. They claim Jones' statements could have been influenced by an anti-psychotic drug he was given at the Mobile County Metro Jail. Jones also has told reporters that he has not killed anyone and fabricated the purported confessions. While Graddick refused to suppress the statements, his one-page order did side with the defense on another matter, ruling that jurors would not be allowed to see television interviews with Jones. At the time of his Alabama arrest, Jones was wanted in Oklahoma for rape and failure to register as a sex offender. Investigators from other states have visited Alabama to talk with Jones about unsolved cases. (source: Mobile Register) PENNSYLVANIA: Accused Killer Talks in Jailhouse Interview The man accused of murdering an 87 year old woman in Wilkes-Barre spoke out to Newswatch 16 Tuesday, admitting to the crime, expressing remorse, but saying he'd kill again. He gave his 1st on-camera interview to Newswatch 16's Jon Meyer. Brian Jones said his attorneys advised against talking with to the media but he said he has nothing else to lose and he wants people to hear his story. He sat calmly inside the Luzerne County jail and answered questions for more than 20 minutes. "At a certain point in that day I had just lost all sense of judgement, became so impaired it was almost like a blackout state," Jones said about the day Mary Leo was murdered. It happened exactly 3 weeks ago. The accused killer detailed how he followed Leo into her apartment on South Main Street above Abe's Hot Dogs, and how the 87 year old woman fought back. He said he was a man on a mission that day and that he needed money for drugs. "I went back to what I've known for the most part of my life, a life of deception, thievery, drug abuse," said. Jones came to Wilkes-Barre from New Jersey, drawn to a drug treatment facility there, treatment the 35 year old never completed. He was back on crack cocaine and admitted he saw Mary Leo as a vulnerable target for cash. "I had more or less lost all sense of self control. The only thing I could see was the next bag of drugs. That individual might very well be standing in my way of getting that," he said. "She became alarmed at my presence in her home. I had become alarmed at the way she charged me and began shouting, 'Get out. The police are coming'. It was a panicky situation on both sides," he said. "She came in my direction. That's when I commenced to stab her. That's when I commenced to stab her." Jones clearly remembered grabbing a knife and repeatedly stabbing Mary Leo. He then went back hours later, looking for more cash. "My way of thinking that day was that there's more to be got. I never sat down and though, wow, you did something so ungodly and so forbidden that you know. The damage had been don, or course. I never took time out to think of the severity of what had occurred." When asked what he would say to Mary Leo's family, Jones responded, "I really don't believe that any word spoken by me to the public out there that has a very, very negative perception of me, I'm sure they wish they could take me down to the park and lynch me. I don't believe there is anything other than to say I'm really remorseful," Jones said. As he sat shackled in jail expressing sorrow for murdering Mary Leo, Jones said he would kill again. "I believe the devil came into me when I had that thought and it went like this: That person who I felt had abandoned me, that if I could just get out one more time and take her off the count so to speak so I wouldn't have that on my mind as I sit on death row. That's the thought that occurred to me," Jones said. "I do believe it it hadn't been that unfortunate lady, it would have been someone other than her," he added. Jones confessed until his arrest, he didn't really care. "My lady friend was telling me a lady called her and said keep your doors locked because there's a man on the loose and he's going in and out of people's homes and I knew what the lady was telling here and I said nothing and fought back my laughter," Jones recalled. What he's not laughing about are the consequences that he could face. He understands what he admits to could lead to the death penalty. "I think that anything at this point is fitting. I really do. I don't see any glimmer of hope in my life ever again. I've failed completely. The admitted career criminal suggested the best place for him is behind bars with no access to drugs and no chance to commit other evils. "I don't believe God has ever really favored me. I prayed on numerous occasions to stop some of the negative thoughts and it's just like my prayers have been in vain. What else am I supposed to think?" he asked. "If there was a time machine where I could change the incident through a time machine, I certainly would." (source: Newswatch 16) OHIO: Death row inmate has unlikely ally Death row inmate John Spirko got support at his clemency hearing Tuesday from an unlikely source: a sheriff's investigator who said law enforcement officers gave too much credence to Spirko's statements about the 1982 slaying of a Van Wert County postmaster and didn't do enough to investigate other suspects. "The justice system is designed to be fair, but it's not infallible," Wyandot County investigator Bill Latham told the Ohio Parole Board. "I think there's a strong possibility that Betty Jane Mottinger's family have not had justice for 23 years." Latham isn't the only lawman to support Spirko: Former FBI Director William Sessions wrote a letter asking the parole board to recommend that Gov. Bob Taft grant Spirko executive clemency because of "substantial prosecutorial abuses." But at Tuesday's 8-hour hearing, the current prosecutors denied there was any misconduct and rejected Spirko's claims that new evidence taints the jury's 1984 verdict and death sentence. Mottinger's survivors told the board that Spirko's execution is long overdue. "I just can't seem to get past the image of Spirko viciously brutalizing and stabbing Mom," said Mottinger's son, Kent. "I continue to struggle with the thought of how the last thing she ever felt was the pain of Spirko's knife slicing and plunging into her over and over again. Can you imagine that happening to your mother?" There is no physical evidence tying Spirko to the killing. Prosecutors said he was convicted because he told police information about the case that only the killer would know. Mottinger, 48, disappeared from her post office in the hamlet of Elgin on Aug. 9, 1982, two weeks after lifelong criminal Spirko was paroled from Kentucky, where he had served 12 years for the 1969 murder of an elderly woman. Mottinger's decomposed body was found 6 weeks later in a bean field, wrapped in a paint-spattered tarp. Spirko, jailed in Michigan on an unrelated felonious assault charge, surfaced that October, telling authorities he wanted to trade information on the slaying for leniency. His false leads "should all have been red flags to investigators that anything and everything he said simply could not be relied upon," Latham told the board. "There was no independent information developed by the investigators that would have led them to his doorstep." But prosecutors said Spirko told them facts about the evidence that were not publicized and could only be known by the killer. Chairman Gary Croft said the parole board will report its recommendation to Taft on Tuesday. Spirko is to be executed Sept. 20. (source: Dayton Daily News) ****************************** Family seeks execution of man convicted in '82 murder After 8,410 days of pain, nightmares and bitterness, Kent Mottinger unloaded on the Ohio Parole Board yesterday as it considered clemency for John G. Spirko Jr., his mother's killer. "If, after all of this, you still don't know that Spirko's execution should be carried out, I have one last suggestion for you: Take him home and introduce him to your family," Mottinger said. Spirko, 59, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 20 for the abduction and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, the postmistress in Elgin in Van Wert County, on Aug. 9, 1982. The parole board, after an eighthour hearing - the longest since Ohio resumed capital punishment in 1999 - was to discuss a recommendation for Gov. Bob Taft. The board's decision will be made public Tuesday. Under Ohio law, Taft has unlimited power to grant clemency or a reprieve or do nothing and allow Spirko's death by injection to proceed at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. The kidnapping and brutal slaying of Mottinger, a diminutive, 48-yearold mother of 3 children and grandmother, triggered one of the largest state and federal investigations in recent Ohio history. She was stabbed 18 times in the chest and stomach and raped. Her body, wrapped in a gray, canvas tarp, was found 6 weeks later in a bean field about 50 miles away. Whoever killed her netted $50 in cash, stamps and postal money orders. Spirko continued to protest his innocence through the 21 years since his conviction and death sentence, although he changed his story more than a dozen times. Now Spirko's legal team, backed by luminaries such as Steven Drizin, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, is battling to persuade Taft to grant clemency or at least a temporary reprieve while appeals continue. Spirko's long criminal record included the murder in 1969 of a 73-year-old woman in Covington, Ky., for which he served 12 years. He was released from a Kentucky prison just 12 days before Mottinger's murder. Although not originally a suspect in the Mottinger case, Spirko came forward and provided prosecutors with information about the crime in hopes of striking a deal in connection with an unrelated offense. "The absolute worst horror of all," said Thomas Hill, Spirko's attorney from Washington, D.C., "would be to execute an innocent man." Hill said there is no physical evidence linking Spirko to the case - no murder weapon or fingerprints. Further, he said, county and state prosecutors conspired to hide evidence that could have been used in Spirko's defense. Part of the information defense attorneys say is missing concerns Delaney Gibson, Spirko's former friend and Kentucky cellmate. Although Gibson was identified as being outside the Elgin Post Office at the time of Mottinger's abduction, he was never brought to trial. He remains free today, his whereabouts unknown. Hill said eyewitness Opal Seibert testified at Spirko's trial about Gibson. Hill said that Spirko was convicted in part because of Gibson's reported presence in Elgin. But, Hill said, Gibson, who worked as a migrant farmhand in North Carolina in 1982, had a rock-solid alibi because he was visted by relatives on the weekend of Mottinger's murder. Gibson's relatives came forward after Spirko's trial and provided photos taken that weekend, plus a dated photo-processing receipt. Also, Hill said, the photos showed Gibson wearing a full beard, and his farm boss remembered him as wearing a beard then. But Seibert testified that the man she identified as Gibson was clean-shaven. "In the case, the jury's search for the truth was corrupted," Drizin said, "and over 23 years later, the search for truth is still being corrupted." Tim Prichard, senior deputy attorney general, countered the defense claims, calling them "an evolution of deception and concealment." Prichard said there is no new, credible evidence, and Spirko should be executed after 2 decades of appeals at the county, state and federal levels. Prosecutors yesterday played video from Spirko's statement to the jury at his 1983 trial. "I'm tired," he said. "Rather than spend my life in prison, I ask you to kill me." Only Spirko's death, Jane Varley told the parole board, may banish her bad dreams. Varley's brother married Mottinger's daughter, Kay. "I am plagued by recurring nightmares. I am always in Janie's place, enduring the torture, the rape, and finally the repeated thrusts of the knife into my body. "I haven't slept in 48 hours," she said. "I am afraid to go to sleep." (source: Columbus Dispatch) *************************** 'No mercy' urged for Spirko----Murdered postmaster's son pleads with parole board A son still grieving 23 years after his mother was brutally stabbed to death told Ohio Parole Board members yesterday they would be little better than terrorists if they recommend mercy for John Spirko as a similar panel did in Kentucky two weeks before his mother disappeared. "The monster Spirko murdered a helpless woman in Kentucky," said Kent Mottinger. "Your counterparts in that state chose not to do their job and let the monster go. He killed a woman in cold blood, and they let him go!" Spirko, 59, one of the longest-serving residents of Ohio's death row, faces execution by lethal injection on Sept. 20 for the Aug. 9, 1982, kidnapping and murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, the 48-year-old postmaster of the tiny Van Wert County village of Elgin. The murder occurred 2 weeks after he moved in with his sister in Swanton, nearly 100 miles from Elgin, after being paroled. He'd served 12 years of a Kentucky life sentence for strangling an elderly woman. Spirko's sister, Cathy Bailey, and his attorneys yesterday urged the parole board to recommend that Gov. Bob Taft grant him a full pardon or, in the alternative, a reprieve to allow time for a new appeal to proceed in U.S. District Court in Toledo. "John Spirko is a liar, perhaps a compulsive liar," said attorney Thomas Hill. "He's an unsavory character. He's an unsympathetic character. ... But we don't execute people because they're liars. We punish them in other ways. ... John Spirko is innocent of this crime." The board will issue its recommendation to Mr. Taft Aug. 30. He has granted clemency once before in a death-row case, commuting a sentence to life in prison without parole. He has never granted a full pardon. The state maintains Spirko's own words convicted him as he spun numerous tales about what happened that day, offered in hopes of securing leniency for himself and his girlfriend on unrelated assault and attempted jailbreak charges. Investigators fixed on threads of those stories - descriptions of the purse Mrs. Mottinger had bought days earlier, the torn tarp draping her body found 6 weeks later near Findlay, and the approximate number of stab wounds - to place him at the scene. "He revealed information that only the real killer would know, and he's offered no other explanation," said Senior Attorney General Tim Prichard. He pointed to Spirko's statement in his final interview: "Lay it on me. I killed her." "That is an admission to aggravated murder... ," said Mr. Prichard. "This is a confession, and it's not made up. This alone is enough to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt, and it's certainly enough to deny clemency for this guy." But Spirko's attorneys argue no physical evidence ties Spirko to the crime and that his story involving fellow Kentucky cellmate Delaney Gibson to the crime was just the latest in a series of lies. They contend prosecutors tied Gibson to the crime to implicate Spirko, relying on the testimony of an 81-year-old eyewitness who identified a photo of a clean-shaven Gibson as the man she saw outside the post office the morning Mrs. Mottinger disappeared. But Gibson was never tried. His indictment was quietly dropped late last year, a fact that intrigued at least one board member. The eyewitness died in 1991. "You have an 81-year-old witness, the only witness placing Gibson at the scene of the crime," board member Kathleen Kovach told county Prosecutor Charles Kennedy. "We can understand why it was dismissed later, much, much later, but what happened in all those years [after Spirko's conviction]?" "I was satisfied that he was serving what I was told was two life sentences in Kentucky," said Mr. Kennedy. Gibson was paroled in Kentucky in 1998 and is free. Spirko's attorneys point to statements by Paul Hartman, a chief investigator, that he was convinced Gibson was in North Carolina on the days before and after the murder. They point to photos and other evidence suggesting he had a full beard at the time, unlike the eyewitness' description. (source: Toledo Blade)
