Gerald Pizzuto was sentenced to death by the State of Idaho for two murders committed during a robbery
According to court documents Gerald Pizzuto would break into a cabin and would murder the two occupants: Berta Herndon, 58, and her nephew Del Herndon, 37,
Gerald Pizzuto would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
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Where Is Gerald Pizzuto Now
Gerald Pizzuto is incarcerated at Idaho Maximum Security Institution
Gerald Pizzuto Case
On July 25, 1985, the petitioner Gerald R. Pizzuto, Jr., (Pizzuto) murdered two innocent strangers, Berta Herndon and her nephew Del Herndon. Pizzuto approached them with a .22 caliber rifle as they arrived at their mountain cabin and made them enter the cabin. While inside, he tied the Herdons’ wrists behind their backs and bound their legs in order to steal their money. Some time later, he bludgeoned Berta Herndon to death with hammer blows to her head and killed Del Herndon by bludgeoning him in the head with a hammer and shooting him between the eyes. Pizzuto murdered the Herdons just for the sake of killing and subsequently joked and bragged about the killings to his associates. A jury convicted Pizzuto of two counts of murder in the first degree, two counts of felony murder, one count of robbery, and one count of grand theft. In 1986, the district judge sentenced Pizzuto to fourteen years fixed for the grand theft, to a fixed life sentence for the robbery, and to death for the murders. On appeal this Court affirmed Pizzuto’s convictions and his sentences, with the exception of his sentence for robbery. We held that the robbery was a lesser included offense of the felony murder, and therefore vacated the fixed life sentence. State v. Pizzuto, 119 Idaho 742, 810 P.2d 680 (1991). Within forty-two days after entry of the judgment imposing the death sentence, Pizzuto also filed his first petition for post-conviction relief. The trial judge denied him any relief on his petition, and we affirmed the denial on appeal.
https://law.justia.com/cases/idaho/supreme-court-criminal/2008/pizzuto-1.html
