This guy. In 1986, when he was 17 years old, he and his mentally challenged 14-year-old accomplice broke into my 72-year-old aunt’s home in a small town in northern Idaho. They came through her side door just as she was coming out of the bathroom. This guy beat my elderly aunt until she was unconscious, then suffocated her by pushing her face into a pillow that he had placed on her dining room floor. He instructed his accomplice to continue pushing her face into the floor while he ransacked her house in search of money or valuables. He got away with a little over $150 and a carton of cigarettes. I know all this because the accomplice was caught distributing the cigarettes to the neighborhood kids, and sang like a canary.
He was eventually given an indeterminate life sentence. I attended two of his parole hearings. In the last one, he was caught lying multiple times and went back to denying his role in my aunt’s murder after previously admitting it. Despite this, he was granted parole in 2004. Obviously, some sort of arrangement had been made between him and the parole board. My brother, who has experience with the justice system, thinks he probably snitched his way out of prison.
He remained on the street until 2019 when he attempted three times to strangle someone in a car. I’m amazed that he didn’t succeed. The newspaper article didn’t identify the victim, but the online version had multiple links to domestic violence resources at the bottom, so I suspect it was his wife. She is the sister of another inmate and met this guy while she was visiting her brother in prison.
He was sentenced to 15 years for the attempted strangulation, and a hearing was held to determine whether his parole on the life sentence for the murder conviction should be revoked. I testified at that hearing via Zoom, as it was held during the pandemic. By this time there was a whole new cast of characters on the parole board. They required little convincing to revoke his parole and reinstate his life sentence. This means that with a little luck, and continued sanity on the part of the parole board, his reign of terror may have at last come to an end. For the sake of the good people of Idaho, I certainly hope so.