National Roundup

California
Condemned killer dies of natural causes at 74
SAN QUENTIN, Calif. (AP) — A California inmate who was convicted of killing two people in 1983 died Tuesday of natural causes while awaiting execution, prison officials said. He was 74.

Curtis Price died Monday at San Quentin State Prison, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Price, a reputed hitman for the Aryan Brotherhood criminal gang, was sentenced to death in 1986 in Humboldt County for killing Richard Barnes and Elizabeth Ann Hickey.

Prosecutors said Barnes was shot in Los Angeles County because he was the father of Steven Barnes, another Aryan Brotherhood member who had testified against other gang members but was in protective custody.

Hickey was beaten to death at a Humboldt County home from which guns had been stolen and who knew of Price’s involvement in the Barnes killing, authorities said.

Price also was convicted of the armed robbery of a movie theater in Humboldt County the same day that Hickey’s body was discovered.

At the time of his death, Price had an appeal of his conviction pending in federal court, the San Jose Mercury News reported.  His attorneys argued that prosecutors committed misconduct and that the case was largely based on the shaky word of a reputed Aryan Brotherhood leader, Michael Thompson, who left the gang and agreed to testify against Price.

Last month, another condemned inmate died of natural causes at age 68. Donald R. Millwee was sentenced to death in Riverside County in 1990 for the fatal shooting of his physically disabled mother. He had been housed at a state prison in Corcoran, midway between Bakersfield and Fresno.

 There are currently 698 people on California’s death row. The state’s last execution was in 2006. Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted a moratorium on executions in 2019.

Colorado
Ex-inmate gets life for 1984 hammer killings
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — A former Nevada prison inmate was sentenced Tuesday to three consecutive life sentences in the long-unsolved 1984 hammer killings of three Colorado family members, including a 7-year-old girl, inside their suburban Denver home.

Sixty-one-year-old Alex Ewing was convicted Aug. 6 of first-degree murder after a two-day trial in which prosecutors contended Ewing used a hammer and a knife to kill Bruce Bennett, 27, his wife, Debra, 26, and daughter Melissa in the Bennetts’ home. Melissa Bennett also was raped, prosecutors said.

Another daughter, 3-year-old Vanessa, was beaten in the head with a hammer as were her parents and sister but survived the attack.

Ewing is also charged with the hammer killing of Patricia Louise Smith, 50, in her home in suburban Lakewood about a week before the Aurora killings. Smith also was sexually assaulted. Ewing’s trial in that case is set for October.

Arapahoe County District Court Judge Darren Vahle told Ewing on Tuesday that the crimes Ewing was convicted of were the worst he had seen in a quarter-century of practicing law, The Aurora Sentinel reported.

“Over a 12-day span, you inflicted an unspeakable orgy of violence,” Vahle said.

Ewing was identified as a suspect in 2018 through DNA evidence while in imprisoned in Nevada, where he was convicted of attacking a couple in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson in 1984 with an ax handle in their bedroom. The results of a DNA sample taken from Ewing were linked with DNA developed years later from evidence taken from the scenes of the Colorado killings.

Ewing didn’t speak during the sentencing hearing.

Several Bennett family members read statements during Tuesday’s hearing, including Vanessa Bennett Schulz, now 41.

“I’m sure my parents and sister were great people, but it’s unfortunate I don’t remember anything about them,” Bennett Schulz said. “I didn’t just lose my parents and sister, I lost my trust in people.”

Bruce Bennett’s mother, Connie Bennett, 87, asked the judge for the maximum sentence. She had testified that she discovered her son’s bloody body inside the home after her son and his wife did not show up for work.

“Some people may call him an animal,” she said of Ewing. “But I won’t because I think animals have a purpose in this world.”

South Carolina
Sheriff: Arrest in ‘92 cold case death of baby girl
ROCK HILL, S.C. (AP) — Nearly 30 years after an infant girl’s stabbed body was found floating on a South Carolina river, authorities announced the arrest Tuesday of the child’s mother and said she has been charged in the death.

Stacy Michelle Costner Rabon, 48, of Rock Hill, South Carolina, faces a charge of homicide by child abuse in connection with the girl’s death in August 1992, news outlets reported. Only hours old when she died, the child was found wrapped in a bedsheet inside a plastic grocery bag that was discovered by a swimmer on the Catawba River, officials said.

Authorities said the child had stab wounds but a coroner’s report determined that the death was the result of suffocation — not drowning or the stabbings.

Detectives reexamined the case last October and submitted DNA from the bed sheet to the York County Forensic Biology Lab for testing. Results identified Rabon as a suspect and deputies were eventually able to obtain a warrant for her arrest, authorities said.

Rabon was arrested Tuesday and was being held at the York County Detention Center. It was unknown if she has an attorney who could speak on her behalf. The charge carries a prison sentence of 30 years to life in the event of a conviction.

“I am very thankful for the hard work of our detectives and DNA analysts. Their dedication and ability to work cooperatively has led to the closure of a case that has haunted our community for years,” York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson said at a news conference.

In 1992, the baby was named Angel Hope by members of the community who also paid for her burial at a cemetery in Rock Hill.

A DNA match between the baby and Rabon was made after Rabon was arrested on a drug distribution charge in 2019, Tolson said. DNA was collected from Rabon after her arrest, Tolson added.

Rabon’s DNA was sent to a national DNA database where it matched with evidence in the baby’s case from 1992, Tolson said. While the initial DNA match pointed authorities toward a suspect, Tolson said, more investigation was needed before Rabon could be charged.

“This child deserved our best,” Tolson said. “Maybe now she will be called Baby Angel Justice.”