december 17
TEXAS:
Mother of capital murder suspect in disbelief
Even after a confession from her son, Olivia Martinez doesn’t believe her
transitioning transgender son is guilty of brutally killing 20-month-old
Patricia Ann Rader, the sweet girl known as Annie.
Martinez is the mother of Shawn Vincent Boniello, 30, of Albuquerque, N.M.
Boniello is charged with capital murder in Annie’s Dec. 3 death. Milam County
District Attorney Bill Torrey will seek the death penalty if Boniello is
convicted, Torrey announced Thursday after the Milam County grand jury indicted
the suspect. He was also indicted under his assumed name of Shayla Angelina
Boniello.
“It’s devastating. It’s a nightmare that I feel like myself and my family can’t
wake up from,” Martinez told the Temple Daily Telegram Friday.
Martinez didn’t find out what supposedly happened until 2 days later, she said.
She usually talked to Shawna every day, at least by text message. She talked to
her son that Sunday, but not on Monday. Martinez sent several messages Tuesday,
but never heard back — so she called Mike Matthews, who was Annie’s custodial
grandfather, and he called her back to tell her “what allegedly had occurred.”
She was understandably shocked, Martinez said.
“It was like a nightmare,” she said. “I have read all the articles and, you
know, I know that I’m a very faithful Christian woman. I know God has this and
I know the truth will come out of what really happened. But I also know my
daughter wouldn’t hurt a fly, and there is no way she did the things they
described.”
Family members of the dead girl responded angrily.
“So what happened? Did a ghost do it?” Thomas Bond, the dead infant’s uncle,
said.
“Let’s get real. It sounds like she’s trying to state someone else did this,
and he’s getting blamed for it,” Rachel Bond, Annie’s aunt, said.,P> “Annie’s
the only innocent person. She was a helpless, defenseless baby,” Rachel said.
“We will keep all family that’s involved in our prayers. The only narrative
we’re focusing on right now is getting justice for Annie.”
Boniello said in the statement to police that he was “punching, shaking and
picking up the victim and wrapping her around her and squeezing the victim
until she stopped moving.” He said he was angry and frustrated when he squeezed
the girl until “he felt her bones begin to pop and crush,” a probable cause
affidavit said.
Martinez described Boniello as “very distraught,” and believes the Rockdale
Police Department targeted Shawn because of being transgender. She also
believes there are extenuating circumstances that haven’t been examined,
Martinez said.
Thomas Bond said that explanation made no sense. He explained they had no idea
“she was even a he” until after police officers searched the trailer and found
paperwork where he was going through a name change.
“If we as a family didn’t know, how would anyone else have known?” Rachel said.
“Did anyone else even know Shayla/Shawn was in Rockdale?”
Martinez said Boniello “would never, ever have done the horrible things that
are being said. I believe she was coerced into confessing because she was the
easy target.”
Concerns about living in Texas
Boniello moved to Rockdale in October to be with Annie’s grandfather, Michael
Matthews. The two met on the internet, Martinez said.
/ She had her concerns about Boniello — already transitioning — moving to a
small town in Texas where he would probably be the only transgender and to live
with someone he didn’t know. Also, the couple had already been evicted from
where they had lived, Martinez said. She imagined the bias and lack of
acceptance in the small community.
Martinez went to Rockdale in November to see Boniello and to meet the man with
whom he lived. She stayed in the mobile home with them and watched Boniello
interact with Annie. She said she could see how much Boniello loved Annie.
Martinez also liked Matthews, she said.
She was still concerned, however. Three weeks after Boniello moved to Rockdale,
he and Matthews were evicted from where they lived. Matthews didn’t have a car
and the trailer where they lived didn’t have a stove. Boniello cooked on a hot
plate and in a microwave and took care of Annie like “she was her own,”
Martinez said.
Martinez mentioned the presence of Texas Department of Family and Protective
Services in the past lives of the Matthews family. She said she didn’t know the
family, but thought there was sufficient evidence to make someone wonder if
something else happened to Annie that day.
Boniello was the only one there except for Annie’s 14-year-old uncle, an arrest
affidavit said.
Matthews’ parents wanted to take Annie out several times days prior to her
death, Rachel Bond said, but Boniello reportedly kept making excuses. He kept
the baby from the grandparents. No one had seen Annie since Thanksgiving. It
seemed like he isolated Mike and Annie from Matthews’ parents.
“Annie was removed from the custody of her parents shortly after her birth,”
Lisa Block, Department of Family and Protective Services spokeswoman, said
Friday. “The court appointed Matthews as her guardian on May 4 after her brief
stay in foster care. The CPS case was closed after Matthews was appointed her
guardian by the court.”
Although Block couldn’t say the reason Annie was removed from parental custody,
she said, “In general, children are removed for abuse/neglect.”
Martinez fears for her Boniello’s life right now, she said.
A mother’s viewpoint
Martinez could tell starting when Shawn was three years old that he had mostly
female behavior, she said.
“That’s not a learned behavior. She was born that way,” Martinez said. “We, as
a society, have to accept those things. My daughter shouldn’t be condemned for
that.”
Thomas Bond said that played no part in what happened.
Boniello is on medications to help with the transition, and she is allowed to
take those in jail, Boniello told his mother. However, no one knows what will
happen when the prescriptions run out, Martinez said.
Early in his early teenage years, Boniello had some substance abuse issues, his
mother said. She added there never has been any violence or violent tendencies.
However, Martinez speculated it was possible the medications could have
triggered something.
“It was an accident,” Martinez speculated. “Things sometimes happen that are
outside of our control. I think my poor daughter panicked. And now words are
being misconstrued and things are being twisted around.”
Martinez has had an outpouring here of support, prayers and good wishes from
the people in Albuquerque who know Boniello.
Martinez asked the people of Milam County to not pass judgment until all the
facts are known and all the evidence is uncovered.
“I hope the community of Rockdale doesn’t pass judgment on her because she is
transgender,” she said.
Rachel Bond had a reaction to Martinez’s statement.
“If I had a son or child going through the same thing, I’d be heartbroken and
upset but, at the same time, I’d want all the facts and justice to be done.
We’re all adults. We have to be held accountable for our actions, and that
includes everyone, she said.
This isn’t about gender. Everyone needs to focus on Annie and what was done to
her, both Bonds said. And there is only one person who did it, and that’s what
everyone needs to focus on, the couple said.
A visit with her son
Martinez said she saw her son Sunday in the Milam County Jail, adding that
Boniello “is very emotional, cries a lot, is distraught, scared and worried.”
Martinez said Boniello asked her how Mike and his family were doing.
Boniello’s father lives in Arizona, and his relationship with Boniello is “up
and down” because he’s had a hard time with Shawn’s transition and transgender
issues. However, he’s planning to visit Boniello in January if he can gather
enough money for the trip, Martinez said.
Boniello’s grandmother is deceased, and his grandfather is out of the country
and can’t be reached, Martinez said. She said they have a small family except
for some extended family in Italy.
“I have lifted it up to the Lord because He is good and He is just. The truth
will come out,” Martinez said.
Arrest records
Boniello has other aliases including Shawn Mascarena and Shawn V. Mascarena.
“There is more to this. Why does he have all the aliases from one male name to
others?” Thomas Bond said.
Besides Albuquerque, Boniello previously lived in Rio Rancho, N.M.; San
Francisco; and Prescott, Ariz.; online records showed.
Shawn has an arrest record under the surname Mascarena, but some charges were
dismissed by the prosecution. Other cases were listed as pending, including two
driving while intoxicated charges, a failure to appear and a
delivery/possession of drug paraphernalia charge. The charges ranged from 2008
through 2011.
(source: Temple Daily Telegram)
COLORADO:
Death penalty: How likely is it to be imposed with a new Colorado governor?
With a new governor and a Democratic-controlled House and Senate, legislators
are set to propose a bill to abolish the death penalty in Colorado.
Fort Collins Rep. Jeni Arndt, D-Fort Collins, said she's working on a bill in
the state House to abolish the death penalty, with support from Democratic Rep.
Adrienne Benavidez from Commerce City.
Arndt, who is seeking to fill Sen. John Kefalas' seat in the state Senate — as
is Democratic Rep. Joann Ginal — said she can't speak to the bill's specifics
yet, but the bill has been proposed several times in the General Assembly and
failed, so she's trying again.
For Arndt, her faith plays a factor in why she opposes the death penalty, but
she also believes that the death penalty is discriminatory and unevenly applied
based on race — pointing to the fact that all the inmates on Colorado's death
row are black.
She said she remembers asking her mom at only 5 years old why "the government
killed people."
"She didn't have a good answer," Arndt said.
The high-profile case of Colorado man Christopher Watts — who pleaded guilty to
killing his pregnant wife and 2 daughters but did not face the death penalty —
brought discussion of the state’s capital punishment back to the forefront this
fall. And 2 weeks ago, 17th Judicial District Attorney Dave Young filed his
notice of intent to seek the death penalty in the shooting death of Adams
County Sheriff’s Deputy Heath Gumm.
Democratic Governor-elect Jared Polis said if the Colorado General Assembly
were to send him a bill either ending or phasing out the death penalty, he
would be happy to sign it.
Polis believes the death penalty will be phased out on both a state and
national level, though he said he's unsure if it'll be in 5 years, 10 or even
20.
Currently, Colorado is one of 30 states that allow capital punishment.
The governor-elect cited the case of James Holmes, who killed 12 and injured
scores of others in 2012 in the Aurora theater shooting, as an example. Holmes
was not sentenced to death, but others who have killed fewer people have,
showing that it “seems erratic in how it’s being implemented.”
Part of the inconsistency is that different prosecutors make different
decisions about capital punishment, as do different juries, Polis said.
It's up to a district attorney's office to choose to pursue the death penalty
in a case, but a jury has to come to a unanimous decision on the death penalty
after a guilty verdict.
There's also the problem of cost, Polis said. A study published in the
University of Denver Criminal Law showed that death penalty cases took almost
four years longer to resolve than life-without-parole cases.
That same study cites an opinion piece by former Boulder County district
attorney Stan Garnett, who said prosecuting a death penalty case can cost the
prosecution more than $1 million in addition to costs incurred by the judiciary
and the defense counsel, "which is almost always funded with taxpayer funds."
The study asserts that this number is too low, but the dollar figures are
imprecise and anecdotal.
Arndt said cost is the third reason she's pursuing the bill, though it's not
her primary motivating factor.
Ultimately, "I think (the death penalty is) just cruel," she said, adding that
often inmates stay on death row for long periods of time.
In the Watts case, Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said he didn’t
seek the death penalty mainly because of the “strong wishes” of victim Shanann
Watts’ family, but it also helped him reach a plea agreement in the case.
Neither Rourke nor his predecessor Ken Buck, now a U.S. congressman, sought the
death penalty while serving as Weld County District attorney. The county’s last
capital murder case was in 2002.
“The reality of the death penalty in Colorado is it is exceedingly difficult,
even if the jury imposes a death sentence, for it to be carried out,” Rourke
said.
The most recent death row inmate, Nathan Dunlap, convicted of killing 4 people
in a Chuck E. Cheese in Aurora in 1993, was scheduled to be executed in 2013.
Gov. John Hickenlooper granted him a temporary reprieve from execution, though
he did not grant him clemency.
Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler tried the 2012 Aurora
theater shooting case and called Colorado's death penalty statutes the
“toughest in the United States of America.” He said the standards to impose it
are even more difficult than those federal cases are subject to, such as in the
case of the Boston Marathon bombing.
After all the facts were determined in the Holmes case and the defendant had
been found guilty, the death penalty decision came down to “individual reasoned
moral judgement.” One juror opposed the death penalty on moral grounds, and a
unanimous consensus is required.
“We make it very intensely personal, and that’s where you lose people,”
Brauchler said.
Brauchler said he believes the governor’s office has politicized capital
punishment in the state.
Though Hickenlooper did not provide the Coloradoan with an interview for this
story, his staff released a statement on his behalf that said because the death
penalty is the “most absolute punishment that exists,” it needs to be almost
perfect.
“It is not,” the statement reads. “The death penalty isn’t cost-effective. It
does not stop the suffering of victims’ families. It doesn’t deter crime. A
death penalty system must operate flawlessly, and ours doesn’t.”
The statement goes on to say that the “inconsistent and imperfect application”
of capital punishment renders it useless.
But Brauchler disputes those arguments, saying if legislators trusted the
voters, they would do what Hickenlooper has previously suggested and ask the
voters to decide on the death penalty rather than pass legislation to end it.
And Brauchler believes Colorado citizens will vote to keep it.
Arndt, however, said voters selected their representatives. If residents wanted
to make it a ballot issue, they could do that through a citizen referendum.
The potential cost-savings of an end to the death penalty, according to
Brauchler, are “nonsense.” He said there are cost savings when people plead
guilty to life without parole, and what makes the death penalty cases so
expensive are the years of appeals and uncertainties, such as in the Dunlap
case.
“This is all an effort to continue to whittle away at sanctions against people
who commit the worst crimes in our community,” he said.
Rourke, meanwhile, isn’t looking for easy fixes to Colorado’s statutes or to
make imposing the death penalty easier. Rather, he wants to make it “more
functional” to be imposed and carried out.
But he thinks cost should be one of the last factors anybody considers when
determining the fate of someone who took the lives of others and committed a
horrific crime, calling it a “callous, cold, inappropriate consideration when
trying to make that incredible decision.”
“We don’t seek it because it’s inexpensive. We don’t seek it because it’s
expensive,” he said.
7 cases in Larimer County where the death penalty had impact
Though he supports the death penalty, Eighth Judicial District Attorney Cliff
Riedel said at a panel discussion that the death penalty in Colorado is "on
death row."
Riedel said during his tenure in Larimer County, there were seven criminal
cases that came to the resolutions they did because the death penalty was on
the books.
Jeffrey Etheridge: He was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting
and killing Heather "Helena" Hoffmann in 2017 in City Park.
Travis Forbes: He was sentenced to life in prison for the 2011 murder of Kenia
Monge in Denver, and he also brutally attacked and sexually assaulted Fort
Collins woman Lydia Tillman and received an additional sentence in Larimer
County.
Joseph Curl: He was sentenced to life in prison for killing and strangling
Linnea Dick, a Front Range Community College student, in 2008, and then setting
the home on fire.
Jason Clausen: He was sentenced to life in prison for the 2003 murder of Lacy
Jo Miller, 22, after he impersonated a police officer to pull her over,
abducted her and killed her.
Rick Watson: Watson, a carnival worker, was sentenced in 2002 after he beat an
elderly man to death who had provided him a place to stay in Fort Collins at an
apartment complex Riverside and Mountain avenues in Fort Collins.
Troy Graves: The serial rapist was sentenced to life in prison after the murder
of a woman in Philadelphia and sexual assaults on several woman in Philadelphia
and Fort Collins.
Marion Pruitt: Pruitt was sentenced in the 1980s to multiple life sentences for
murdering a clerk at 7-Eleven in Fort Collins and then murdering a clerk at a
7-Eleven in Loveland. He also murdered other individuals in different states.
(source: Coloradoan)
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