Marco Montez was sentenced to death by the State of Oregon for the sexual assault and murder of a woman. According to court documents Marco Montez and Timothy Aikens sexually assaulted and murdered the victim Candace Straub in a Portland motel room in 1987. The woman was strangled using bed sheets before being set on fire. Timothy Aikens was sentenced to life, Marco Montez was sentenced to death
Montez and Timothy Aikens beat, raped and sodomized Candace Straub in a Portland motel room in 1987. They then strangled her with a bed sheet and set her body on fire. Montez was later arrested in Idaho. Aikens is serving a life sentence.
Marco Montez Other News
On June 20, 1987, Candice Straub, accompanied by two men, rented a room at the Continental Motel in Portland. The next day, firefighters responding to a fire at the motel discovered Straub’s nude and bound body on a bed in one of the motel’s rooms. Her body had been doused with flammable liquid and set afire. It was determined later that she had been strangled to death.
A few weeks later, defendant Marco Montez told Annie Edmo, a woman with whom he had been living in Pocatello, Idaho, that he had helped get rid of the body of a woman in Portland after Tim Aikens, the co-defendant in this case, had strangled her. Edmo reported that statement to the Pocatello police. Defendant was arrested in Pocatello on July 12 on unrelated Idaho charges. The Pocatello police notified the Portland police of his arrest and of Edmo’s report.
Portland Detective Goodale flew to Pocatello to interview defendant. On July 15, after introducing himself to defendant, Goodale handed defendant a constitutional rights (Miranda) advice form, which defendant read. Goodale then read the form to defendant, stopping after each of the four individual Miranda rights, to ask defendant if he understood. Defendant responded that he did, and he initialed the form beside each right as Goodale read it to him. Defendant stated that he understood his rights and that he would speak to Goodale. He signed the advice of rights form. Defendant does not dispute that he was advised of, understood, and voluntarily waived his Miranda rights before talking to Goodale for the first time on July 15.
In response to Goodale’s questions, defendant at first denied any involvement in Straub’s murder. He stated that he had met Aikens in Portland and that they had worked together for a day at a cannery. Aikens had met Straub at the cannery, and she had accompanied Aikens and defendant to a drop-in center in Portland when they returned from work. After sleeping for a few hours, the three went to breakfast and to a second hand store before separating. Aikens and Straub went to the Continental Motel; and defendant went to a park, where he remained until Aikens contacted him later. At that time, Aikens told defendant that he had left Straub at the motel and that he wanted to show defendant something there. Defendant, however, declined to go to the motel. Aikens then said *1357 that he had a “problem,” after which defendant and Aikens then made plans to leave town.
Goodale asked if Aikens had explained the nature of his “problem.” Defendant replied, “I think I need a lawyer to talk about the rest of it so I don’t get linked up.” Goodale asked defendant if “he was telling us that he wanted an attorney and did not want to talk with us anymore.” Defendant’s reply was no. Goodale again advised defendant that he had the right to have a lawyer and to have his lawyer present at any time during the questioning. He asked defendant “if that’s what he wanted?” Defendant replied that “that was not what he wanted.” Goodale asked defendant if he was “still willing to talk with us?” According to Goodale, defendant replied, “I will talk to you without one.”
In response to further questions by Goodale, defendant admitted that he had gone to the motel, where Aikens had showed him Straub’s dead body in the bathtub. Aikens told defendant that Straub had refused to have sex with him, that he had hit her, and that she had fallen and hit her head. Defendant stated that he had then left the motel. Defendant stated that Aikens had later admitted setting the motel room afire. Defendant at first denied involvement in the fire, but he later admitted that he had helped Aikens move Straub’s body from the bathtub to a bed and had participated in setting the motel room afire. Defendant admitted that it had been his plan to burn the room, but he still denied killing Straub or having sexual relations with her.
Defendant voluntarily submitted to polygraph tests on July 16 and 17. When the polygrapher told defendant that the tests indicated deception, defendant told the polygrapher that he did not want to talk to him anymore, and the polygrapher turned defendant back over to Goodale.
Goodale resumed his questioning of defendant. Defendant related more incriminating details about Straub’s death, although he still insisted that Aikens alone had killed her. Defendant then returned to his cell, but shortly thereafter he asked a jailer to tell Goodale to return and “to bring his tape recorder.”
When Goodale arrived, he again advised defendant of his Miranda rights. Defendant then admitted that he had participated in Straub’s murder. He stated that he and Aikens had beaten, raped, and sodomized Straub and that when she had resisted, Aikens pushed his fist into her anus causing her to bleed profusely. They then tied Straub’s arms and legs behind her back and gagged her and put her in the bathtub. Defendant stated that he and Aikens became concerned that Straub might report them to the police, and they decided to kill her. After looping a towel around Straub’s neck, each man pulled one end until she was dead. They then placed her body on the bed, doused it with lighter fluid, set it afire, and left. Defendant admitted that they burned the motel room to destroy any evidence that could link them to the crime.
Defendant then asked if Goodale knew what would happen to defendant in Oregon. Goodale explained the Oregon homicide laws. Defendant then said that he was willing to plead guilty to murder but hoped that he would not be sentenced to death.
On August 28, Goodale again spoke with defendant, who stated that Straub had been conscious when he and Aikens carried her into the motel bathroom and placed her in the bathtub. He also admitted that he rather than Aikens had placed his fist in Straub’s anus.
Michael McDonnell was sentenced to death by the State of Oregon for a murder committed during a prison escape. According to court documents Michael McDonnell would escape from the Oregon State Penitentiary farm on November 21, 1984. A month later Michael McDonnell would murder the victim, Joey Keever, who was found dead on the side of the road, the woman had been stabbed over forty times. Michael McDonnell would be arrested, convicted an sentenced to death.
Michael McDonnell was serving a 10-year sentence for perjury and theft when he walked away from the Oregon State Penitentiary farm on November 21, 1984. While an escapee McDonnell encountered and stabbed Joey B Keever, 22, of Roseburg 42 times in her pickup truck near Yoncalla on December 22, 1984. Keever’s throat was cut and she was dumped near U.S. 99.
Michael McDonnell Other News
Defendant previously had been committed to the Oregon State Penitentiary and was received there on May 16, 1984. He was assigned to the Farm Annex on November 9 and escaped from custody on November 21. He was still an escapee on the day he killed Keever.
In 1986, the trial court set aside the indictment against defendant, concluding that ORS 163.095(2)(f) violated Article I, sections 16 and 20, of the Oregon Constitution, and the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, because it imposed an unconstitutional sentence. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case for trial, concluding that “[t]he fact that a sentencing statute authorizes imposition of an arguably unconstitutional sentence does not mean that the statute defining the crime violates any of the * * * constitutional provisions [cited by the trial court].” State v. McDonnell, 84 Or.App. 278, 281, 733 P.2d 935, rev. den. 303 Or. 455, 737 P.2d 1249 (1987).
At his trial in 1988, defendant stipulated that he caused Keever’s death by cutting her with a knife. His defense was that he did so while in a drug-induced psychosis and that, while he was in that condition, he was unable to form the intent necessary to commit the crime of aggravated murder and that, therefore, he was guilty only of the crime of manslaughter.
Martin and Jennifer Thompson testified for the state that on December 22, 1984, they were driving to a livestock auction. They stopped to observe a pickup at the railroad tracks on Boswell Springs Road near Drain. They thought that the pickup had been in an accident because it was parked against the tracks. Martin Thompson left his car to investigate and saw defendant with a knife in his hand and blood on himself. Defendant told Thompson “to get the hell out of there.” As Thompson returned to his car to get a gun, defendant threw Keever out of the pickup, *944 slashed at her with the knife, and drove off at high speed.
Keever got up and ran toward the Thompsons. Her throat had been cut. The Thompsons placed Keever in their car and drove her to the Drain fire station, where a volunteer ambulance crew commenced life-saving measures. Keever was dead on arrival at the Douglas Community Hospital.
The cause of death was loss of blood, primarily due to the severing of Keever’s neck vessels. Dr. Roos, who performed the autopsy, found 40 knife wounds on Keever’s body, including multiple wounds to the chin, neck, hands, chest, and abdomen. Keever had eight stab wounds on her right hand and 13 on her left. Roos characterized them as “defense” wounds, which he described as occurring “where someone is grabbing for something and then it’s pulled away and then it just slices through, here, there, everywhere.” On the day after Keever’s death, Deputy Sheriff Cannaday arrested defendant. At the time, defendant had scratches on his face and some cuts on the back of his right index and middle fingers. A criminalist testified for the state that he would not consider these cuts to be “defensive wounds,” because the wounds were on the backs of defendant’s fingers. Samples of head hair, fingernails, and blood were taken from defendant. His hair matched strands of head hair found intertwined in the fingers of each of Keever’s hands. Blood found on the back of defendant’s pants matched Keever’s blood.
After a jury trial, defendant was found guilty of aggravated murder. In a separate sentencing hearing, the jury answered in the affirmative the three questions then posed by former ORS 163.150(1)(b). See post, at 958. The trial court then entered an “order” sentencing defendant to death. ORS 163.150(5). Later, pursuant to leave granted by this court, State v. McDonnell, 306 Or. 579, 761 P.2d 921 (1988), the trial court entered a judgment of conviction and sentence of death.
Randy Guzek was sentenced to death by the State of Oregon for a double murder. According to court documents Randy Guzek with two accomplices would rob the victims before killing the two victims, Rod and Lois Houser, of Terrebonne. Randy Guzek two accomplices would testify against him at trial in exchange for a lighter sentence. Randy Guzek would be sentenced to death
Guzek was convicted of killing Rod and Lois Houser, of Terrebonne. Guzek, who was 18, shot Lois Houser three times with a handgun, chased her up a staircase and shot her for the last time as she huddled inside a closet. He then ripped the rings off her fingers. Rod Houser was shot 20 times by Mark Wilson, who is serving a life sentence for the killing. Donald Cathey also is serving a life sentence for participating in the crime, although he did not kill anyone. Guzek has been sentenced to death four times.
Randy Guzek Other News
After only a few hours of deliberation, a Bend jury imposed the death penalty for a fourth time Thursday afternoon against convicted double-murderer Randy Lee Guzek for his role in the brutal murders of a Terrebonne couple, after three earlier decisions were overturned on appeal over the past 23 years.
People were called back to the courtroom around 2 p.m., 5 1/2 hours after the jury got the case, following closing arguments and final jury instructions from a visiting Lane County judge.
The jury decided Guzek deserves to die by lethal injection, rather than be given life in prison with the possibility of parole when he’s 78.
Guzek was convicted of two counts of aggravated murder in 1988 for killing Rod and Lois Houser at their home in Terrebonne.
The 41-year-old Guzek was 18 when he and two other men shot and stabbed the Housers, then ransacked their house.
His death sentence has been overturned three times since his conviction, on legal issues. A new Deschutes County Circuit Court jury has spent the past three weeks hearing prosecution testimony detailing the brutal crimes, and most recently from the defense, trying to paint a portrait of a troubled youth with an abusive father.
Special prosecutor Josh Marqis told the jury in his closing statement Thursday, “We can hope that at least Rod Houser was surprised when he was shot 20-plus times. But Lois Houser knew she was going to die when she ran upstairs, running from that man there” – he said, pointing to Guzek – “although there was no escape.”
Eleven Houser family members or supporters were in the front row as the fourth trial in nearly a quarter-century came to an end.
The jury was not swayed to spare Guzek’s life by the tearful convict’s apology for his crimes in court Wednesday, as he told the jury he now blames himself, not an abusive father or drugs, for what happened.
“For the fourth time in 23 years, we’ve all had to relive the irresponsible and shameless behavior of my past,” Guzek said. “I’m truly sorry to all of you for that.”
Guzek said he knew that whatever he said, “my words likely will be perceived as self-serving. The alternative to that, however, would be to say nothing at all, and I don’t think that would be fair either.”
“I remain overwhelmed with guilt (and) shame,” Guzek said. “I am truly sorry for all of the unnecessary pain I have caused. I’m truly sorry for not living my life, and conducting myself, in a manner so that my friends and family could defend me, but never have to.”
“I’m asking for forgiveness,” he said. “I’m asking for peace. And I’m asking the healing process steadfastly work its magic within all of us. It is for these things I ask, and it is for these things I pray.”
“I blame me for my failures; I am responsible for all of them,” he said.
Guzek was 18 when he and two accomplices robbed the Housers, a couple he was familiar with because he briefly dated their niece. Guzek, under the influence of methamphetamine, ordered one of the accomplices to kill Rod Houser, who months earlier had told Guzek to stay away from the girl.
Lois Houser was chased up the staircase and shot three times by Guzek, who then stole the wedding ring off her hand.
Guzek was convicted the following year and sent to death row. The accomplices were spared a potential death sentence by agreeing to testify against Guzek, the alleged ringleader.
Guzek’s conviction has stood for 22 years, but the sentence produced a legal saga with three sequels, not including an appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court. It has reportedly cost the state more than $2 million.
Marquis said in closing arguments Wednesday that the easy choice would be to stop the appeals and simply keep Guzek behind bars until he’s an old man. But that, he said, wouldn’t be just.
Marquis, noting Guzek’s criminal activity before the murders, said Guzek would be a strong candidate to reoffend, even at 78, and has not shown remorse for his actions.
“Mercy, in order to be bestowed, has to be earned, and Mr. Guzek has not earned it,” Marquis said.
Defense attorney Rich Wolf told jurors that it was a “tragedy” for the Housers that the case dragged on for more than 20 years, but it has allowed them to have information jurors did not have in 1988, 1991 and 1997, such as Guzek’s history of being a model inmate.
As for Guzek’s upbringing, Wolf challenged jurors to find a “more reprehensible, more heinous” father.
“To suggest his father was not a factor is quite disingenuous,” he said.
Though relatives of the Housers want Guzek to join the other 33 inmates on Oregon’s death row, Wolf told jurors the family has had to revisit the ordeal in four jury trials, and a death sentence would only renew the appeals process.
“Let the punishment begin today,” he said.
In his rebuttal, Marquis told jurors that the “Houser family speaks for the Houser family.”
“Let’s not talk about closure,” he fumed. “There is no closure.”
Oregon Death Row Men Inmates are kept at the Oregon State Penitentiary while the Oregon Death Row Women Inmates are kept at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. Oregon primarily method of execution is lethal injection.
UPDATE – On December 13 2022 all death row inmates in Oregon were automatically resentenced to life without parole by the current Governor Kate Brown.
Angela McAnulty is on death row in Oregon for the murder of her teenage daughter. According to court documents Angela McAnulty and her husband Richard McAnulty singled out on of their daughters who was was abused for years including starvation. When authorities came across the victims body they thought she was much younger due to her size. Angela McAnulty would be convicted of a slew of charges and eventually be sentenced to death. Angela McAnulty would later be resentenced to life in prison without parole
Angela McAnulty 2022 Information
Offender Name:
Mcanulty, Angela Darlene
Age:
51
DOB:
10/1968
Location:
Coffee Creek Correctional Facility
Gender:
Female
Race:
White Or European Origin
Status:
Inmate
Height:
5′ 03”
Hair:
Brown
Institution Admission Date:
02/25/2011
Weight:
140 lbs
Eyes:
Brown
Earliest Release Date:
No Parole
Caseload:
01429
Angela McAnulty Other News
The Eugene mother sentenced to death row after pleading guilty to murdering her 15-year-old daughter may get a new trial, The Oregonian/OregonLive reports.
A jury of 8 men and 4 women returned a death sentence in 6 hours after hearing two weeks of testimony in 2011 on the death of Jeanette Maples at the hands of her mother, Angela McAnulty.
In a draft ruling obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive, a judge makes the case that “McAnulty should get a new trial because her attorneys failed to adequately represent or advise her during her trial.”
McAnulty changed her plea to guilty on the first day of her criminal trial in February 2011 on charges of murder in the wake of Maples’ death on December 9, 2009.
That put in motion the death penalty phase of the trial.
Firefighters found Maples on her back in the dimly lit living room without her shirt on.
“Help my baby,” McAnulty told the first responders to a 911 call reporting Maples had stopped breathing.
The girl’s body looked small for a 15 year old – so small, the fire captain at the scene, Sven Wahlroos, asked Angela McAnulty several times about the girl’s age.
Maples had no pulse. Paramedics tried CPR and put a tube into her lungs in an effort to make her breathe.
McAnulty appeared agitated, then quiet, then hysterical. Then she laughed a couple of times.
“I just remember it was an odd response,” Wahlroos told the jury in 2011.
“Very odd,” Wahlroos told the court, recalling the feeling in the “hair on the back of my neck. I have never had that feeling in 18 years. All I wanted to do was run.”
He called his supervisor. And he called police.
“In 18 years, I have never cried about a call,” he said. “I cried about this call.”
Ryan Sheridan was the lead paramedic on scene in December 2009. He met Angela McAnulty in the driveway and told the jury he remembers her talking very fast, saying Maples fell down and last seemed well about an hour before the 911 call.
Inside the house off River Road, Sheridan knew something wasn’t right when he found Maples, he told the court in 2011.
No shirt. Wet hair. Bruises on her face, and cuts above her eye.
The girl’s body was skinny, small and frail, so emaciated, you could see her bones.
“It was a hard call,” he said.
Sheridan was there when Maples died in the emergency room.
*****
Dr. Elizabeth Hilton treated Maples when she arrived at the ER.
She could find no signs of life in the girls petite, emaciated body. Doctors pronounced Maples dead at 8:42 p.m.
Dr. Hilton was told Maples had no previous medical problems, but said cuts and wounds on the girl’s lips were old – and appeared never to have received any medical care.
The girl’s front teeth were broken, and there were severe wounds on her legs and back.
Hilton met with the family, and Angela told the doctor Maples had been eating but had gotten very skinny lately.
The charge nurse asked Angela where Maples went to school.
She told the hospital staff Maples was homeschooled.
*****
Angela McAnulty entered the courtroom sobbing when the death penalty phase of her trial began in 2011, saying she knew what she did was wrong.
A member of her defense team consoled her.
She continued to cry, wiping away tears with a tissue – and putting her head on the table sobbing during opening arguments about whether she should spend her life in prison or die for the murder of her daughter.
In front of a courtroom packed with deputies and detectives who investigated the case looking on, McAnulty entered the penalty phase of her murder trial, having already admitted causing her daughter’s death.
At the time in 2011, prosecutor Erik Hasselman said the state would show that, by the time she died on Dec. 9, 2009, Jeanette Maples had suffered for months.
The prosecutor said paramedics thought Maples was already dead when they arrived, even as McAnulty insisted the teen had been fine until just an hour earlier.
The prosecutor said Maples was starved and dehydrated. Her lips and mouther were pulverized from being hit with belts and sticks over a period of months. Her face was disfigured, her head in bandages. On her hip, investigators found a wound where the flesh had been so torn away as to expose the bone.
She had the “appearance of a concentration camp victim,” Hasselman said.
The defense team, led by Steve Krasik, chose to wait until the prosecution rests before making an opening statement.
*****
Prosecutors said the evidence will show how Maples died – and that McAnulty was to blame.
Here is how prosecutors described the girl’s treatment and history:
Maples was forced to sleep on cardboard in a room with blood spattered on the walls, floor and ceiling.
In the house, investigators found leather belts and torture devices, as well as chunks of Maples’ flesh.
“Jeanette was constantly in trouble with her mother,” Hasselman said.
McAnulty would take Maples into the “torture room” and turn on the vacuum cleaner to mask the sound so the two younger children wouldn’t hear it.
Sometimes, McAnulty would tie Maples up, the prosecutor said.
Sometimes, she would make the girl collect dog feces – then run them in the girl’s face and mouth.
The State of California once took Jeanette from her mother but returned her after the birth of a younger child.
In 2002, Angela married Richard McAnulty, and the family moved to Oregon.
At first, Maples attended public school. Teachers were concerned about the girl’s treatment at her mother’s hands. The school confronted Maples, who told school officials that she was being abused.
Oregon’s Department of Human Services visited the home, where Angela McAnulty told child welfare workers that Maples was a compulsive liar.
Maples was left with McAnulty, who took the girl out of school to homeschooled – and to cut off her lifelines to the public, so no friends would see her condition.
Prosecutors said Lynn McAnulty, Richard’s mother, was concerned. Angela denied her access to the grandchildren, and Lynn called state child welfare workers repeatedly – the last time just days before Maples died.
*****
McAnulty was stoic and the packed courtroom was silent at the conclusion of the penalty phase as Judge Kip Leonard read off the jury’s answers to three key questions:
First, did Angela McAnulty deliberately kill her 15-year-old daughter, Jeanette Maples by torturing her?
Yes.
Second, is it likely McAnulty will re-offend?
Yes.
Third, did McAnulty kill her daughter without provocation?
Yes.
Those three affirmatives triggered a fourth and final question:
“Should the defendant receive the death sentence?” Judge Leonard read from the jury’s verdict.
“The answer to that question,” he told the court, “is yes.”
McAnulty silently stared as she learned the jury sentenced her to death, very different from just days before when she wailed openly in the courtroom, begging attorneys to remove pictures of her daughter, Jeanette, from her view.
The 8 men and 4 women on the jury deliberated officially for six hours, but then-District Attorney Alex Gardner said that’s just a fraction of the amount of time the jurors mulled over the testimony.
“These jurors have been thinking about this 24/7 for weeks and weeks,” he said.
The judge and the attorneys thanked the jurors for their service.
“I recognize that those of us who are in law enforcement sign up for this,” Gardner said. “They didn’t sign up for this, they were drafted and compelled to participate in jury service, and the fact that they stood up and did what was required of them is extraordinary, I think.”
McAnulty’s case heads to the Oregon Supreme Court on automatic appeal.
“It is a hugely significant verdict,” Gardner said, “but we should understand that nothing is going to happen soon.”
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Angela McAnulty 2021
Angela McAnulty is currently incarcerated at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility the home of Oregon Death Row for Women
Why Is Angela McAnulty On Death Row
Angela McAnulty was convicted of the murder of her daughter
Angela McAnulty Resentencing
The woman originally sentenced to death row for abusing her 15-year-old daughter Jeanette Maples to death in 2009 will spend the rest of her life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A judge in July 2019 vacated Angela McAnulty‘s guilty plea in the murder of her daughter, finding among other flaws that her attorneys failed her by allowing her to plead guilty at the outset of her trial n 2011.
McAnulty, now 51, appeared by video conference this week at a hearing to approve a new settlement:
She no longer faces death.
Instead, McAnulty will spend the rest of her life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
Sr. Judge J. Burdette Pratt ruled July 10, 2019, that Angela McAnulty’s guilty plea should be vacated and the matter returned to Lane County Circuit Court to be prosecuted again from the beginning.
Judge Pratt found that McAnulty’s attorneys had failed to exercise reasonable professional skill and judgment:
in advising her to plead guilty to the charge of Aggravated Murder without any concessions in return from the state
in failing to adequately prepare for and present evidence on the question of future dangerousness during the penalty phase, and
in failing to conduct an adequate investigation and present evidence regarding Petitioner’s mental health and psychological trauma during the penalty phase.
In August 2019, the State of Oregon appealed the rule, as did McAnulty’s attorneys.
The legislature was also busy revising some of the state’s criminal codes, the Lane County District Attorney’s Office said.
In 2009, McAnulty changed her plea from not guilty to guilty on the first day of her criminal trial in February 2011 on charges of murder in the wake of Maples’ death on December 9, 2009.
That put in motion the death penalty phase of the trial, which essentially meant the trial went on – not with guilt or innocent on the line, but whether McAnulty should be put to death.
Firefighters found Maples on her back in the dimly lit living room without her shirt on.
“Help my baby,” McAnulty told the first responders to a 911 call reporting Maples had stopped breathing.
The girl’s body looked small for a 15 year old – so small, the fire captain at the scene, Sven Wahlroos, asked Angela McAnulty several times about the girl’s age.
Maples had no pulse. Paramedics tried CPR and put a tube into her lungs in an effort to make her breathe.
McAnulty appeared agitated, then quiet, then hysterical. Then she laughed a couple of times.
“I just remember it was an odd response,” Wahlroos told the jury in 2011.
“Very odd,” Wahlroos told the court, recalling the feeling in the “hair on the back of my neck. I have never had that feeling in 18 years. All I wanted to do was run.”
He called his supervisor. And he called police.
“In 18 years, I have never cried about a call,” he said. “I cried about this call.”
*****
Ryan Sheridan was the lead paramedic on scene in December 2009. He met Angela McAnulty in the driveway and told the jury he remembers her talking very fast, saying Maples fell down and last seemed well about an hour before the 911 call.
Inside the house off River Road, Sheridan knew something wasn’t right when he found Maples, he told the court in 2011.
No shirt. Wet hair. Bruises on her face, and cuts above her eye.
The girl’s body was skinny, small and frail, so emaciated, you could see her bones.
“It was a hard call,” he said.
Sheridan was there when Maples died in the emergency room.
*****
Dr. Elizabeth Hilton treated Maples when she arrived at the ER.
She could find no signs of life in the girls petite, emaciated body. Doctors pronounced Maples dead at 8:42 p.m.
Dr. Hilton was told Maples had no previous medical problems, but said cuts and wounds on the girl’s lips were old – and appeared never to have received any medical care.
The girl’s front teeth were broken, and there were severe wounds on her legs and back.
Hilton met with the family, and Angela told the doctor Maples had been eating but had gotten very skinny lately.
The charge nurse asked Angela where Maples went to school.
She told the hospital staff Maples was homeschooled.
*****
Angela McAnulty entered the courtroom sobbing when the death penalty phase of her trial began in 2011, saying she knew what she did was wrong.
A member of her defense team consoled her.
She continued to cry, wiping away tears with a tissue – and putting her head on the table sobbing during opening arguments about whether she should spend her life in prison or die for the murder of her daughter.
In front of a courtroom packed with deputies and detectives who investigated the case looking on, McAnulty entered the penalty phase of her murder trial, having already admitted causing her daughter’s death.
At the time in 2011, prosecutor Erik Hasselman said the state would show that, by the time she died on Dec. 9, 2009, Jeanette Maples had suffered for months.
The prosecutor said paramedics thought Maples was already dead when they arrived, even as McAnulty insisted the teen had been fine until just an hour earlier.
The prosecutor said Maples was starved and dehydrated. Her lips and mouther were pulverized from being hit with belts and sticks over a period of months. Her face was disfigured, her head in bandages. On her hip, investigators found a wound where the flesh had been so torn away as to expose the bone.
She had the “appearance of a concentration camp victim,” Hasselman said.
The defense team, led by Steve Krasik, chose to wait until the prosecution rests before making an opening statement.
*****
Prosecutors said the evidence would show how Maples died – and that McAnulty was to blame.
Here is how prosecutors described the girl’s treatment and history:
Maples was forced to sleep on cardboard in a room with blood spattered on the walls, floor and ceiling.
In the house, investigators found leather belts and torture devices, as well as chunks of Maples’ flesh.
“Jeanette was constantly in trouble with her mother,” Hasselman said.
McAnulty would take Maples into the “torture room” and turn on the vacuum cleaner to mask the sound so the two younger children wouldn’t hear it.
Sometimes, McAnulty would tie Maples up, the prosecutor said.
Sometimes, she would make the girl collect dog feces – then run them in the girl’s face and mouth.
The State of California once took Jeanette from her mother but returned her after the birth of a younger child.
In 2002, Angela married Richard McAnulty, and the family moved to Oregon.
At first, Maples attended public school. Teachers were concerned about the girl’s treatment at her mother’s hands. The school confronted Maples, who told school officials that she was being abused.
Oregon’s Department of Human Services visited the home, where Angela McAnulty told child welfare workers that Maples was a compulsive liar.
Maples was left with McAnulty, who took the girl out of school to homeschooled – and to cut off her lifelines to the public, so no friends would see her condition.
Prosecutors said Lynn McAnulty, Richard’s mother, was concerned. Angela denied her access to the grandchildren, and Lynn called state child welfare workers repeatedly – the last time just days before Maples died.
*****
McAnulty was stoic and the packed courtroom was silent at the conclusion of the penalty phase as Judge Kip Leonard read off the jury’s answers to three key questions:
First, did Angela McAnulty deliberately kill her 15-year-old daughter, Jeanette Maples by torturing her?
Yes.
Second, is it likely McAnulty will re-offend?
Yes.
Third, did McAnulty kill her daughter without provocation?
Yes.
Those three affirmatives triggered a fourth and final question:
“Should the defendant receive the death sentence?” Judge Leonard read from the jury’s verdict.
“The answer to that question,” he told the court, “is yes.”
McAnulty silently stared as she learned the jury sentenced her to death, very different from just days before when she wailed openly in the courtroom, begging attorneys to remove pictures of her daughter, Jeanette, from her view.
The 8 men and 4 women on the jury deliberated officially for six hours, but then-District Attorney Alex Gardner said that’s just a fraction of the amount of time the jurors mulled over the testimony.
“These jurors have been thinking about this 24/7 for weeks and weeks,” he said.
The judge and the attorneys thanked the jurors for their service.
“I recognize that those of us who are in law enforcement sign up for this,” Gardner said. “They didn’t sign up for this, they were drafted and compelled to participate in jury service, and the fact that they stood up and did what was required of them is extraordinary, I think.”
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