Earl Richmond was a serial killer who was executed by the State of North Carolina for a triple murder
According to court documents Earl Richmond would sexually assault and murder 27 year old Helisa Stewart Hayes. Richmond would then stab 8 year old Philip Hayes forty times and strangled him with an electric cord. Richmond would then strangle 7-year-old Darien Hayes.
DNA found at the scene would link Earl Richmond to the brutal triple murder. Once arrested Richmond would also be tied to a murder in New Jersey where Army Spc. Lisa Ann Nadeau was beaten with a hammer and strangled
Earl Richmond would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Earl Richmond would be executed by lethal injection on May 6 2005
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When Was Earl Richmond Executed
Earl Richmond was executed on May 6 2005
Earl Richmond Case
A former Army drill sergeant was executed this morning for killing and raping a Fayetteville woman and then strangling her two children to death with electrical cords.
Earl Richmond Jr. , 43, of Fayetteville, had been a family friend to Helisa Stewart Hayes and had dated one of her sisters. He even served as a pallbearer at the funerals for Hayes, 27, and her son, Phillip, 8, and her daughter, Darien, 7. In November 1991, the family’s bodies were found in their home at the Sunshine Mobile Home Park in Fayetteville. Hayes had been beaten and strangled. Her son had been stabbed 40 times with a pair of scissors and had an electrical cord wrapped around his neck five times. Her daughter was strangled with the cord from a curling iron.
Richmond had been a best friend to Wayne Hayes, Helisa Hayes’ former husband and the children’s father. Wayne Hayes was scheduled to be among the witnesses to Richmond’s death by lethal injection at 2 a.m. today at Central Prison near downtown Raleigh. Other scheduled witnesses included Hayes’ sister, Tara Clark, and Theresa Nadeau Collins, the sister of another of Richmond’s victims. “He’s a beast in human skin,” said Collins, of Plainfield, Conn. “He doesn’t have any remorse.”
Richmond had been separately convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Army Spc. Lisa Ann Nadeau, 24, in April 1991 — seven months before the Hayes murders. Nadeau, a payroll clerk at Fort Dix, N.J., had been beaten with a hammer, stabbed, hog-tied and strangled. Richmond did not become a suspect in Nadeau’s death until after he was arrested in the Hayes murder. He was sentenced to life in prison for Nadeau’s killing. Richmond had been removed as a drill sergeant at Fort Dix for misconduct, officials said at the time
Richmond has been on North Carolina’s death row since June 1995. He was moved at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday to the death watch area, which has four cells and a day room away from death row and is where prisoners stay before execution. At 4:05 p.m. Thursday, he learned that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his request to stay the execution. Richmond did not request a last meal, a prison spokeswoman said. By 8 p.m., Gov. Mike Easley denied Richmond’s plea for clemency.
Richmond’s appellate lawyers say a judge should not have allowed prosecutors to argue for a death sentence by saying Richmond was still a danger to society without letting jurors know he was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The state’s lawyers point out that a federal appeals court ruled it amounted to “harmless” error and a jury would likely have still sentenced Richmond to death.
Richmond’s lawyers also say Nadeau’s father, Arthur, should not have been allowed to testify about his daughter’s death during the sentencing phase of the trial about the Hayes’ murders. Arthur Nadeau’s testimony was based on what he heard at the trial in New Jersey, and amounted to hearsay, Richmond’s lawyers said. Richmond was denied his constitutional right to confront a knowledgeable witness about Nadeau’s killing, they say.
But the state’s lawyers say Richmond’s own confession about Nadeau’s death was far more damaging than anything Arthur Nadeau said on the witness stand. Arthur Nadeau’s testimony was an accurate account of his daughter’s injuries, which the defense doesn’t dispute, the state lawyers added.
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