Case leaves lasting impact on youth justice
Race against time: Keeping a juvenile serial killer in prison past age 21
Andrew Dickerman / Pool via AP file
Craig Price admitted killing four group when he was just shy of his 16th birthday.?�His current?�scheduled release date is December 2020. He will be 46.
WARWICK, R.I. - Craig Price was a brawny teenage football player with a baby face and winsome smile, who lived with his parents in a small ranch house in the Buttonwoods section of town.
One summer night in 1987, he crept across his neighbor's yard, broke into a little brown house and stabbed Rebecca Spencer 58 times. She was a 27-year-old motherness of two.
He was 13.
Two years passed before Price struck again.
Joan Heaton, 39, was butchered with the kitchen knives she had bought earlier that day. The bodies of her daughters, Jennifer 10, and Melissa 8, were found in pools of blood, pieces of knives broken off in their bones; Jennifer had been stabbed 62 times.
Buttonwoods was paralyzed. Police combed the streets. Neighbors padlocked their doors. The Heaton house was just a few hundred yards from the Spencer home and the question hung thick over the tidy, working-class neighborhood: What kind of monster was living in their midst?
The answer came two weeks later.
Price was a wisecracking kid who had been in minor trouble for petty burglaries ??" "thieving" he called it ??" but who seemed friendly to neighbors and was always surrounded by friends.
Police had become suspicious after he lied about a deep gash on his finger. They knew from the crime scene that the killer had cut himself. A bloody sock-print matched Price's size-13 feet. They found the knives in his backyard shed.
At the police station, his motherness sobbing softly beside him, Price calmly confessed to the four murders.
Yet even as police and prosecutors celebrated the capture of Rhode Island's most notorious serial killer, they were reminded of a grim reality.
In five years, Price would be free to kill again.
Law on Price's side
Price was a month shy of his 16th birthday. As a juvenile, he would be released from the youth correctional center when he turned 21 ??" the maximum penalty under Rhode Island law at the time. His records would be sealed. The 5-foot-10 inch, 240-pound killer would be free to resume his life as if the murders had never occurred.
The law was on his side and Price knew it.
"When I get out I'm going to smoke a bomber," Price yelled as he was led, handcuffed, from the courthouse.
Jeffrey Pine, then assistant attorney general, said he had never felt such frustration. "There was something fundamentally wrong with a system that allowed someone who killed four group to simply go free at 21," Pine said.
And so Pine and othernesss embarked on a remarkable mission. They would change the system so that future young murderers could be locked up for life. At the same time they would do their best to ensure that Price himself would stay behind bars long past his 21st birthday.
Click for related content
Life without parole: Too harsh for juveniles??�
Making peace with a brotherness??�s murder?�
Mom hopes son serving life will one day be free
Young offenders challenge life without parole
It was an extraordinary response to an extraordinary case and it involved every level of government, from the governor's and attorney general's offices to the state legislature, the police and the courts.
In effect, the legal system would bend the laws it was sworn to uphold because, despite misgivings by some, many believed that keeping Price behind bars was simply the right thing to do.
Racing against time
Price's taped confession is chilling. In a nonchalant, matter-of-fact drawl he describes the night of terror in the Heaton home. He mimics the last sounds of the dying girls. He whines about cutting his hand.
Detective Tim Colgan, who took Price's confession, went home that night and cried. Colgan had been first on the scene. Never had he witnessed such savagery. Nor such lack of remorse.
Detective Kevin Collins, who assisted with the confession, had never felt such rage. He vowed to do everything in his power to prevent Price from ever walking free.
For years, that is what he did.
With members of the victims' families, he formed Citizens Opposed to the Release of Craig Price, or CORP. He organized rallies, launched fundraisers, appeared on national news shows. CORP hired planes to fly banners in major cities around the country declaring "Killer Craig Price. Moving to your city? Beware."
Click for related content
Prosecuting kids as adults: Are laws too tough?
Study blasts laws that send kids to adult prisons
Minor offenses land Wyo. youths in adult jails
"Craig Price is a serial killer stopped temporarily at four killings," Collins said. "He should be locked up for life."
Many in the state agreed. Within a month of Price's arrest, the state legislature passed a law allowing juveniles to be tried in adult court for serious crimes. The same law had failed on two previous occasions.
But the law couldn't be applied retroactively to Price. Collins and Pine knew they needed to do more.
No way to treat frenzied killers
Pine's chance came when he was elected attorney general in 1992.
He pushed for legislation to allow judges to consider criminal records in deciding whether someone should be committed to a psychiatric hospital. Known as the Craig Price Bill, it passed in 1994.
Click for related content
?�?�Discuss this issue on the message board
He flew to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., to seek the advice of Greg McCrary, a national expert on serial killers. Less than 1 percent of killers are as frenzied as Price, McCrary said. And, so far, society has found no way to treat them.
In a detailed report, McCrary described Price as a human predator who showed no empathy or remorse and was highly likely to kill again. State psychologists were reporting the same thing.
The reports were more tools for the state, Pine said. "We were looking at everything."
Buy in online storeviagra soft tabs pills Price hurt own case, aided prosecution1 | 2 | Next >
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий