Evan Ramsey was sixteen years old when he murdered two people in a school shooting in Alaska. According to court documents Evan Ramsey walked into Bethel Regional High School and opened fire killing one student, he would then fire and injure a fellow student and teacher before murdering the principal. This teen killer would be sentenced to nearly two hundred years in prison and will not be eligible for parole until he is eight five
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A jury convicted Evan Ramsey of two counts of murder in the first degree,1 one count of attempted murder in the first degree,2 and fifteen counts of assault in the third degree.3 Superior Court Judge Mark I. Wood sentenced Ramsey to a composite term of 210 years to serve. Ramsey appeals both his conviction and his sentence. We affirm in part and reverse in part.
On Wednesday morning, February 19, 1997, sixteen-year-old Evan Ramsey entered Bethel High School with a .12 gauge shotgun hidden under his jacket. Ramsey immediately walked toward the student common area where several students were sitting. At the nearest table sat Joshua Palacios, a fellow high school student, talking with several of his friends. Palacios began to turn around and stand up when Ramsey pulled out the shotgun and shot Palacios in the stomach. Palacios later died from his wounds. Two students who were sitting across from Palacios, S.M. and R.L., were also hit by pellets from the shotgun blast.
One of the art teachers at the high school, Reyne Athanas, was in the teacher’s lounge when she heard the first gunshot. She entered the hallway and observed Ramsey shooting into the ceiling. She saw Palacios lying on the floor with another student. During this episode, Ramsey paced up and down the hall several times in a very threatening manner. She and Robert Morris, another school teacher, attempted to convince Ramsey to put the shotgun down and give up. Ramsey then aimed the gun at them, but did not shoot. Ramsey walked away from Athanas and Morris, heading in the direction of the school’s main office where the school’s administrative offices were located.
Meanwhile, Ronald Edwards, the school principal, had been walking through the school looking for Ramsey because he had heard that Ramsey was in the school with a gun. Edwards found Ramsey as he was approaching the main office. Ramsey aimed the shotgun at Edwards, and Edwards turned around to run back into the school’s office. As Edwards was trying to get back into the office, Ramsey shot him in the back and shoulder. Edwards died in his office from the gunshot wounds.
Minutes after the shooting began, Bethel police officers arrived at the high school. Several officers entered the high school and saw Ramsey standing in the common area with the shotgun. Ramsey saw the officers and fired one round in their direction. After a brief exchange of gunfire, Ramsey put the shotgun down and gave up. According to the officers, as he threw the shotgun down, Ramsey yelled “I don’t want to die.” Officers were quickly able to detain Ramsey and take him into custody.
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Evan Ramsey is currently incarcerated in the Alaska Department of Corrections
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Evan Ramsey is not eligible for parole until he is eighty years old
Brenda Spencer was sixteen years old when she shot and killed two people at a school in California. According to court documents she would open fire from her home aiming at young children waiting to get into the school. After all of the shooting was over the Principal and Janitor were dead, eight students and one police officer was injured. Eventually she was talked out of her home. When asked why she would do such a thing Brenda Spencer infamously responded “I don’t like Mondays”. This teen killer would be sentenced to twenty five years to life. Brenda Spencer is still incarcerated in California, forty years following the shooting
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Brenda Spencer – Current Facility – California Institute For Women – Parole Eligibility Date – 1993
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In a prison two-and-a-half hours from the scene of the UCSB murders sits the killer who started it all, with the first high-profile school shooting more than three decades ago.
“With every school shooting, I feel I’m partially responsible,” Brenda Ann Spencer told the parole board back in 2001. “What if they got the idea from what I did?”
Spencer was 16 on Jan. 29, 1979, when she opened fire with a .22 rifle on Grover Cleveland Elementary School across from her home in San Diego, killing the principal and the custodian while wounding eight youngsters and a police officer.
“I don’t like Mondays,” she famously replied when asked her motive.
Spencer has since said she does not remember making the remark that inspired a song by the Boomtown Rats and became a kind of anthem for many of the school shooters who followed. She has said she also does not recall telling a cop, “It was a lot of fun seeing children shot.”
During a 2009 parole hearing, her most recent, she insisted that she had not intended to shoot anybody.
“So, why did you commit this crime?” the head parole commissioner asked.
“Because I wanted to die,” she said. “I was trying to commit suicide.”
“Why pick the school across the street?” the commissioner asked.
“Because I knew that if I fired on the school the police would show up, and they would shoot me and kill me,” she said. “And every time I had tried suicide in the previous year I had screwed it up.”
“Why did you have to shoot the people at the school?” the commissioner asked.
“I wasn’t specifically aiming at people,” she said. “I was shooting into the parking lot.”
The commissioner inquired how many rounds she had fired, and she said she did not recall.
“Well, that’s pretty good shooting to hit as many folks as you did if you’re not trying to hit anybody from across the street,” the commissioner noted.
“I don’t remember aiming at anybody,” Spencer insisted.
“Do you remember them taking cover?” the commissioner asked.
“Vaguely,” she said.
The commissioner asked if she remembered the police coming, and she said she did.
“You hit one of those fellows, too,” the commissioner noted.
“Uh-hmm,” Spencer said.
The commissioner reminded her that she had eventually surrendered.
“[You] put your gun down,” the commissioner observed. “You didn’t follow through with your plan.”
“No, I had gotten scared,” she said.
“This gun was a gift?”
“Yes,” she responded.
“From whom?”
“My father.”
The commissioner observed that Spencer had described a dark side to her father, while others described him as a decent man.
“He liked to keep appearances up, that everything was fine in the house,” Spencer now said.
“What about your mother?” the commissioner asked.
“She just wasn’t there,” Spencer said.
“But your father was always there.”
“Yeah.”
“And apparently you two slept in the same bed?”
“Yes.”
She had submitted a written statement in which she alleged that her father had begun fondling her when she was 9 and had sexually assaulted her virtually every night.
The commissioner said they would get back to all that. He returned to the shooting.
“You didn’t go to school that day?” the commissioner asked.
“No, I wasn’t feeling good,” she replied.
She said she had been under the influence of alcohol, pot, and downers.
“They made me numb so I didn’t feel anything,” she said.
She confirmed that she had heard the kids in the school across the street.
“A lot of kids laughing and doing their thing?” the commissioner asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Did that upset you?”
“No.”
“It didn’t upset you that they seemed to have happier lives?”
“No,” she said. “I was just set on committing suicide.”
“I am sorry you had to go through everything you went through, but what I’m trying to do is find out why you would open fire and kill two people and hurt so many others,” the commissioner said. “You indicate you weren’t really trying to hit anybody—but you did a heck of a job of hitting a lot of people.”
“The only thing I was concentrating on was getting the police there so that they could shoot me,” she said.
“Well, you could have shot out one window of the school and the police would have come.”
“I didn’t think that.”
“You didn’t have any anger at the children?”
“No.”
“You weren’t trying to hit anybody?”
“Not that I remember.”
The commissioner asked if she recalled saying she had fired on the schoolyard because “I don’t like Mondays.”
“I might have said that,” she replied. “It would have been the drugs and the alcohol talking.”
The commissioner quoted the police negotiator’s report, which said she had told him, ”It was fun to watch the children that had red and blue ski jackets on, as they made perfect targets.” The negotiator added that she told him she “liked to watch them squirm around after they had been shot.”
“It’s entirely possible I said that,” Spencer told the parole board.
“Do you have any idea why you’d go out of your way to harm so many innocent people?” the commissioner asked
“I didn’t consider that other people would get hurt,” she said. “I didn’t think it all the way through”
“Several children were injured by gunshot wounds. The principal of the elementary school, Burton Wragg, age 53, had gone to the aid of the students and was subsequently shot himself,” the commissioner said. “Michael Suchar, age 56, school custodian, went to the aid of Mr. Wragg and was also shot.”
“Uh-hmm,” Spencer said.
“You’re shooting people as they come to the aid of others,” he said. “You’re shooting these people as they become targets, and yet you told me that you didn’t intend to hit anyone.”
“No,” she said.
“Are you pretty good with a rifle?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “I guess.”
She was asked if any adults had seen danger signs before the shooting.
“A month before I was arrested, my [high school] counselor took me to see a psychiatrist,” she reported.
She said the psychiatrist had recommended she be hospitalized as a danger to herself and to others.
“My dad told them that nothing was wrong with me and everything was fine, and leave us alone,” she recalled.
That had been just before Christmas. She had asked her father for a radio.
“I don’t know why he bought me a gun,” she said.
The San Diego District Attorney’s Office sent a representative to the hearing. He informed the board that on the Saturday before the shooting Spencer had told another teen that something big was going to happen on Monday that would be on TV and radio.
“On Monday morning, January 29th, she asked her father if she could stay home from school because she didn’t feel well,” the deputy district attorney reported. “Her father left home for work around 7 o’clock in the morning. Then the inmate proceeded to commit one of the most notorious crimes in the history of this nation.”
He went on: “At 8:30 a.m., the children were lining up to enter Cleveland Elementary School… She picked up her .22 caliber, semiautomatic scoped rifle and began shooting children. Principal Burton Wragg heard the shooting and ran out to get the children out of harm’s way, and the inmate shot him in the chest and killed him. The head custodian, Michael Suchar, known as ‘Mr. Mike’ to the children, ran to Mr. Wragg’s aid, and the inmate shot him in the chest and killed him. She shot eight children, and she shot a responding police officer, Robert Robb, in the neck. But for the heroic efforts of a police officer who risked his life to drive a trash truck in front of her residence to block her field of fire, no doubt further children would have been shot.”
The D.A. representative added that Spencer had complained to the police negotiator that the custodian had tried to get everybody off the school grounds.
“She shot him because, by her own words, he was making it more difficult for her to shoot the kids,” the representative said. “The number of shots fired and the number of vital hits speaks of incredibly accurate, directed shooting, and these were moving targets.”
The representative further reported that blood and urine samples taken after Spencer’s arrest tested clean. He concluded that no drugs or alcohol had been talking when she said she just didn’t like Mondays.
“Basically, what she’s telling this board are a series of untruths,” the representative concluded.
A lawyer representing Spencer spoke next. He suggested that the testing of the time may have simply failed to detect the intoxicants. He allowed that Spencer’s father had never “owned up” to sexually abusing her. But the lawyer also noted that while visiting Spencer at a juvenile-detention facility after her arrest, the father had met a girl who resembled his daughter, but was younger.
“[The father] then went on and had a sexual relationship with her and married her,” the lawyer alleged.
The commissioner read into the record several victim-impact statements. One was from Wilfred Suchar, son of the murdered custodian, Michael Suchar. He said his wife had heard on the radio of a shooting at the school and called him at work. He had gone to his parent’s home to tell his mother, Valentina.
“We found her singing as she gardened in the backyard,” the son recalled. “We were all very upset and shocked on the way to the hospital, because no one would tell us Michael’s condition. When we arrived, we found him not in the hospital room, but down in the basement, dead. He had died trying to help the children and Principal Wragg, killed by Ms. Spencer trying to liven up her Monday.”
He said that his mother never recovered.
“She was lonely and scared, and became more and more depressed,” he said. “There didn’t seem much I or the rest of the family could do to help her.”
He went on to say that his father “had gotten out alive from some rough times in the Pacific during World War II. He was then a part of the Allied occupying forces in northern Germany. Here he met his wife-to-be, Valentina. She, because of the language and cultural differences in the United States, always counted on him to manage their affairs. Suddenly, he was gone. I think her premature death in 1991 was at least partly the result of this traumatic experience.”
He ended by saying on behalf of his deceased parents and the surviving members of the family that they opposed parole for Spencer.
“My question is, will there be another boring Monday for her?” he asked.
The custodian’s brother, Andrew Suchar also submitted a statement, noting that Michael had survived two ship sinkings during the war only to be killed by a 16-year-old in a schoolyard. The brother said that although his widowed sister-in-law lived until 1991, “her life actually ended in January 1979. The victims are not only those killed, but the survivors who live the tragedy for the rest of their lives.”
And then there was a statement by Steve Wragg, son of Principal Burton Wragg.
“My dad and Mike were the only two to die that day,” he said, “The kids that they were trying to save all lived. Some of them were seriously injured, but all survived. I hope that somehow my dad and Mike know this.”
There was also a statement from the principal’s daughter.
“People have told me that I look like him, act like him, that my kids are the spitting image of him,” she said. “When the kids hear this, they can’t possibly relate to such statements, because they have never met their grandfather, and they know they never will, because I’ve told them over and over again that he is dead, that he was murdered by Brenda Spencer.”
The daughter spoke of scattering her father’s ashes in the desert.
“The place he loved the most. The small ceremony solidified my understanding of love and eternity, and of our ties to one another as human beings. Yet, while it was all happening, so beautiful, so serene, I couldn’t get over the perverse violence associated with my dad’s passing. I still can’t.”
She described going to the school to collect her father’s personal effects
“The blood hadn’t been scrubbed from where he had fallen on the concrete. I walked around this place, not stepping on the splotches and the puddles, and didn’t want to be hugged by anyone. Nothing can console me ever.”
She then spoke words that have gained ever more truth after ever more mass shootings.
“A person can be attending school and be gunned down.”
She added, “It happened here first.”
Other statements came from children now grown.
“My name is Crystal Hardy,” one began. “I was 10 years old when I was shot by Brenda Spencer.”
She described arriving at school and hearing shots and seeing the principal and the custodian lying dead. A teacher had called for her to duck.
“But I wasn’t able to run from the bullet Brenda had for me,” Hardy said.
She recalled lying in the nurse’s office, bleeding as bullets crashed through the window.
“I was greatly comforted when the policemen arrived to carry me away. I can still remember the pool of blood on the nurse’s bed, and the terror didn’t end there. Later, of course, I had nightmares, and to this day I fear that someone is pointing a gun at me when I’m walking in open places.”
“And recently, my boyfriend wanted me to go to a shooting range with him because it’s a sport he enjoys, and although I was hesitant, I thought, ‘Well, it’s been a long time, I’ll probably be OK.’ And I sat there as he shot the silhouette, but he had to stop because I started frantically crying. It was completely uncontrollable.”
There was also a statement by a parent, Francis Stile, whose two daughters attended the school. He recalled “the phone call from the neighbor who said there had been a shooting at Cleveland, the frustration of not being able to get near the school because the incident was still going on, the terror in my wife’s eyes, her screams of anguish at not knowing whether our girls were involved, the phone call from the hospital telling us that one of them had been wounded, looking at the bullet hole in her right elbow and the bullet burns on the inside if each thigh where a bullet had passed between her legs.”
The other daughter had been saved from harm when a notebook with a pouch of pens stopped a bullet. Both girls had witnessed the death of the principal and the custodian.
“They still speak of hearing the gurgle in Mr. Wragg as he lay there dying… If such evil can occur in such a benign and tranquil setting, then it can happen anywhere and probably will.”
A former student named Cam Miller attended the hearing in person and offered the last statement.
“I was 9 years old when I was shot,” he began.
He recalled that his mother had just dropped him at school directly opposite Spencer’s home and he had been starting up the sidewalk when he saw the bodies of the principal and the custodian. He had then blacked out as a bullet passed within an inch of his heart, exiting his chest. He survived but remained terrorized.
“I would have to call to my mother two or three times each night to walk me around the inside of my house, just so I knew that Brenda Spencer was not inside my house,” he recalled.
He had been called to testify against her.
“I walked into court and saw this monster glaring at me,” he remembered. “The look at Brenda Foster gave me was enough to scare any young child to death.”
Thirty years later, Miller beheld her in another proceeding and asked the board not to parole her. The board denied her and she will not be eligible for another hearing until 2019.
In the meantime, she will sit as inmate W14944 in the California Women’s Institution, seeming to see no irony in having used heated metal to brand the words “Courage” and “Pride” across her chest. She is now 51 and will no doubt hear of more school shootings and ask herself if they got the idea from what she did on that long ago Monday.
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Brenda Spencer has been eligible for parole since 1993 however has been denied repeatedly. Her max sentence is life
Luke Woodham was sixteen years old when he murdered three people. According to court documents Luke Woodham would stab his mother to death before headed to Pearl High School armed with a rifle. This teen killer would shoot and kill two female students including his ex girlfriend. He would also injure seven other students. This teen killer would be convicted and sentenced to two life terms and seven twenty years terms for the attempted murders.
Luke Woodham 2023 Information
Race: WHITE
Sex: MALE
Date of Birth: 02/05/1981
Height: 6′ 3”
Weight: 290
Complexion: FAIR
Build: EXTRA L
Eye Color: BLUE
Hair Color: BROWN
Entry Date: 06/15/1998
Location: MSP
UNIT: UNIT 30
Location Change Date: 03/01/2018
Number of Sentences: 10
Total Length: LIFE
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On June 5, 1998, Luke Woodham, a sixteen-year-old high school student, was convicted of stabbing his mother to death and sentenced to life imprisonment. At trial, Luke Woodham testified that he had no recollection of killing his mother. He described his relationship with his mother as devoid of love and essentially nonexistent. He recalled his earliest memories of home life while on the stand. These consisted of his parents fighting and finally divorcing when he was in the sixth grade. Woodham testified that he was often left without adult supervision. He never had any close relationships with his extended family, and he described his childhood as lonely.
¶ 3. At trial, he stated that he had suffered from depression as early as age eight. Classmates picked on him as early as kindergarten; and, according to Luke Woodham, the further he went in school, the more intense the picking, name calling and physical bullying became. In high school, he was indifferent regarding his school work and had to repeat his ninth grade year. He testified that he began to seclude himself from others with the exception of a girlfriend, whom he contended provided him with the love he had waited for all of his life. When the relationship ended, however, he began an emotional downward spiral.
¶ 4. Grant Boyette, an older high school student, befriended Luke Woodham and other unpopular students at school. These students began spending time together-playing video games, reading books and discussing philosophy. At some point, Luke Woodham detailed how the group began dabbling in the occult under the guidance of Boyette. Witnesses testified that Boyette began preaching satanic teachings to the other members of the group, later named “The Kroth.”
¶ 5. At trial, Luke Woodham testified that on the day of his mother’s death, he heard Boyette’s voice in his head directing him to kill his mother. He recalled the following:
I remember I woke up that morning, and I had seen the demons I’d seen all the time when Grant had told me to do something. And he was telling me that I was nothing and that I’d always be nothing; ․ And I remember getting the knife, and I got a pillow. And I walked into my mother’s room. And I remember Grant’s voice and he told me that I had to do all of this.. I remember I just closed my eyes, and I just followed myself. I didn’t want to do any of it ․ I kept hearing his voice. And my eyes were closed. When I opened them, my mother was lying on her bed dead.
¶ 6. Lucas Thompson, a classmate of Luke Woodham, testified that the night prior to the homicide, Woodham told him in a telephone conversation that he was going to kill his mom the next day with a knife. Thompson did not believe him; however, when they spoke again the next morning, Luke Woodham, who was on the other phone line with Boyette, informed Thompson that he had in fact done it.
¶ 7. Woodham’s blood and the blood of his mother were found on a butcher knife removed from the crime scene. Dr. Steven Hayne, the State’s pathologist and author of Mary Woodham’s autopsy, detailed her injuries:
There were multiple types of injuries. Specifically there was evidence of blunt force trauma. There was evidence of multiple slash wounds. There was evidence of multiple stab wounds. In fact a total of seven stab wounds were identified, and eleven slash wounds were noted during the course of the autopsy. In addition, there were superficial injuries consisting of scratches or abrasions located on multiple surfaces of the body. There was also one small cut located over the front of the left arm. And there was also areas of bruising located predominantly over the right side of the face.
He concluded that the ultimate cause of death was attributable to “three stab wounds of the chest, to include a stab wound of the heart, a stab wound of the right lung, a stab wound of the left lung, and the subsequent collection of a large volume of blood bleeding into the chest cavity to a volume of approximately three quarts of blood․”
¶ 8. Shortly after Luke Woodham was taken into custody and mirandized, an investigator observed a large cut on Woodham’s hand and asked him how he had cut his hand. Luke Woodham paused for a moment and responded, “Killing my mom.” A jail administrator testified he also asked Woodham the same question and received the same answer. Investigators obtained written and video recorded statements from Woodham. In their presence, Luke Woodham signed a waiver of rights form, a video release form and a form styled “Voluntary Statement” in which he confessed to killing his mother. In the “Voluntary Statement” Woodham wrote the following:
I woke up this morning, got a butcher knife, and a pillow. I got into my mother’s room at about 5:00 a.m. I put the pillow over her head and stabbed her.
He further explained in a videotaped confession that killing his mother was the only way that he could get the gun and the car.
¶ 9. A jury convicted Luke Woodham of murder on June 5, 1998. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Aggrieved by the jury’s verdict, he has timely filed this appeal.
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Pearl High School shooter Luke Woodham, who killed three in 1997, is pushing for parole eligibility.
In January, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that those sentenced as teenagers to mandatory life sentences for murder must be given a chance to argue they should be released from prison.
On Oct. 1, 1997, the 16-year-old Woodham stabbed and bludgeoned his mother to death and then entered Pearl High School with a .30/30 rifle. He shot nine classmates, killing two of them.
The school attack, one of the worst in U.S. history at the time, helped inspire other school shootings across the country, culminating in 1999 with the shootings in Colorado at Columbine High School, where students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 and injured 21 others.
In his 1998 trial, the jury rejected Woodham’s insanity defense, convicting him of the three murders.
“I am sorry for the people I killed and hurt,” Woodham told Circuit Judge Samac Richardson. “The reason you see no tears anymore is because I’ve been forgiven by God. If they could have given the death penalty in this case, I deserve it.”
Under Mississippi law, those convicted of murder receive a life sentence, but are eligible for parole.
The judge sentenced Woodham to three consecutive life sentences. The judge also gave seven 20-year sentences for attempted murder.
Prosecutors were unable to prosecute Woodham for capital murder under the law at that time. Lawmakers have since changed the law, making it possible to bring the death penalty against anyone who kills on educational property.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in January built on the 2012 decision that threw out mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles.
Woodham has no parole eligibility date at this time.
In keeping with the 2012 decision, the state Supreme Court ordered a hearing before Richardson on Woodham’s claim.
His attorney, Tom Fortner, wrote that his client’s 140-year sentence for aggravated assault is the equivalent of a life without parole sentence.
Fortner wrote that justices have concluded that such sentences for juveniles are unconstitutional.
He suggested that the 140-year sentence be allowed to run concurrently with the life sentences.
“Mr. Woodham will still be serving life sentences and thus will remain in prison unless and until the Parole Board decides that he has earned the privilege of release on parole,” he wrote.
This is not the first time Woodham has pushed for his freedom.
In 2011, he asked then-Gov. Haley Barbour for clemency. Barbour rejected the request.
Seven years earlier, the state Supreme Court denied Woodham’s request for post-conviction relief.
Andrew Wurst was responsible for the Parker Middle School dance shooting in Pennsylvania. According to court documents Andrew Wurst would walk into the facility A Nick’s Place, banquet hall, that was hosting a school dance for Parker Middle School. Wurst would open fire killing a man, and wounding three others including a teacher and two student. This teen killer would soon be apprehended, convicted and sentenced to sixty years in prison.
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Parole Number:EA5775 Age: 35 Date of Birth: 02/03/1984 Race: WHITE Height: 5′ 10″ Gender: MALE Citizenship: USA Complexion: LIGHT Current Location: FOREST Permanent Location: FOREST Committing County: ERIE
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Andrew J. Wurst failed to convince an Erie County judge in 2016 that his sentence for the 1998 fatal shooting of a teacher should be shortened.
He has now taken his efforts to U.S. District Court in Erie, where he is making much the same argument he put forth in his unsuccessful appeal.
In a petition filed last week, Wurst again claimed that his sentence of 30 to 60 years in the death of science teacher John J. Gillette failed to take Wurst’s youth into consideration. Wurst was 14 when he killed Gillette and wounded two students at a middle-school dance near Edinboro on April 24, 1998.
Wurst is asking to be resentenced like Pennsylvania’s “juvenile lifers,” whose mandatory sentences of life without parole for murders committed before they turned 18 were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court five years ago.
“This Court should hold that Mr. Wurst’s sentence is unconstitutionally disproportionate because the sentencing judge failed to consider his youth and associated characteristic in determining the proper sentence,” Wurst wrote in the request, called a petition for habeas corpus.
But unlike the state’s juvenile lifers, Wurst did not receive a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. Wurst will be eligible for parole on April 25, 2028, almost three months after his 44th birthday.
He pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and other charges in September 1999, avoiding the possibility of a first-degree murder conviction and a mandatory life sentence without parole.
Wurst made a similar request that was denied in Erie County Court in the summer of 2016. Erie County Judge William R. Cunningham wrote that Wurst “is not entitled to relief under these (juvenile lifer) cases since he was not sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.”
Wurst wrote in the new federal filing that Judge Michael M. Palmisano, who sentenced Wurst, “allowed the crime to overpower all other mitigating evidence of youth.” Cunningham ruled that Palmisano, now retired, took Wurst’s age and other factors into consideration in fashioning the sentence.
Now 33, Wurst is incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Forest, near Marienville. He is representing himself in the petition.
The Erie County District Attorney’s Office will have an opportunity to respond to Wurst’s request in federal court.
A 15-year-old Edinboro boy accused of killing a teacher at a junior high school dance last year pleaded guilty to third-degree murder yesterday, sparing himself the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.
Judge Michael Palmisano sentenced Andrew Wurst to a total of 30 to 60 years in prison on the murder charge and for attempted homicide, assault and weapons charges.
Wurst must serve at least 30 years before becoming eligible for parole.
He would have faced a mandatory life sentence if convicted of first-degree murder for the April 1998 death of teacher John Gillette, 48.
Wurst stood before the judge with closely-cropped hair and wearing green prison overalls, his mother at his side, as District Attorney Joe Conti asked questions to ensure they understood the plea agreement.
Wurst refused to meet the prosecutor’s eyes and answered each question with a near-inaudible “yes” or “no.” His mother, Cathy, also answered quietly. As in previous court appearances, Wurst displayed no emotion and appeared uninterested in the proceeding.
The teen-ager’s attorneys had planned an insanity defense. But they encouraged their client to agree to the guilty plea for fear jurors would not accept that Wurst was mentally ill.
“The only way he would have done better is if the jury would have found him insane, and insanity is a very difficult defense, especially in the tenor of today’s times with these shootings around the country,” defense attorney Philip Friedman said.
If jurors had rejected the insanity defense, Wurst’s attorneys had no other defense to offer, Friedman said.
“There’s just a lot of hostility out there. It’s very difficult for the average jury to excuse people’s behavior for these actions, so we have to take into account that climate when we make a decision like this,” Friedman said.
Gillette was killed when Wurst, then 14, opened fire at a dance for his eighth-grade class from James W. Parker Middle School at a banquet hall in Edinboro. He also wounded two students and held a gun to the principal’s head.
The shooting — which occurred within months of those involving students in Jonesboro, Ark., West Paducah, Ky., and Pearl, Miss. — stunned tiny Edinboro, a town of 7,000 that is home to Edinboro University and serves as a family vacation spot in northwestern Pennsylvania.
After Thursday’s hearing, Conti said the victims had approved of the plea agreement, which he said spared them the hardship of a trial.
Gillette’s wife, Debbie, and the other victims were in court.
None would comment afterward.
Attorney Charles Longo of Cleveland, who represented Debbie Gillette since shortly after the shooting, said she planned to file a civil lawsuit against the Wurst family and a landscaping business owned by the boy’s father, Jerome Wurst.
Longo said the Gillette family was neither happy about nor satisfied by Wurst’s guilty plea. “They’re able to accept it,” he said.
Wurst had been scheduled to go to trial Oct. 25 as an adult on a first-degree murder charge.
Under Pennsylvania law, Wurst could not have been sentenced to death because he was younger than 16 at the time of the shooting. Because of publicity about the case in Erie County, jurors for Wurst’s trial were to have been selected in Washington County, about 140 miles south of Erie.
In April, Palmisano ruled that Wurst should be tried as an adult following days of conflicting testimony from psychiatrists about the boy’s mental state.
“The evidence suggests the defendant made a conscious decision to arm himself with a deadly weapon and ammunition, after which he selected his victims and executed his plan,” the judge wrote at the time.
He added that “the evidence is insufficient to show that if the defendant is truly suffering from mental illness at this stage, he would be ostensibly cured and nondangerous upon his release from a juvenile facility.”
A month before the killing in Edinboro, Wurst told classmates he wanted to kill people and commit suicide.
Another classmate noticed that Wurst was becoming curt and unfriendly in the weeks before the shooting.
Palmisano recommended that Wurst begin his sentence in a separate unit at a state prison for inmates younger than 18 who have been convicted as adults. That unit is part of the state prison at Houtzdale, Clearfield County.
Gabe Parker was fifteen years old when he brought a gun to school in Kentucky that would leave two fellow students dead. According to prosecutors Gabe Parker entered Marshall County High School shortly before 8 a.m. on Jan. 23 opening fire with a handgun leaving two students dead and fourteen others injured.
This teen killer would be arrested shortly after the shooting and would confess to police he was responsible. At trial Gabe Parker would plead guilty to two counts of murder and eight counts of first degree assault and six counts of second degree assault. Gabe Parker would be sentenced to life in prison with the chance of parole after twenty years
Gabe Parker 2023 Information
Name:
PARKER, GABRIEL Active Inmate
PID # / DOC #:
511795 / 313745
Institution Start Date:
6/12/2020
Expected Time To Serve (TTS):
LIFE SENTENCE
Classification:
Unassigned
Minimum Expiration of Sentence Date (Good Time Release Date): ?
Gabe Parker, the teenager who opened fire inside a Kentucky school in 2018, killing two students, pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of murder and multiple counts of assault.
As part of the plea deal, a judge is expected to sentence him June 12 to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years.
Parker had been indicted on two counts of murder and 14 counts of assault after he opened fire with a handgun at Marshall County High School shortly before 8 a.m. on Jan. 23. Bailey Holt and Preston Ryan Cope — both 15-year-old students — died in the attack. He pleaded guilty to eight counts of 1st degree assault and six counts of 2nd degree assault.
Parker, now 18, confessed to police less than an hour after the shooting.
Defense attorney Tom Griffiths said Parker pleaded guilty “not because it was the easy thing to do, but because it was the right thing to do, not just for him but for the victims and the community. He has a lot to atone for and he had to move forward and start to do that.”
Marshall Commonwealth’s Attorney Dennis Foust said Parker was not eligible for life without parole or the death penalty because of his age, 15, at the time of the shooting, so “we got the maximum sentence.”
If convicted at trial, Parker could have been sentenced at most to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.
Foust said the families of the Bailey and Preston were in agreement with the plea bargain.
In part, the prosecution chose not to go to trial because the COVID-19 pandemic would have delayed it until at least 2021 and there were no guarantees it would happen then, Foust said.
“The trade off is in terms of not having to worry about appeals” or when the trial could be held, he said.
In fact, the prosecution could not even work with medical witnesses from Vanderbilt University because of the current pandemic.
Griffiths agreed that avoiding trial was best for everyone involved.
“I don’t think anyone would have been served by this case going to trial when you had someone admitting responsibility and accepting life in prison,” he said.
And Foust said of the victims, “everybody’s going to get a chance to speak at the sentencing and hopefully this will be the first chapter in the beginning of the healing process.”
Griffiths said Parker may or may not speak at his sentencing.
Asked if Parker every told him his reasoning for the shooting, Griffiths said “not that makes any sense to adults. There may be a better answer to that at sentencing, but I can’t promise you that either.”
Parker’s mother, Mary Minyard, released a statement:
“I’ve had more than two years to think about what I want to say at this moment. Two devastatingly long, cruel years to come up with the words, and I find I still don’t have them. Words are inadequate to express how deeply sorry I am for everything that has happened. To every child in the school that day, to every parent and loved one of those children; to the school system and entire community, I’m so sorry. Most especially, my most heartfelt apologies go to those children hurt that day and their families. To the Holt and Cope families, I know there will never be words that I can say to make up for the precious lives you’ve lost, but I hope know how deeply I feel that loss and how truly sorry I am. I can only hope you all find some comfort and light in the days and years ahead.”
In a victory for the prosecution, a Marshall Circuit Court judge has held that alleged teen shooter Gabriel Parker voluntarily confessed to the January 2018 fatal shootings and assaults at Marshall County High School.
Judge Jamie Jameson denied a motion to suppress Parker’s statements, including one in which the county sheriff asked him immediately after the shootings if anyone else was involved and Parker replied, “No, it was me.”
Parker’s public defenders had maintained his Miranda rights were violated and the investigators also violated a law requiring the immediate notification of a juvenile’s parents that they have been arrested.
Jameson noted in his Nov. 10 ruling that sheriff’s investigators did not specifically ask if he wanted to waive his right to maintain his silence, but he said he understood his rights.
He fully confessed to the crimes within five minutes, Jameson said.
The judge said that while Parker’s mother and stepfather were not notified of his arrest for about an hour on Jan. 23, 2018, “Given the chaotic nature of that day, the time frame in which notification occurred was not only legally sufficient, but commendable.”
He said the parents were contacted before Parker was formally charged, and even if the notification law was violated, suppression of his statement is not required unless it was given involuntarily, which Jameson ruled it was not.
Parker was 16 when he allegedly shot and killed students Preston Cope and Bailey Holt and injured 14 others at the school.
His trial on charges of murder and assault will begin June 1 in Christian County, where it was moved on a change of venue. Parker, now 17, has pleaded not guilty.
At a status conference Friday, Jameson set an additional conference for Feb. 14, according to Commonwealth’s Attorney Dennis Foust.
Gabe Parker is serving a life sentence however is eligible for parole in 2038
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