August 26 TEXAS: Ill attorney delays trial's penalty phase The start of the sentencing phase of Maria Raquel Rivas' capital murder trial was postponed until today after her lead defense lawyer became ill Thursday. Grant Jones became ill as a side effect of prescription medication that he is taking, court officials said. He was told to rest Thursday. A jury convicted Rivas of capital murder Wednesday in the March 2004 stabbing death of James Timothy Haynes. Haynes, 44, was found dead in his vehicle in the 2400 block of West Broadway, authorities said. Leonard Ray Haskins, 21, was convicted in June of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors have said Rivas supplied Haskins with the knife that killed Haynes and that she was a co-conspirator in the crime. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty and, if jurors agree, Rivas would be the 1st woman in Nueces County to receive capital punishment. (source : Corpus Christi Caller-Times) LOUISIANA: 5 years later: Wright still on death row 5 years ago, Donnie Wright was found guilty by a Lafayette jury for the 1st degree murder of 6-year-old Heather White. Just 2 days later, that same jury sentenced Wright to die by lethal injection for the crime. Today, Wright remains on death row at Angola State Penitentiary, and it looks like he may be there awhile yet. "He's really not a whole lot closer to getting executed than he was 5 years ago," District Attorney Schuyler Marvin, who prosecuted the case as an assistant, said. "That's really frustrating." The public first heard of the tragic story on Sunday, December 12, 1999, when Webster sheriffs deputies responded to a call in which a little girl had quit breathing. LSU Health Sciences Center officials said then the best-case scenario for little Heather would be living with brain damage. Deputies worked throughout the night and the next week, piecing together evidence that led to the conviction of Wright. Items recovered as evidence from the Freight Entrance Road mobile home included blood spatters on the walls, a bloody board and rifle strap used to beat the child, among other things. Heathers mother, Lora Moseley, and Wright, Moseley's boyfriend, were then arrested for attempted murder. But on Wednesday, December 15, 1999, with Heather brain dead, but still alive, family members made the decision to remove her from life support. Residents and law enforcement from all over Webster Parish mourned the little girl, holding candlelight vigils, prayer meetings and celebrating her birthday by lighting a tree in downtown Minden in her honor. Moseley and Wright found themselves now charged with 1st degree murder. Trial began the next August, with Judge Dewey Burchett ordering a change of venue to Lafayette because of the publicity the case had received. Jury selection took a little more than a week, with testimony beginning Tuesday, August 22. Expert witnesses testified the extent and repetitiveness of Heathers injuries, which included countless beatings, malnutrition, sexual abuse and dozens of bruises internally and externally. When the jury went out for deliberations, it took just 3 hours for them to unanimously vote to convict Wright of 1st degree murder. During the penalty phase, it took just 2 hours for the jury to determine death as the appropriate sentence for the child killer. Moseley pleaded guilty in October 2000 to 1st degree murder in exchange for a life sentence. She remains at the Louisiana Correctional Institution for Women at St. Gabriel. The death sentence for Wright was the 1st in Lafayette since 1983. Wright has exhausted all of his appeals through the Second Circuit, Louisiana Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court. The case is now in its second round of appeals through the Capital Appeals Project of New Orleans, which is required by law to represent all death row cases. "The bar association booklet says they shouldnt handle more than five cases on trial and 10 on appeals. There are 70 to 80 on death row, and they represent every one of them," Marvin said. "They say theyre over the limit and can't take any more cases." However, the court has ruled that the Project must represent Wright - a ruling that is now on appeal. "It's crazy. This is insanity," Marvin said. "If you have $10 million in the bank, you can't hire anybody else - you have to hire these folks, and then they say they can't be ordered to represent you because theyre over the limit on cases." Recent exonerations due to DNA and mental incapacitations have also put a hamper on the death penalty. "There's a lot of prosecutors who think we won't execute anybody in 5 years in Louisiana," Marvin said. "Mental retardation has been changed in the legislature. That and DNA has kind of overwhelmed the death penalty. "A lot of states are doing away with the death penalty because of the exoneration by DNA," he continued. "DNA's great, but it's just not there in every case and never will be, and this case has absolutely nothing to do with DNA." Wright will die on death row - but only time will tell whether it will be by lethal injection or natural causes. (source: Minden Press-Herald) FLORIDA: A murderer killing time Some of the infamous and sacred symbols of the terrorism that began in Gainesville 15 years ago today are changing. Construction gates block entrances to the olive-drab ghost town on Archer Road named Gatorwood Apartments. The sprawling complex has been closed in preparation for razing or remodeling. It was in Gatorwood apartment No. 1203 that confessed serial killer Danny Rolling committed his final 2 murders of 5 college students in late August 1990 - those of Tracy Paules and Manuel Taboada, both 23 and from Miami. A few blocks west, SW 24th Avenue, little more than a lane that connects SW 34th Street to 43rd Street, has become the center of a community debate over widening the road to enable expansion of the nearby Butler Plaza shopping center. Inside a khaki-colored duplex apartment on SW 24th Avenue - a block west of 34th Street and a short hike from the killer's wooded campsite - Rolling murdered Christa Hoyt of Archer, an 18-year-old Santa Fe Community College student. Up a hill about a mile to the north, at the summit of the 34th Street graffiti wall, the 15-year-old painted memorial to the five murdered students today is as often painted over as not. The 25-foot-long, framed panel presumably is defiled unintentionally by people too young to know anything about the savage crimes on the eve of the 1990 fall semester at the University of Florida and SFCC. Gatorwood, SW 24th Avenue and The Wall: each in its way is a monument to Gainesville's darkest hour, a time when palpable fear stalked the city for months and threw it into the harsh spotlight of national notoriety. Amid change, however, those monuments illustrate how time, and life, go on. That's now being demonstrated all over town as students arrive in Gainesville to start or continue their college careers. They're settling in, gearing up for studies and embarking on new beginnings. Just as 5 other students did in August 1990: 18, a UF freshman from Deerfield Beach, and her Williamsburg Village Apartments roommate, CHRISTINA POWELL, 17, a UF freshman from Jacksonville. Their bodies - the first to be discovered - were found Aug. 26, 1990, the Sunday before classes began. CHRISTA HOYT, a records clerk for the Alachua County Sheriff's Office who planned to go into forensic investigation, whose body was discovered the next day. TRACY PAULES, entering her senior year at UF and planning to go to law school, and MANUEL "MANNY" TABOADA, a SFCC transfer who planned to major in architecture. Their bodies were found Aug. 28. A killer awaits 15 years after the murders and more than 11 years after he was sentenced to death for them, life goes on, too, for Rolling. Now 51, he remains on death row in Union Correctional Institution west of Starke, less than 40 miles from the scenes of his heinous rampage, which included the decapitation, mutilation and rape of some of his victims. Outside the razor-wire fencing, Rolling's appeals of his 1994 death sentence continue to drag on. He recently lost the latest motion in his drive to get his sentence overturned. After confessing to the crimes in early 1993, Rolling changed his plea to guilty in a Gainesville courtroom on Feb. 15, 1994. He was sentenced to death 2 months later. In July in Tallahassee, the U.S. District Court of Appeals in the Northern District of Florida - which received the case 3 years ago this month - denied Rolling's petition to have his sentence set aside. Rolling's lawyer's had contended that he should be given a new sentencing hearing because it was impossible for him to have gotten an impartial jury in the Gainesville area. He also questioned the constitutionality of Florida's death penalty. Court records indicate that Rolling plans to file a new appeal soon with a federal court in Atlanta, the last stop before the U.S. Supreme Court. Rolling also is a suspect in the 1989 stabbing deaths of an 8-year-old boy, his mother and grandfather in Shreveport, La., Rolling's hometown. Louisiana officials didn't pursue an arrest warrant in that case because of Rolling's case in Florida, said a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office in Shreveport. Given the legal questions involved, it's conceivable that Rolling's appeals could be sent back to state courts, and more years could pass before his case is resolved. Delayed justice Some members of the victims' families see cruel irony in the slow pace of justice. "It's really sad that Christa's dad is no longer here," said Dianna Hoyt of Archer, Christa Hoyt's stepmother. "One of the reasons he got ill was because of Christa's death, and it was one of the reasons he passed away - he died of a broken heart." Her husband, Gary Hoyt, turned 53 Aug. 28, 1990 - the day after his daughter's body was found. He died in 2000 at age 63. "And to think that he passed on, and for (Rolling) the appeal process is going on and on . . . it's so sad," said Hoyt, 61, a pediatric registered nurse at Shands at UF. Rolling also has outlived Jim Larson, Sonja Larson's father. He died of colon cancer in 1996, a death his widow believes was advanced by his daughter's murder. "I think it was pushed ahead by his sorrow," said Ada Larson, 67, a retired teacher who lives part of the year in Ohio and the other part in Deerfield Beach, south of Boca Raton. "How much longer for these appeals?" she said. "It took two to three years for his (last) appeal, and just last month they denied it. They sent me like 40 pages from that hearing. I read the whole thing and it's just a lot of rehash of the same things. It's just ridiculous." The day Rolling was sentenced to death in 1994, Mario Taboada of Miami stood in the courtroom, held out his left hand with fingers and thumb extended and shouted at the man who killed his younger brother, 5 years - you're going down in 5!" 11 years and 4 months have passed since Taboada made his dramatic gesture in court. He told The Sun recently that the endless delays in carrying out Rolling's death sentence are beyond frustrating. They're spurring him to greater involvement in helping bring about Rolling's execution. "I'm thinking about becoming more active in expediting this," said Taboada, 44, an account executive at WXDJ-FM, a tropical/Latin-music radio station in Miami. "I want to do whatever I can to make it happen. "I've said this before and I'll say it again: I'd like to refer to Danny Rolling in the same tense as my brother - in the past tense," he said. Some people outside the victims' families are also frustrated and angered by the legal delays. "What 15 years teaches us is that Florida has an absurd, inefficient and costly legal system," said Sadie Darnell, a retired Gainesville Police Department captain who was the ever-present voice of GPD during the student-murders investigation, and a friend to - and advocate for - the victims' families ever since. "If I were a judge or jury and pronounced this very weighty decision, I'd expect that sentence to be carried out at least within one's lifetime. "2 of the victims' fathers are dead," said Darnell, who earlier this month returned to GPD in a civilian capacity as a community relations coordinator. "The fact that his sentence has not been carried out is a chronic, painful reality for the families." Spencer Mann was Darnell's counterpart when he served as public information officer for the Alachua County Sheriff's Office at the time of the murders. "It's been very frustrating that the appellate process has dragged on so long, especially for the victims' families," said Mann, who in 1998 joined the 8th Judicial Circuit State Attorney's Office in Gainesville as an investigator and spokesman. "It's very close to working itself out, but it shouldn't take this many years to get there." Former GPD Chief Wayland Clifton said there likely are "several years yet to go" in Rolling's appeals process. "From my perspective, that's far, far too long," said Clifton, who served as chief during the student murders and the investigation. "It literally has no deterrent value if the perpetrator is caught and given the death penalty but is still alive 16 or 17 years later." A town in terror 15 years ago, Gainesville and UF were riding the crest of a hopeful new era. Early in 1990, John Lombardi was named the school's new president. Steve Spurrier began his tenure as head football coach. That August, Gainesville learned that Money Magazine had selected the city as the 13th best place to live in the United States. Among the criteria for the magazine honor was the city's "safe streets." Mann recalled how the city and campus were on an emotional high as the fall semester approached. "When the murders occurred, it knocked the community's feet out from under it," he said. Within a week of what headlines called "the Southwest Slayings," as the national news media descended on the city with their fleets of satellite trucks, then-CBS News anchor Dan Rather called Gainesville "perhaps the most dangerous place in America." The Tampa chapter of the Guardian Angels, a volunteer group of crime fighters that got its start in New York City, sent a delegation to Gainesville to patrol apartment complexes. Nine days after the final two bodies were found, talk show host Phil Donahue drew a large audience at the Downtown Community Plaza as he did a live broadcast on the student murders. Even as the thickening mist of 15 years tries to obscure the details, some who experienced that period in Gainesville readily recall how terrifying life was in the months before Nov. 15, 1991, when Rolling was indicted and formally charged with the murders. "There was a fear in this community that was overwhelming," said Jeanne Singer, chief assistant state attorney for the 8th Judicial Circuit, who in 1993 was assigned to build the prosecution's case in the Paules-Taboada murders. "I had young children then, and I didn't let them play in the front yard." With each new discovery of bodies, the community's fear escalated. Singer recalled how sales of guns and Mace skyrocketed during that period. The city was crawling with police. Dozens of investigators were assembled into a task force, including members of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Florida Highway Patrol. Clifton once said he wanted the killer, while still at large, to feel like Gainesville was a police state. Locksmiths were kept busy fortifying doors, and many people installed home security systems. Almost every house with a porch light had it turned on every night. UF ramped up its Student Nighttime Auxiliary Patrol, which provided escorts to students as they walked across campus. Demand for the service was so great that the university hired and trained dozens of new escorts. On the campuses and off, people sought safety in numbers, doubling and tripling up with roommates or relatives. Frightened people swamped GPD and the Sheriff's Office with calls about a strange sound or suspicious activity. "Rumors were flying like crazy," said Linda Gray, who as director of UF's News and Public Affairs department served as spokeswoman for the university. "At the time, it was deemed probably the worst crisis to hit a college campus in modern times," said Gray, who today is assistant vice president and director of News and Information at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. "There had been murders and shootings on campuses before, but in most of those cases the perpetrators were immediately known. This was a situation where five bodies were found over a three-day period . . . and Danny Rolling was not charged for almost a year." It was in the days before widespread cell phone use, and parents and students weren't able to be in instantaneous contact as they are today. UF set up a bank of phones in alumni offices, Gray said, and received thousands of calls each day from parents wanting to know if their children were safe. As vice president for student affairs at the time of the murders, Art Sandeen helped coordinate UF's response to the crisis. "There was no precedent for this scale of tragedy, at least in my experience," said Sandeen, professor in UF's College of Education's Department of Educational Leadership, Policy and Foundations. "Parents and students didn't know what to do." Lombardi's leadership and constant visibility "really enabled the institution to continue," Sandeen said. "And Mike Browne, who was student body president - We couldn't have been more fortunate during those terrible days to have a leader like Mike. I'll never forget a press conference in the Reitz Union in which Mike said, 'This is my university and they're not going to take it away from me.' And he urged his fellow students to return." UF didn't cancel classes, but instead said attendance was optional. The school also dispensed with the deadlines for tuition and other fees. Gray said that after initially going home for a few days, most UF students returned for the fall semester. About 500 didn't return in the fall, she said, but most of them came back for the spring semester in 1991. Increased security Clifton, who today is chief probation officer for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice in the 8th Judicial Circuit, said the experience of 1990 led to changes that remain in place 15 years later. "Security is a lot better now," he said. "We're all more conscious about the transition from one semester to another. It's a time when the community is very vulnerable because we've got 60,000 new people coming to town." It's routine now, Clifton said, for additional police patrols to be out during the start of semesters. Around student housing, he said, patrols are doubled during the transition period. Like Gatorwood, SW 24th Avenue and The Wall, the community has changed. As the places of horror and honor disappear, however, people may forget what happened 15 years ago. The victims' families don't want people to forget. "I work with many young nurses who were small children when (the murders) happened, and it has no importance to them," Dianna Hoyt said. "I don't think they need to know the full details, but they do need to know there is a safety issue, and how horribly it affected the community. "We want everyone to remember our children and to realize that (Rolling's sentence) needs to be followed through." (source: Gainesville Sun) INDIANA: Clemency for Baird This is the one, governor. It's been an unprecedented year for Indiana executions - 5 since Gov. Mitch Daniels took office in January. He has expressed his concern about the death penalty. But if Daniels didnt think there was sufficient reasons to stop the previous four executions, surely the sentence involving a man whom a well-respected Indiana University psychiatrist deemed "grossly psychotic and delusional" is the one that most demands clemency. Commuting his sentence to life in prison without parole would be a merciful act. Arthur Baird II, 59, of Darlington, is scheduled to die Wednesday for the 1985 murders of his parents, Arthur and Kathryn Baird. He was also sentenced to 60 years in prison for killing his pregnant wife, Nadine. The Indiana Parole Board voted 3-1 Wednesday to deny clemency, but Daniels doesnt have to abide by its ruling. Baird is mentally ill, incapable of preparing to die. Indiana gains nothing from his death. Dr. Philip Coons, a professor emeritus at Indiana University School of Medicine specializing in post-traumatic stress disorders, terms Bairds murderous eruption "the perfect storm." Baird, Coons said, had been sexually molested as a child and developed mental illnesses that included delusions and obsessive-compulsive disorder. At the time of the murders, he was under stress, heard voices and felt possessed. Police said Baird confessed, telling them he'd gone "berserk." He also said he was going to get $1 million from the federal government for solving the national debt. He was in debt himself and had been laid off from a factory job. Coons' analysis gives us a reason for Bairds horrific actions, but it does not excuse the crime. No, Coons' analysis should lead Hoosiers to one question: What is the value in putting a mentally ill man to death? Nothing. Even the "justice for the family" defense often used by death penalty supporters doesn't work here. LaQuita Anglin, Nadine Bairds sister, said Bairds parents would not want him to die. Neither would she. "He is no harm to anyone in prison," she told the board. Daniels should also consider the words of Robert Elmore, a juror who voted to convict Baird: "I think if there had been life without parole," he told the board, "I think we would have chosen that." The state did not offer that sentence until 1994, several years after Baird's trial. So, a noted professor, a family member and a juror have compelling reasons why they think Baird deserves life in prison rather than death. This is the one, governor. ************************************ How responsible are the delusional? The Indiana Parole Board has voted 3-1 against recommending clemency for Arthur Baird II, scheduled to be executed Wednesday for the 1985 murder of his parents, and that merely puts off a discussion we've long needed to have in this state about capital punishment and the profoundly mentally ill. There is a dispute about the true state of Baird's mental health. His defense team says he had been sexually molested as a child and developed mental illnesses that included delusions and an obsessive-compulsive disorder that he largely masked for years. He was under intense stress, heard voices and felt possessed when the killings occurred. The parole board, backing up the prosecution and the state, disagrees: Baird has "played an elaborate game of deceit" and is "nothing but a brutally cruel man." He has been "escalating his insanity story" in hopes of avoiding execution. It's valid to try to determine the exact mental state of someone facing execution. But does it even matter? Deputy Attorney General Steve Creason points out that the Indiana Supreme Court has considered mental illness as a "low range" mitigating factor when it comes to the death penalty. So even if the state agreed that Baird was deeply psychotic and delusion at the time of the killings, that doesn't mean the state would change his sentence to life without parole. The unanswered question: If someone is delusional because of an accident of brain chemistry, how much more "responsible" for his acts is he than someone who, for example, kills a pedestrian with his vehicle after a seizure caused by an unknown medical condition? (source for both: Editorial, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette) NEW JERSEY: Trantino haunts families of slain Lodi officers "What can happen in Lodi?" 7 syllables that have gnawed at the heart of Sadie Tedesco for more than 4 decades now. They were the last words she ever heard from her son, Gary. It was around midnight when Sadie confronted her 22-year-old son about his plan to ride with the cops that night. She had a bad feeling. She wanted him to stay home for good and quit his crazy dream of being a cop. Gary placed his hands on his mother's shoulders and smiled. "Go to bed, mom. Stop worrying," she said, recalling her son's words in an interview last week. "What can happen in Lodi?" While his mother lay sleepless, Gary Tedesco was shot and killed in the early hours of Aug. 26, 1963, at a Route 46 roadhouse about a mile away. Tedesco, an unarmed trainee, was sent to the Angel Lounge to help veteran Lodi police officer Peter Voto and learn from Voto's handling of a disturbance there. At the Angel Lounge, two drunken hoods and their girlfriends were celebrating a big heist they had made that afternoon in New York. The hoods, ex-cons named Thomas Trantino and Frank Falco, had already stripped and pistol-whipped Voto when Tedesco came into the bar. The trainee and the veteran died together in an explosion of gunfire that has become one of the most infamous crimes in New Jersey history. Today, on the 42nd anniversary of the murders, the families of Voto and Tedesco are reminders that the Lodi cop killings are less an isolated act of crime than a tragedy in progress. In ways big and small, the families have been forced to relive their loss time and time again. Next month, for example, a Superior Court judge in Passaic County is scheduled to take up a wrongful death suit the families have filed against Trantino. Lawyers for the families and Trantino are in settlement talks. But long before the families filed suit in 2002, they found themselves forever frustrated in their mission to bring justice to the man who started the shooting that night at the Angel Lounge - Trantino. The police had shot Falco dead in a scuffle just hours after the killings. Trantino turned himself in to be convicted and sentenced to the electric chair, but escaped execution when the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in 1972. For the next 30 years, family members stood beside prosecutors as they argued against Trantino's release, in venues ranging from the parole board to the Legislature to the state Supreme Court. Peter Voto's brother, Andy, a Lodi police officer who became chief years after the murders, attended every hearing. He died last year at the age of 77, having lived long enough to see his brother's killer go free. Trantino was paroled and released from prison in 2002, at the age of 64. "My father died in 1963 when they killed Pete, he died in 1972 when the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty, and he died in 2002 when Trantino walked," said Andy Voto's daughter, Louise Voto Clarke, a schoolteacher from Paramus. "His life became a mission of justice for his brother, and he died with the incredible reality that, in this case, there is no justice," said Voto Clarke. "You want to talk about loss? You want to talk about tragedy? Just look at my dad." No end to mourning Patty Tedesco was just 11 the night her brother was killed. She recalls a phone call in the middle of the night, a trip to the police station and the abrupt appearance of a man in uniform, the news bearer. It was not just the end of Gary's life, but the beginning of a long twilight for the hospitable Italian family that had once been the center of life in their Harrison Avenue neighborhood. On some nights, it was not uncommon for 20 or 30 people to show up for Sadie's spaghetti and meatballs. After Gary's death, the family abandoned the dining room and the long banquets in favor of quiet meals in the kitchen. The dining room table was the place for grieving. "Every night for months and months, my parents sat around that table and cried," said Patty Tedesco, an executive training consultant who lives in Bucks County, Pa. For the better part of a year, Patty Tedesco said, people would come to the house every night and talk about the murders, about justice, about what Gary's life would have been like if he lived. The family also stopped celebrating Christmas. Plans for the future were put on hold. Schedules were organized around court appearances and memorial services. For a long time, it seemed the only day the family was capable of looking forward to was the day Trantino would finally sit in the electric chair. Patrick Tedesco, Gary's father, had already received an invitation to the execution from the state of New Jersey. Patrick Tedesco, an accountant who was active in Lodi Democratic circles, died eight years after his son was murdered. Family members said his heart attack came after eight years of crying every night. "I was raised in a family that had frozen," said Patty Tedesco. "Looking back ... it's a miracle I was able to escape and do as well as I have." For Patty Tedesco, a childhood of grief led to a life of depression and, at times, $750-a-week therapy bills. She said the murders that destroyed her family have, in one way or another, affected almost every part of her life. She spent a large part of her wedding day, for example, weeping at the graves of her brother and family. She said her ongoing bouts with depression contributed to her divorce and subsequent decision to become a single mother. Over the years she has also become estranged from some family members, she said, because all they want to do is talk about a murder that happened 42 years ago. A few years ago, when her 16-year-old daughter, Ashley, received her first Holy Communion, Patty Tedesco had to talk to her therapist before deciding to throw a party for her daughter. "I did not want my daughter, a whole other generation, to be harmed in any way by this Lodi thing that I went through," Patty Tedesco said. "The therapist and I decided I should call my mother and tell her she could come to the party on 2 conditions: You can't talk about Gary, and you can't wear black." Ashley Tedesco, a student at Central Bucks High School, said she understands the 1963 killings will always be a part of her life, especially as long as her uncle's killer remains free on parole. Earlier this month, she traveled with her mom to Philadelphia for a live taping of a television call-in show about the media's treatment of the Trantino case. One day, she says, she hopes to become a broadcast journalist. "Hopefully, by that time this will no longer be such a big issue for my family," she said. Focus on Trantino But the ghosts of 1963 show no sign of going anywhere soon. In 2002, a new state law that eliminated the 2-year statute of limitations on homicide cases prompted the families to bring the wrongful death suit now pending in Superior Court. Trantino, to the dismay of the families, continues to enjoy his freedom and media attention focusing on his work counseling ex-inmates. Now 67, Trantino receives $33,000 a year for his work, which is sponsored by the Quakers. He lives in Camden. Trantino has said he is considering selling some of the paintings he made during 38 years in prison. There are also plans to make a movie about his life. Back in Lodi, Sadie Tedesco sits at the living room table talking about Gary. On the wall nearby is a framed black-and-white photo of Gary standing next to his pride and joy, a 1932 Ford roadster he had rebuilt by hand. In every room there are pictures of Gary. On a coffee table is a big silver flashlight that Gary once used to halt a robbery at the Dairy Queen which, by the way, was just across the street from the Angel Lounge. And in the hallway, right outside Gary's old bedroom, is a wall full of medals and citations Gary received from the police department. All the awards came after he was dead. Tedesco, who wanted to be a cop from the age of 2, never was sworn in as a police officer. That was scheduled to happen a week after the killing. The blue police uniform Tedesco would have worn to his swearing in became his burial suit. Sadie Tedesco points out a window of her tidy but faded one-story cottage that sits just over the Garfield border. In the lot next door Gary was going to build his dream house where he and longtime girlfriend, Adrienne, would raise a big Italian family right by grandma. There were going to be three big bedrooms and a 2nd floor rec room were Gary could entertain all his friends. Sadie would have cooked for all of them. That dream ended 42 years ago. "People say 'You got to move on, you got to get over it,'" Sadie Tedesco said. "Well I can't, and I don't care, because I'm a mother and that's how mothers feel. I had a beautiful life and a beautiful son for 22 years, then it ended." (source: NorthJersey.com) CALIFORNIA: Death penalty sought against man accused in Glendale crash Prosecutors have decided to seek the death penalty against the man accused of causing a collision of 2 commuter trains that killed 11 people and injured nearly 200. Juan Manuel Alvarez, 26, allegedly parked his Jeep on tracks in suburban Glendale on Jan. 26, then abandoned the vehicle as a Metrolink train approached. The train crashed into the Jeep and derailed, slamming into an oncoming train. Glendale police have said that while it initially appeared Alvarez was trying to commit suicide, the discovery of other evidence, including gasoline doused on the sport utility vehicle, showed he was trying to cause the crash. Alvarez has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of murder and one count of arson. Eleven members of the Los Angeles County district attorney's capital case committee agreed this week to use a rarely used "train wrecking" statute as one of the special circumstance allegations against Alvarez, spokeswoman Jane Robison said Friday. She declined to discuss what led the committee to seek the death penalty. "We don't comment on any proceedings at the committee meetings," she said. Alvarez's defense attorney, Eric Chase, did not immediately return a telephone message requesting comments. (source: Associated Press)
