Tag: arizona

Patrick Bearup Arizona Death Row

patrick bearup arizona death row

Patrick Bearup was sentenced to death by the State of Arizona for the murder of a man. According to court documents Jessica Nelson suspected her boyfriend Mark Mathes from stealing from her and asked Patrick Bearup, Sean Gaines, and Jeremy Johnson. Mark Mathew would be beaten before he was shot and thrown off a cliff. Patrick Bearup would be arrested and sentenced to death.

Patrick Bearup 2021 Information

ASPC Florence, Central Unit
PO Box 8200
PATRICK W. BEARUP 136226
Florence, AZ 85132
United States

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In February 2002, Jessica Nelson discovered money missing from her room.   She suspected that Mark Mathes, another resident of the home, had taken it.   She called Sean Gaines and told him of her suspicion;  Gaines instructed her to call back when Mark returned home.

¶ 3 Following the conversation, Nelson told Bruce and Marie Mathes, the owners of the home, that Gaines and “the boys”-Jeremy Johnson and Patrick Bearup-were going to confront Mark about the missing money.   Bruce and Marie expected Mark to receive a “butt whooping” when Gaines, Johnson, and Bearup arrived.   Bruce asked Nelson to retrieve a ring he had previously given Mark as a present.   When Mark returned home that evening, Nelson called Gaines and told him that Mark was back.   She then alerted Bruce and Marie that “the boys” were coming, so Bruce left the residence with his daughters.

¶ 4 After receiving Nelson’s call, Gaines and Johnson armed themselves and left for Nelson’s house.   According to Johnson, they brought weapons because they “knew there was going to be a confrontation” and they were going “[t]o take care of business.”

¶ 5 On the way, Gaines and Johnson stopped at a convenience store to meet Bearup.   As the men got back in their cars, Bearup proclaimed, “Let’s go play, boys.”   Johnson understood this statement to mean they were going to “[c]ause trouble.”

¶ 6 The three men got out of their vehicles and approached the Mathes home.   Gaines carried a loaded shotgun, Johnson had an aluminum baseball bat, and Bearup had a folding knife with a nine-or ten-inch blade.   They advanced across the backyard toward Mark, who was sitting on the rear patio with Nelson.

¶ 7 Bearup, Johnson, and Gaines surrounded Mark.   Johnson attacked Mark with the baseball bat, striking him in the head and upper torso as many as twenty-five times.   Bearup maintained his location throughout the assault, preventing Mark from leaving.

¶ 8 The witnesses disagreed about whether Mark was alive following the beating.   Nelson was certain that Mark was killed on the patio, while Johnson claimed that Mark was still conscious and groaning.   After the attack, Johnson and Bearup dragged Mark to one of the cars and stuffed him in the trunk.   Bearup kicked Mark’s head to make him fit into the trunk.

¶ 9 The four perpetrators got into two vehicles-Bearup and Nelson in Bearup’s car and Johnson and Gaines in the vehicle containing Mark’s body-and drove to an isolated area near Crown King.   Johnson testified that he heard Mark mumbling and moaning in the trunk during the drive.

¶ 10 When the cars stopped on Crown King Road, Bearup pulled Mark from the trunk.   Gaines and Nelson stripped him to make the body more difficult to identify.   Nelson was unsuccessfully attempting to remove Mark’s ring when Bearup approached and cut off the finger with a pair of wire clippers.   Mark was then thrown over the guardrail and, as he lay in the ravine below, Gaines shot him twice.

¶ 11 The assailants then returned to their vehicles and departed for Phoenix.   Bearup stopped at a gas station and then drove Nelson home.   Once there, Nelson returned the ring to Marie, and Bearup told Marie that she did not have to file a missing person’s report because Mark would never be found.

¶ 12 In February 2002, Bearup told his ex-wife, Sheena Ramsey, that he had gone with friends to beat up a man who had stolen a ring, but the person was killed and he helped dispose of the body.   Bearup also told an ex-girlfriend about the killing.   She overheard Bearup laughing as he talked about cutting off the victim’s finger, and he seemed amused when he told her about the act.

¶ 13 Bearup was indicted on one count of first degree murder and one count of kidnapping.   The State alleged two aggravating factors:  a previous conviction for a serious offense, Ariz.Rev.Stat. (“A.R.S.”) § 13-703(F)(2) (2001), and the commission of the offense in an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner, id. § 13-703(F)(6).

¶ 14 At trial, Bearup presented alibi and mistaken identity defenses.   The jury convicted him of first degree murder and kidnapping and found both the (F)(2) and (F)(6) aggravating factors.   The jury determined that the mitigation was not sufficiently substantial to call for leniency and returned a verdict of death for the murder.   This automatic appeal followed.   See Ariz. R.Crim. P. 31.2(b).  We have jurisdiction pursuant to Article 6, Section 5(3) of the Arizona Constitution and A.R.S. § 13-4031 (2001).

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/az-supreme-court/1425234.html

Frank Atwood Arizona Death Row

frank atwood arizona death row

Frank Atwood was sentenced to death by the State of Arizona for the murder of a child. According to court documents eight year old Vicki Lynne Hoskinson was abducted as she was biking to the mail box. The child would disappear with her bike laying on the side of the road. Seven months later the body of Vicki Lynne Hoskinson would be found in a desert. A witness had reported seeing the girl with a suspicious male and gave the license plate number to police who would trace it to Frank Atwood who was out on parole out of California for kidnapping and sexual molestation charges. Frank Atwood would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

Frank Atwood 2021 Information

ASPC Eyman, Browning Unit
PO Box 3400
FRANK J. ATWOOD 062887
Florence, AZ 85132
United States

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federal appeals court has once again rebuffed a bid by a previously convicted pedophile to overturn his conviction for the 1984 death of a 7-year-old Tucson girl.

In an extensive ruling, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the claims by Frank Jarvis Atwood that his trial counsel was ineffective hold no water. Judge Sandra Ikuta, writing for the appellate court, said there were legitimate reasons for decisions made by attorney Stanton Bloom in how to conduct the defense.

And the judges said, in essence, Atwood’s theory that police and prosecutors planted evidence was so far-fetched as to have no credibility.

Wednesday’s ruling could finally bring Atwood, who has been on death row for 30 years, close to the end of exhausting all of his appeals.

Atwood, released on parole in California in 1984 after serving his second prison term for sex acts with children, traveled with a companion to Tucson where, on the morning of Sept. 17, he was seen at De Anza Park. Later that day, Vicki Lynne Hoskinson disappeared while riding her pink bicycle.

Authorities eventually tracked Atwood to Texas, where he was arrested on charges of kidnapping, with murder charges added after Vicki’s skull and some bones were found in the desert northwest of Tucson the following year.

At trial, witnesses for the state testified that pink paint on the front bumper of Atwood’s car had come “from the victim’s bike or from another source exactly like the bike” and that Vicki’s bicycle had nickel particles on it that were consistent with metal from the bumper.

Atwood’s convictions on murder and kidnapping charges were affirmed by the Arizona Supreme Court and in repeated federal court hearings, with the U.S. Supreme Court denying review. But he has pursued a series of claims, including those that resulted in Wednesday’s appellate court ruling.

One of those issues was his claim that a state judge improperly dismissed his contention that FBI agents and Pima County prosecutors planted the pink paint from Vicki’s bicycle on the bumper of his car.

Ikuta, in the 56-page ruling, said Atwood’s theory is that Pima investigators, in collusion with the FBI, removed both bumpers from his car in Texas, where they found it, and transported them as luggage on a commercial airline to Tucson.

There, Atwood claims, investigators scraped pink paint off the bicycle and planted it on the front bumper. And then, he said, investigators collected scrapings from the pink paint they had applied to the bumpers, combined those with scrapings from an unrelated pink paint smear on the bumper, and substituted the combined sample in the evidence log.

And after that, according to Atwood, the Pima County investigators used water-soluable paint to cover up the scrape marks created while collecting the sample, transported the bumpers from Tucson back to the FBI impound garage in Texas, and reattached them to Atwood’s car. It was at that point, he said, agents took photos of the pink paint on the bumpers and substituted those photos for original ones taken earlier.

Ikuta said the “general implausibility of Atwood’s theory” supports the conclusion of the state court that an evidentiary hearing was not necessary.

“There was no reason for the Pima County investigators, as part of a clandestine operation to take both bumpers to Tucson (when they needed only one for the alleged fabrication), to check these bulk items as baggage on a commercial airline, or to take photos of the bumpers during the fabrication process,” the judge wrote.

She also pointed out that the police were in the middle of the investigation, as they did not know at that time whether Vicki was alive or dead.

“Atwood’s claim that at this point state and federal officers would have concocted an elaborate plot to fabricate evidence is simply not credible,” Ikuta wrote.

The appellate court also rebuffed Atwood’s contention that Bloom should have presented evidence from mental health experts regarding the defendant’s drug abuse and the traumatic effects of his own childhood molestation.

But Ikuta noted that Bloom had seen records from multiple social workers, psychiatrists and psychologists from one of his prior incarcerations and that none indicated Atwood had any significant mental impairment or disease. Bloom also could have reasonably concluded that if he adopted a mental health defense, that would open the door to prosecutors seeking testimony that Atwood has pedophilic and antisocial personality disorders, testimony that could be “highly damaging” to the case, the judge wrote.

https://tucson.com/news/local/killer-loses-another-appeal-in-1984-tucson-murder-of-vicki-lynne-hoskinson-7/article_6f242b50-30a6-576c-b896-edc44f52bd88.html

Frank Atwood Execution

An Arizona inmate convicted of killing an 8-year-old girl nearly 38 years ago was executed by lethal injection Wednesday morning, the state’s attorney general announced in a news release.Frank Atwood’s execution took place at the Arizona State Prison Complex just after 10:15 a.m. local time, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said.Atwood was sentenced to death nearly 35 years ago and had exhausted all his appeal options, the attorney general said.

“To an innocent child whose life was brutally taken and a family that has had to endure decades of suffering, Arizonans will never forget,” Brnovich said in a statement

Atwood was convicted in the September 17, 1984 death of Vicki Lynne Hoskinson. Vicki was riding her bike home when Atwood kidnapped and killed her and left her body in a desert, the attorney general said. A hiker found the child’s remains roughly seven months later, according to the news release.

Prior to Vicki’s killing, Atwood had already been convicted of “lewd and lascivious acts and kidnapping” involving two young children in California, the attorney general said.Federal courts denied Atwood’s motions to halt the execution, in which he claimed the procedure would violate his constitutional rights and would cause a substantial risk of pain because of a degenerative spinal disease he suffered from. In response to that concern, state officials agreed to make accommodations in their execution protocol by providing a device that would help “avoid any unnecessary pain due to his condition,” according to court documents.A district court dismissed those claims and on Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.

The United States Supreme Court on Wednesday also denied Atwood’s ask to halt his execution.Atwood was the second person executed in Arizona since the botched lethal injection execution of Joseph Wood in 2014 that sparked a stateside hold in executions for more than seven years. Wood, who was also executed by lethal injection, gasped for air and struggled to breathe for most of the nearly two hours it took him to die, his attorney had said at the time.

The governor directed the corrections department to review the process and an independent report released in 2014 found the state’s corrections department followed protocol in Wood’s execution.Approximately 111 inmates remain on death row in the state, according to the news release

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/08/us/frank-atwood-executed-vicki-lynne-hoskinson-killing/index.html

Shad Armstrong Arizona Death Row

shad armstrong arizona death row

Shad Armstrong was sentenced to death by the State of Arizona for two murders. According to court documents Shad Armstrong and two accomplices planned the murders out in the weeks before. On the day of the murder they put down sheets to catch the blood and waited for the two victims Shad Armstrong sister and fiance. When the two victims arrived they were both shot by a shotgun wielded by Armstrong. The victims possessions were take and the murderous trio would travel to the victims apartment where they stole more valuables. Shad Armstrong would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

Shad Armstrong 2021 Information

ASPC Florence, Central Unit
PO Box 8200
SHAD D. ARMSTRONG 155617
Florence, AZ 85132
United States

Shad Armstrong More News

Shad Armstrong in February 1998 dug a huge grave, turned garbage bags and sheets into dropcloths and then used a shotgun to kill his sister and her fiancé.

What defense attorneys and prosecutors don’t agree on is why.

If jurors agree with prosecutors, Armstrong could wind up on death row again.

If not, Armstrong, 34, will be sentenced to life in prison with or without the possibility of parole.

Armstrong has already been convicted on two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Farrah Armstrong, 22, and Frank Williams, 25.

A jury convicted him in December 2000 and a judge sentenced him to death. However, the U.S. Supreme Court later decided that jurors, not judges, should decide the sentences in capital-murder cases.

So on Tuesday, a new group of jurors gathered at Pima County Superior Court to decide if Armstrong is eligible for the death penalty and if he should get it.

When Armstrong moved to Tucson with his girlfriend and sister in 1998, he was wanted for violating parole in Oklahoma and for burglary, prosecutor Susan Eazer told jurors.

If he was caught, Armstrong knew he would go to prison for life, Eazer said.

Farrah Armstrong was also in trouble with the law, but shortly after she moved to Tucson she fell in love with Williams and decided to turn her life around, Eazer said.

She and Williams decided that before they got married, Farrah Armstrong needed to turn herself and her brother in to Oklahoma authorities, Eazer said.

Unfortunately, Farrah Armstrong told her brother’s girlfriend, Rusty Medina, her plans, Eazer said.

Armstrong decided he needed to kill his sister and use her money to go on the run again, Eazer said, and decided to kill Williams to cover his tracks.

In the weeks before the murders, Eazer said, the unemployed Armstrong stole his sister’s bank card and began making withdrawals. At the same time, he plotted the murders with Medina and his roommate in Three Points, David Doogan.

On Feb. 19, 1998, Eazer said, Armstrong lured Williams and his sister to Doogan’s trailer.

Once inside, he shot them both in the head and the chest, tore his sister’s rings from her fingers and rifled through Williams’ pockets for his cash, Eazer said.

He and Doogan then tied the bodies up in the sheets and garbage bags, hooked them up to a pickup truck and dragged them to their predug grave.

Eazer said Medina and Doogan both testified Armstrong tried to use his sister’s bank card after the murders and was upset to find out she had changed her personal identification number.

Medina and Armstrong spent time in Mexico and California before being arrested in Texas.

In order for Armstrong to be eligible for the death penalty, Eazer said, the jury has to find that he killed his sister for money and that Williams and Farrah Armstrong’s deaths happened at the same time, in the same place and for the same reason.

Defense attorney Dan Cooper told the jury that despite his client’s “horrible, senseless, unspeakably sad and unbelievable” actions, they have to remain dispassionate. He urged them to decide if Armstrong is eligible for the death penalty on the facts of the case.

At no time did Doogan or Medina ever say Armstrong killed his sister for her money and property, Cooper said. They have always said he killed her to stop her from turning him in.

It was Doogan who hoped to gain financially from the murders, Cooper said. It was he who ended up with Farrah Armstrong’s belongings.

Cooper also said that while Farrah Armstrong and Williams died seconds apart in the same location, Williams died for a different reason.

“Frank was killed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and Shad didn’t like him, period,” Cooper said.

If the jury doesn’t think Armstrong should be eligible for the death penalty, Pima County Superior Court Judge Christopher Browning will be required to sentence Armstrong to life without the possibility of parole or life with the possibility of parole after 25 years.

Doogan is serving 22 years for his part in the crime, and Medina, the mother of two of Armstrong’s children, received 11.5 years.

https://tucson.com/news/local/crime/jury-weighs-death-penalty-in-dual-killing/article_a8c926d6-322d-5964-a6aa-c729ed64a2b8.html

Michael Apelt Arizona Death Row

michael apelt arizona death row

Michael Apelt was sentenced to death by the State of Arizona for the murder of his wife. According to court documents Michael Apelt would marry a woman and a month later would murder her in order to collect the insurance money. Michael Apelt would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death

Arizona Death Row Inmate List

Michael Apelt 2021 Information

ASPC Florence, Central Unit
PO Box 8200
MICHAEL APELT 080735
Florence, AZ 85132
United States

Michael Apelt More News

The U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed the efforts of a man who married and then killed a Pinal County woman for her life insurance to escape the death penalty.

In a brief order, the justices rejected arguments by attorneys for Michael Apelt that his counsel at his trial had been deficient and that required a new sentencing.

The high court did not disturb the conclusion of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the attorney may have botched the job of representing Apelt at sentencing and finding evidence to urge a trial judge to spare his life. But they also left intact the appellate ruling that said even if the attorney had done a better job it would not have made any difference — and Apelt still would have been sentenced to death.

“Nothing in the record indicates that any explanation for why Apelt became a monster would have changed the sentence,” they wrote.

It was that ruling that the Supreme Court left intact on Monday without comment.

Court records show Apelt and his older brother Rudi came to the United States from Germany in 1988.

Over the next few months the brothers met and “conned” a series of women, telling tales of wealth and intrigue. The goal was both to get money and, ultimately, to find a woman to marry Michael Apelt.

That culminated with the October marriage to 30-year-old Cindy Monkman.

Less than a month later they began shopping for $1 million in life insurance policies, ultimately resulting in the purchase of $400,000 worth of coverage after they could not get more.

Then, in December, the brothers hatched a plan to kill Monkman.

Her body was found in the desert near Apache Junction two days after the insurance policies were obtained. She had been stabbed multiple times and nearly beheaded.

The brothers flew to Los Angeles, paying a homeless man to recite a message onto Monkman’s answering machine suggesting he had killed her and was coming after Rudi and Michael next.

Both eventually were found guilty and sentenced to death, though Rudi was declared mentally disabled, making him ineligible for the death penalty.

In reviewing the sentence, a federal judge found various flaws in the defense mounted by Michael Apelt’s original attorney, including failing to find ways of investigating his mental health and background.

That conclusion was affirmed by the 9th Circuit where the appellate judges said that the trial judge was presented a very different picture of Michael Apelt’s background than what might have been seen had the lawyer produced other evidence. But that, the appellate judges concluded, was not enough, saying there was no showing that he would have escaped the death penalty even if other evidence had been presented.

One big issue, the appellate judges said, was that the murder was “premeditated and calculated.”

“The record shows that from the time Apelt entered the United States around Labor Day 1988, he lied to and manipulated others, and borrowed and stole money from women,” the judge said.

They noted he had proposed to three different women in less than a month and got Monkman to secretly marry him in Las Vegas by leading her to believe he was wealthy. And there was the decision to seek life insurance on her a little over a week after the marriage.

“As borne out by subsequent events, Apelt’s unwavering intent was to murder the woman he had convinced to marry him in order to collect on the insurance policy,” the court concluded.

https://tucson.com/news/local/supreme-court-upholds-death-sentence-in-pinal-county-murder-case/article_be2fe26d-64a5-5874-b7f9-f4431abfdcf6.html

Frank Anderson Arizona Death Row

frank anderson arizona death row

Frank Anderson was sentenced to death by the State of Arizona for the murders of three people. According to court documents Frank Anderson, Robert Poyson and Kimberly Lane would force their way into a home where they would murder Leta Kagen, her 15-year-old son, Robert Delahunt, and Roland Wear in order to steal a truck. Frank Anderson and Robert Poyson would be sentenced to death however Poyson death sentence was later overturned. Kimberly Lane was a teenager at the time of the triple murder and would be sentenced to eight years.

Frank Anderson 2021 Information

SPC Eyman, Browning Unit
PO Box 3400
FRANK W. ANDERSON 136521
Florence, AZ 85132
United States

Frank Anderson More News

A week-long evidentiary hearing has ended for a California drifter who sits on Arizona’s death row for a 1996 triple murder in Golden Valley.

Frank Winfield Anderson, 70, was sentenced to death in December 2002 for his part in the murder of a Golden Valley family in August 1996. He was originally sentenced to death in 1998. The Arizona Supreme Court reversed the conviction and death sentence and the case was retried in Mohave County in 2002 when Anderson again was convicted and sentenced to death.

Superior Court Judge Rick Williams heard testimony from witnesses in a week-long evidentiary hearing in Kingman on Anderson’s post-conviction relief.

Phoenix defense attorney John Saccoman argued that the trial judge improperly instructed the jury on the lesser included sentence of life without parole. Other defense arguments included ineffective counsel and prosecutor misconduct. There were also changes in the law since filing the PCR.

Anderson’s age and his deteriorating physical health, which leaves him in a wheelchair, would make it cruel and unusual punishment if he is executed; he may not live long enough to face execution, Saccoman argued.

Williams took the testimony under advisement and will schedule a status hearing to set another hearing for testimony from one last witness in the PCR.

Anderson’s co-defendant, Robert Poyson, 42, was sentenced to death for the murders but a federal appeals court overturned his death sentence. A third co-defendant, Kimberly Lane, pleaded guilty and served eight years in prison and has since been released.

Anderson, Poyson and Lane were arrested for the brutal murders of Leta Kagen, her 15-year-old son, Robert Delahunt, and Roland Wear at Kagen’s Golden Valley home Aug. 12, 1996. Anderson and Lane, who was 14 at the time of the murders, had hitchhiked to Golden Valley from California.

The three suspects committed the murders in order to steal Wear’s pickup truck. They fled to Illinois where Anderson, Poyson and Lane eventually were arrested.

https://apnews.com/article/c1521d79b3904c8a898ca50fb4d470c8