Steve Boggs and Christopher Hargrave Murder 3

Steve Boggs and Christopher Hargrave were sentenced to death by the State of Arizona for a triple murder

According to court documents Steve Boggs and Christopher Hargrave would go into a Jack In The Box restaurant and force three employees, Beatriz Alvarado, 31, Fausto Jimenez, 31, and Kenneth Brown, 27, into a freezer, once inside the employees were fatally shot

Initially it was assumed that the triple murder was gone wrong however when Steve Boggs was arrested he would tell police he wanted to get rid of a few immigrants

Steve Boggs and Christopher Hargrave would be convicted and sentenced to death

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Steve Boggs And Christopher Hargrave Case

Late on the evening of May 19, 2002, Christopher Hargrave and Steve Boggs drove to a fast food restaurant from which Hargrave had recently been fired.   Hargrave entered dressed in his work uniform and told the employees that he had been called into work.

¶ 3 Armed with a handgun, Boggs followed Hargrave into the restaurant and ordered the three employees to lie down on the floor and empty their pockets.   Hargrave watched the employees while Boggs took money from two registers.   Hargrave then assisted Boggs in directing the employees through the cooler into the freezer where Boggs lined them up and shot them as he shouted racial epithets.   Hargrave also fired the murder weapon once inside the cooler.   He later tried to withdraw money from an ATM using a bank card belonging to one of the victims.

¶ 4 A customer who arrived at the restaurant after the shootings saw victim B.A. on the ground by the back door and called the police.   When police officers arrived, they found the body of victim F.J. on the floor near a telephone and the body of victim K.B. inside the freezer.   All three victims died from their gunshot wounds.   Between $200 and $500 was missing from the cash registers.

¶ 5 On May 21, 2002, Boggs pawned a .45 caliber handgun at a shop owned by Hargrave’s girlfriend’s parents, who reported the transaction to the police.   Ballistics tests indicated that the gun had ejected the shell casings found at the restaurant, and an analyst concluded that Hargrave was a “major contributor” to the DNA recovered from the grip of the weapon.

¶ 6 On June 6, 2002, officers apprehended Hargrave while he was sleeping at a campsite.   Nearby, officers found two handguns, a shotgun, two assault rifles, boxes of ammunition, and several documents evidencing Hargrave’s involvement with the “Imperial Royal Guard,” a white supremacist organization.   As officers arrested him, Hargrave stated that “things would have been different” if he had been awake when they arrived.

¶ 7 A jury found Hargrave guilty of three counts of first degree felony and premeditated murder and all other charges.   The jury found three aggravating factors for each murder:  (1) the murders were committed in the expectation of pecuniary gain, A.R.S. § 13-751(F)(5) (2010); 2  (2) the murders were committed in an especially cruel manner, id.  § 13-751(F)(6);  and (3) multiple homicides were committed during the offense, id.  § 13-751(F)(8).

¶ 8 Hargrave did not present mitigation during the penalty phase and the jury determined that he should be sentenced to death for each murder.   The court imposed a death sentence for each of the murders and concurrent terms of twenty-one years for the armed robbery, fifteen years for the burglary, and twenty-one years for each of the three kidnapping counts.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/az-supreme-court/1527217.html