South Carolina
Couple gets life in prison; wanted in 5 killings in 3 states
CHESTER, S.C. (AP) — A man and his girlfriend suspected of killing five people in three states last year have pleaded guilty to two of the killings in South Carolina and been sentenced to life in prison without parole, authorities said.
Tyler Terry and Adrienne Simpson each pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and numerous other charges Wednesday in Chester County, according to media reports.
Prosecutors agreed to not seek the death penalty in any of the five killings as long as the couple also pleaded guilty to two shootings near St. Louis, Missouri, and another in Memphis, Tennessee. All five deaths happened in May 2021, investigators said.
Terry, 27, said nothing in court other than to answer questions about his guilty plea, while Simpson apologized to the families of the victims, which included her estranged husband.
Simpson, 34, said she was heartbroken over what happened and wished she could turn back time. Her lawyer said Simpson has struggled with abusive relationships.
Police began looking for Terry last year after he fired at an officer who tried to talk to him when he was parked at a closed restaurant. The officer kept chasing him with a bullet hole in her SUV’s windshield, authorities said.
Simpson was arrested at the end of the chase, but Terry managed to avoid more than 300 officers looking for him over seven days in one of the largest manhunts law enforcement could recall in South Carolina.
The couple pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing Simpson’s estranged husband Eugene in Chester County and Thomas Hardin in York County on the same day in May 2021.
Terry and Simpson then ended up in Missouri 13 days later where prosecutors said they shot and killed Sergei Zacharev during a robbery in a restaurant parking lot in the St. Louis suburb of Brentwood. They then killed Barbara Goodkin as she sat in her car with her husband in University City, authorities said.
Goodkin’s husband was also shot, but investigators said the bullet hit his cellphone, which may have saved his life.
Two days later, Danterrio Coats was found shot to death near a car with its emergency flashers on in Memphis, said investigators, who think he was also robbed.
Prosecutors in South Carolina said their counterparts in Tennessee and Missouri also agreed not to seek the death penalty against either Terry or Simpson as long as they plead guilty in those states, too.
The couple will serve their life sentences in South Carolina prisons after they are sent to the other states to admit to the crimes, authorities said.
Massachusetts
Arrest made in connection to 1966 death of 10-year-old girl
A 73-year-old convicted sex offender has been charged in connection with the 1966 disappearance and death of a 10-year-old Massachusetts girl, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Donald Mars was arraigned on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Betty Lou Zukowski, who left her Chicopee home on the evening of May 26, 1966 and was found beaten to death several days later in the Westfield River in West Springfield, prosecutors said in Hampden Superior Court in Springfield.
A not guilty plea was entered on Mars’ behalf.
His attorney did not object to his client being held without bail, but retained the right to seek bail at a later date. An email seeking comment was left with the defense.
“While this investigation will not bring Betty Lou back to her family, or grant her the opportunity to grow into a healthy adult that she and every child deserves, it is for them and for Betty Lou that we embark upon this journey of seeking justice,” Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said at a news conference after the arraignment.
Betty’s Lou’s parents, Stanley and Mildred, have died but authorities have been in touch with surviving members of her family, he said.
The victim left her family’s Chicopee home after taking a phone call from what she told her parents was a girlfriend, Gulluni said. Her parents reported her missing later that night.
Her “beaten and mud-covered 4-foot-7 inch (1.4-meter), 75-pound (34-kilogram) body was found just offshore by boys fishing in the Westfield River in the town of West Springfield,” he said.
“The cause of the death was determined by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to be multiple blunt force injuries to her head, a skull fracture and terminal drowning,” he said.
Because she left her home voluntarily, investigators believe she knew her attacker.
She was laid to rest on June 2, 1966, which would have been her 11th birthday, he said.
Mars, who would have been a teenager at the time of Betty Lou’s death, was linked to the killing as long ago as 1997 but was not arrested, Gulluni said. Gulluni’s cold case unit refocused on the case in the last few months, he said, although he did not disclose what evidence led to Mars.
According to the state sex offender registry, Mars was convicted of child rape and assault and battery on a child under 14 in 1995. He is listed as a Level 3 sex offender, considered the most likely to reoffend. His most recent address was in Bedford.
He attended the arraignment via video, and although he did not say anything, he shook his head several times as the prosecution read a list of past criminal cases he has been involved in.
Oregon
Charge: Security guard raped woman he accused of shoplifting
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man working as a loss prevention officer for a Rite Aid store in Portland, Oregon, has been charged with raping a woman he accused of shoplifting.
Daniel Luis Cassinelli, 43, was arraigned Wednesday on four counts of first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy and two counts of first-degree sex abuse, Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt said. It wasn’t immediately known if he has a lawyer to comment on his behalf.
The charges stem from 2015 when Cassinelli was working at the Rite Aid and allegedly accused a woman in the store of shoplifting.
Cassinelli allegedly escorted her to a secluded room, used his position of authority and the threat of reporting her to police to make her feel that she was unable to leave. Cassinelli then subjected her to non-consensual sex acts, Schmidt said. He then allegedly escorted her back to the main store upstairs and allowed her leave.
Interviews with Cassinelli have led Portland police investigators and prosecutors to believe that Cassinelli may have committed similar criminal conduct with other victims, Schmidt said.
Cassinelli worked in the Portland area in loss prevention at multiple locations during and after 2015.
Connecticut
Man convicted in sex assaults of 4 women in ’80s
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut man who was linked to the sexual assaults of four women in 1984 by information on a genealogy database was convicted Wednesday of all eight kidnapping charges against him.
A state jury in Hartford took less than an hour of deliberations to unanimously convict Michael Sharpe after a five-day trial. He faces 25 to 100 years in prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 9.
Sharpe, 71, who had been free on a promise to appear in court, was detained after the verdicts because a judge set a new bond at $2.5 million.
At least two of the victims were in the courtroom and wept after the verdicts were announced, The Hartford Courant reported.
Sharpe’s public defender, Dana Sanetti, said in her closing argument Tuesday that the only evidence connecting Sharpe to the attacks was his DNA, which was only “a piece of the puzzle,” Hearst Connecticut Media reported.
Sharpe, of Marlborough, was once the chief executive officer of a group that ran the Jumoke Academy, a tuition-free charter school in Hartford.
Prosecutors said he broke into the women’s homes in four different towns and sexually assaulted them at gunpoint in June and July of 1984. Investigators found DNA evidence at the homes, but no matches could be found at the time and the cases went cold.
Police said they were able to identify Sharpe as a suspect in 2020 because his relatives had given DNA samples to the GEDmatch website. DNA samples taken from trash outside Sharpe’s home, and later from his cheeks, matched the DNA found at the crime scenes, officials said.
Sharpe could not be charged with sexual assault because the statute of limitations expired, but authorities were able to file kidnapping charges, which have no such time limit.
Oklahoma
Inmate gets temporary reprieve from execution
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt granted another temporary reprieve to death row inmate Richard Glossip, pushing his scheduled execution back until February 2023 so that an appeals court has more time to consider his claim of innocence.
Stitt, who is locked in a tough reelection contest, issued an executive order on Wednesday that delays Glossip’s execution, which was scheduled for Nov. 21. Stitt’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A clemency hearing for Glossip that was scheduled before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board next week also will be delayed.
Glossip received the death penalty for the 1997 murder-for-hire killing of his boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese. Prosecutors acknowledge Glossip did not kill Van Treese, but maintain that he paid the hotel maintenance man, Justin Sneed, to do it. Sneed, who received a life sentence but was spared the death penalty, was a key witness in two separate trials in which Glossip was convicted.
Attorney General John O’Connor said in a statement that he respects the governor’s decision but remains confident in Glossip’s guilt.
“After 25 years, justice is still on hold for Barry Van Treese and his family,” O’Connor said. “Mr. Van Treese was in a room of the motel he owned when he was brutally murdered with a baseball bat by Justin Sneed, an individual Richard Glossip hired to work at the motel and later enlisted to commit the murder. Two different juries found Glossip guilty of murder for hire.”
Van Treese’s brother, Ken Van Treese, did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Stitt’s decision.
Glossip asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals for a new evidentiary hearing following the release of an independent investigation by Houston law firm Reed Smith that raised new questions about his guilt. The firm’s report did not find any definitive proof of Glossip’s innocence, but raised concerns about lost or destroyed evidence and a detective asking leading questions to Sneed to implicate Glossip in the slaying.
“The newly uncovered evidence shows a concerted effort by the state to destroy and hide evidence that is favorable to Rich, even to this day, and, most shockingly, to manufacture trial testimony they needed to convict him,” Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, said in a statement. “There is now overwhelming support for what Reed Smith has concluded after its thorough investigation — that no reasonable juror who heard all the evidence would find him guilty.”
A bipartisan group of 62 Oklahoma legislators, led by Republican state Rep. Kevin McDugle, have signed a request that a new evidentiary hearing be granted.
Glossip, now 59, has long maintained his innocence. He has been scheduled to be executed three separate times, only to be spared shortly before the sentence was set to be carried out. He was just hours from being executed in September 2015 when prison officials realized they had received the wrong lethal drug, a mix-up that helped prompt a nearly seven-year moratorium on the death penalty in Oklahoma.
