According to court documents Charles Walker would rob Kevin Paule, 21, and his fiancée Sharon Winker, 25. The young couple who were fishing while the robbery occurred would be fatally shot
Charles Walker would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Charles Walker would be executed by lethal injection on September 12 1990
Charles Walker Photos
Charles Walker Case
A man who admitted he killed a young couple in a $40 holdup and opposed efforts to appeal his death sentence died by injection in Illinois’ first execution in 28 years.
Charles Walker, 50, was pronounced dead at 12:12 a.m. at Stateville Prison. The high school dropout had spent 24 years of his life in prison for various offenses.
The case had been watched closely by opponents of capital punishment, who feared it would open the floodgates on executions in Illinois, where 124 people are on Death Row.
“Tell Jesse and tell Vi that I will see them later. You’re a good man,” Walker told Warden Thomas Roth as he went to his death. He was referring to Jesse Mathes, a minister, and to his girlfriend.
The Supreme Court and Illinois’ high court Tuesday had rejected challenges by death-penalty opponents and two death-row inmates, who contended the combination of drugs used in the execution did not meet state law
Gov. James R. Thompson (R) on Monday had refused to commute Walker’s sentence.
Walker had opposed any attempt to save his life, saying he would rather die for the 1983 murders of Kevin Paule, 21, and Paul’s fiancee, Sharon Winker, 25. The couple, who had been fishing near Mascoutah, were tied to trees, robbed and shot. “I’m guilty. I can accept my punishment,” Walker once said. “I’m sorry I done it, yeah, but it’s done.”
He became the 139th person executed in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed states to resume use of the death penalty.
Illinois, which had not put an inmate to death since it sent a man to the electric chair in 1962, is the 16th state since 1976 to resume executions.
According to court documents George Del Vecchio, who was convicted of murder as a teen, would break into a home where he would sexually assault a woman in the home before nearly decapitating six year old Tony Canzoneri.
George Del Vecchio would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
George Del Vecchio would be executed by lethal injection on November 22 1995
George Del Vecchio Photos
George Del Vecchio Case
Lawyers for Death Row inmate George Del Vecchio have asked the Illinois Supreme Court to delay Del Vecchio’s scheduled Nov. 22 execution.
The reason for the requested delay is that Del Vecchio, 47, through his attorneys, argues he is too sick to be executed. He suffered a heart attack in October, and his lawyers believe he is too ill to understand the last-minute appeals available to him.
An inmate asking to be allowed to return to health before being executed is an intriguing notion and a creative legal move.
Lost in all of this is what Del Vecchio did to end up on Death Row. He has an excellent legal team to argue on his behalf; his victims, on the other hand, are voiceless. So while the Illinois Supreme Court decides whether to allow Del Vecchio to recover his health before his execution, perhaps it is not unreasonable to say a few words here on behalf of his victims.
On Dec. 22, 1977, Del Vecchio, then 29, high on the drug PCP-he had ingested enough of the drug to “kill a horse,” his attorney said-went to the home of Karen Canzoneri on West Wabansia Avenue in Chicago. She testified that she was awakened shortly after 5 a.m. by a man standing over her bed and holding a knife. She said that the man sexually assaulted her.
After the assault, she said, she escaped through a bathroom window and summoned police. When officers arrived, they found the body of her 6-year-old son, Tony. The child’s throat had been slashed “from ear to ear,” according to the officers who found him; the boy had been all but decapitated. One officer said, “It would break your heart to see what was done to that boy.”
Indeed, one of the officers who found the murdered child left the house in tears. An arrest was made immediately; George Del Vecchio was found on the roof of the Canzoneri house. Police believed that Del Vecchio murdered the child before having sex with the boy’s mother, that he slaughtered the boy in order to silence him. Del Vecchio’s excuse was that, because he was under the influence of drugs, he was not in possession of his faculties.
It was not the first time Del Vecchio had extinguished a human life.
In 1965, when Del Vecchio was 16, he and two other young men killed a 66-year-old man named Fred A. Christiansen while the man was out for an evening walk near his home.
Police officers said that Del Vecchio and the others attacked Christiansen because they wanted money to buy drugs. Del Vecchio, according to police, fired five bullets into Christiansen. One of Del Vecchio’s accomplices tried to quiet the screaming man by kicking him while he lay on the ground. Christiansen would not stay quiet (much like 6-year-old Tony Canzoneri would not stay quiet 12 years later); Del Vecchio shot the man at least five more times, killing him. Del Vecchio and his accomplices got $11 for their night’s work.
Del Vecchio pleaded guilty to the murder, saying he was high on drugs at the time. Because he was a juvenile, he was put in the custody of the Illinois Youth Commission. By 1973 he was deemed to be rehabilitated, and was paroled. Four years later he slit the throat of Tony Canzoneri.
None of the attorneys working on Del Vecchio’s appeal dispute that Del Vecchio murdered the child; none of them dispute that he earlier killed Fred Christiansen. The attorneys say that there were procedural errors in Del Vecchio’s trial, and that he is now too ill to be executed on Nov. 22.
As we have been reminded in recent days, it is a very good thing that persons scheduled to be executed should have the right to thorough and fair appeals, and should be represented by top-quality lawyers. What sometimes gets lost, though, is the story of the people whose murders were the reason the condemned prisoners are on Death Row.
Testimony at Del Vecchio’s trial for the murder of Tony Canzoneri alleged that before Del Vecchio slit the child’s throat, the boy cried: “Mommy, Daddy, I don’t want to die.”
Now, 18 years later, Del Vecchio’s attorneys are arguing that he is not yet ready to die.
Maybe not. But however you feel about this case, one thing is not in doubt:
On the night that George Del Vecchio butchered Tony Canzoneri, that 6-year-old boy wasn’t ready to die, either
According to court documents Charles Albanese would murder three member of his family over a year period by poisoning them with arsenic in order to get his hands on the inheritance
Charles Albanese mother in law 69-year-old Marion Mueller would die on August 6 1980
Marion Mueller mother 89-year-old Mary Lambert would die on April 18 1980
Albanese father Michael Albanese Sr would die on May 16, 1981, aged 69
Charles Albanese would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Charles Albanese would be executed by lethal injection on September 20 1995
Charles Albanese Photos
Charles Albanese Case
Convicted triple murderer Charles Albanese was executed early Wednesday at Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet, becoming the fourth inmate in Illinois to be put to death this year.
Albanese, 58, of Spring Grove, had no last words for the more than 30 official and media witnesses before he was given a dose of lethal drugs. He was pronounced dead at 12:24 a.m., as about two dozen death-penalty opponents held a vigil outside the prison grounds.
In a statement released earlier by his lawyer, Albanese angrily maintained that he was innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted, the poisoning deaths of three relatives.
Prosecutors maintain that greed for power and money motivated Albanese to kill his victims in Lake and McHenry Counties in 1980 and 1981 and to try to kill a fourth
Throughout the day Tuesday, state and federal courts refused to grant Albanese a last-minute reprieve of his death sentence, and Gov. Jim Edgar refused a clemency request.
Albanese discouraged his family, including his six children, from visiting him in prison Tuesday, his lawyer said. Albanese did, however, talk to a priest, and was communicating with his lawyer by telephone
Shortly before 8:30 p.m., he took an oral sedative, which Illinois prison officials routinely offer to condemned inmates in the hours before their executions.
About 9 p.m., Albanese issued a statement that he had written a week ago, intending it to be released upon his death, according to his lawyer, Roger Webber.
“By the time you have read this you will have executed an innocent man,” Albanese wrote. “Truth, justice and the judicial system is an oxymoron! Not only have you killed an innocent man, you have destroyed my family, all I have worked for in life, and allowed someone to get away with murder. In the name of `justice’ the state knowingly and willfully allowed state experts and witnesses to commit perjury, partaking in the fabricated circumstantial evidence. The case was choreographed by the same people who are supposed to be our protectors against crime.”
Albanese blamed prosecutors for allowing at his murder trial the critical testimony of three witnesses, including his brother, Michael, an intended victim who survived.
Webber said Albanese blamed his brother for the killings of his father, his mother-in-law and his wife’s grandmother. Albanese was convicted of murder in their deaths and of attempted murder for trying to kill his brother.
Albanese was the fourth Illinois prisoner to be executed this year and the sixth since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976. One or two more of the 163 other inmates on Death Row in Illinois also are likely to be executed by the end of the year, said a spokeswoman for Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan.
Only Texas leads Illinois in the number of executions performed so far in 1995, with 14.
In August 1980, prosecutors said, Albanese poisoned Marion Mueller, 69, and Mary Lambert, 89, the mother and grandmother of his then-wife, Virginia, when they came to his Spring Grove home for a Sunday dinner.
At the time, their deaths went unexplained. But a year later, when their bodies were exhumed, officials concluded that they had died from arsenic poisoning.
Prosecutors maintained that Albanese was motivated to kill by about $60,000 in bank funds, real estate, life insurance payouts and pension proceeds that he obtained upon the deaths of the two women. At the time, Albanese was behind on payments to satisfy bank and mortgage loans. He also owed child support from a previous marriage.
In the fall of 1980, Albanese’s brother Michael, then in his early 30s, began suffering from what was later determined to be non-lethal doses of arsenic. Prosecutors later theorized that the poison had been placed in his lunches at work.
And in May 1981, Albanese’s 69-year-old father, M.J., died of what tests of his exhumed body showed was arsenic poisoning.
Those two poisonings followed Albanese’s demotion to treasurer from president in the family company, Allied Die Casting in McHenry.
Albanese wasn’t arrested until November 1981, when McHenry County investigators linked Albanese with arsenic that he had obtained, ostensibly to “get rid” of “some pests around the house,” according to court documents.
In his written statement, which was directed to the “State of Illinois,” Albanese urged other condemned inmates to fight their death sentences.
“To those still on Death Row who have been convicted because of the injustice of our justice system, KEEP FIGHTING! Maybe, just maybe, the people of Illinois will wake up to the injustice. I pray not too many more people will be executed before the People of Illinois realize that any one of them could be next.”
According to court documents Girvies Davis and Richard Holman would pull off a series of robberies where they would murder at least four people. Authorities believe the pair may be responsible for as many as nine murders
Murders They Were Convicted Of:
89-year-old Charles Biebe
84-year-old John Oertel
83-year-old Esther Sepmeyer
21-year-old Frank Cash
Girvies Davis was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Richard Holman would be sentenced to life without parole plus 75 years, his age made him ineligible for the death penalty
Girvies Davis would be executed by lethal injection on May 17 1995
Girvies Davis Photos
Girvies Davis Case
The scheduled execution of Girvies Davis early Wednesday by the State of Illinois has become something of a microcosm of the contentious debate surrounding the death penalty in the United States.
Accusations of racial bias, perverse police tactics and pointed criticisms of the criminal justice system are pitted against violence- weary citizens and public officials bent on justice and fueled by vengeance. Barring a last-minute reprieve from Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar, Davis, 37, is set to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday at the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet for his involvement in the 1978 murder of an elderly wheelchair-bound man.
Edgar, a Republican, has not indicated which way he is leaning, although he supports the death penalty and has presided over three other executions during his term. Davis’ case has drawn no less controversy, and probably quite a bit more, than the preceding ones.
Prosecutors have painted a picture of a brutal young man who participated in a series of burglaries and killings in a ‘reign of terror’ in the late ’70s in the St. Louis Metro East area. The Illinois attorney general’s office and officials in St. Clair and Madison counties, where most of the crimes occurred, say 16 years of appeals is enough and it is time to put the case to rest. But a curious coalition including defense attorneys, journalists, former police officials, lawmakers and university professors have rallied to Davis’ aid. ‘If Girvies Davis is executed on May 17, he will become the first Illinois person in this century to die for a crime in which the actual triggerman was not prosecuted,’ said Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess, who has followed Davis’ case and has written several books on the death penalty.
The state doesn’t dispute that point. According to Davis’ confession, he and Richard Holman robbed Charles Biebel’s mobile home near Belleville on Dec. 22, 1978. Holman fatally shot the 89-year-old while Davis loaded stolen goods into a car outside. Holman, already jailed for another killing, has never been prosecuted in the case.
Davis was well aware that Biebel was going to be killed, having participated in more than one burglary with Holman that ended in murder, prosecutors contend. ‘After the third time he might have had a clue (someone was going to be killed),’ said Mark Von Nida, a spokesman for the Madison County state’s attorney’s office. St. Clair County Sheriff’s Police Capt. James Lay was one of the officers who took Davis’ lengthy confession and said Davis, then 21- years-old, said he and Holman killed their victims to avoid being identified. When asked why they didn’t wear masks to hide their identity rather than kill their victims, Lay said Davis gave a chilling response. ‘Just as cold as ice he said, ‘This was easier,” Lay said.
That late night confession from September 1979 is another point of contention among Davis’ supporters. Many insist it was coerced from Davis at gunpoint after a five-hour ride in a squad car. Attorney David Schwartz, giving pro-bono representation from the Chicago firm of Jenner & Block, said police pulled over during that night drive and ordered Davis out at gunpoint, saying, ‘You’re going to sign (a confession) or you’re going to run.’ ‘This isn’t a recent concoction. He’s been telling this same story for 15 years.’ Schwartz and others also contend that the confession should be thrown out because Davis was illiterate and couldn’t have read it before signing it. ‘He looked at it as if he read it….He said, ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ signed it and handed it back to me,’ Lay said. ‘Whether he could read or not, I don’t know.’
Mirroring death penalty cases throughout the history of the United States, the issue of race has become a factor. Davis, a black, faced a white judge, white prosecutors, an all-white jury and was convicted of killing a white man near Belleville, a town about 15 miles east of St. Louis with a rather dubious civil rights record. And Davis’ defenders point out that prosecutors used their pre- emptive challenges to remove all blacks from the potential jury pool, a practice that the U.S. Supreme Court later held unconstitutional. The ruling did not apply retroactively. Schwartz finds this aspect of the case ‘astounding,’ while Protess predicted the case would be overturned if prosecutors attempted a similar move today. T
he racial bent to the case prompted several black Illinois lawmakers to step forward and request a stay of the execution. The Congressional Black Caucus jumped in, saying it was ‘deeply disturbed by the racially discriminatory trial proceedings.’ Barbara Preiner, with the Illinois attorney general’s office, said all of the issues raised by the defense are irrelevant in the face of the brutal crimes committed by Davis. ‘We consider the ruling of the jury to be sancrosant, and should not be interfered with,’ Preiner said. Lay said Davis deserves to die and explained that he was unconvinced Davis wasn’t the actual gunman, describing him as older and more ‘dominant’ than Holman. ‘It’s dragged out for 16 years and it’s about time they put it to rest,’ he said.
Finally, Davis’ supporters argue that he is rehabilitated, having earned his high school equivilency while in prison and become an ordained minister in a correspondence Bible college. Probation officer Richard Cosey has testified to Davis’ rough upbringing in East St. Louis and said he was a career criminal, but not a violent man. ‘This gives the death penalty a bad name,’ said former Chicago police superintendent Richard Brzeczek, who describes himself as a supporter of capital punishment. ‘Nobody is talking about freeing Girvies Davies….He should spend the rest of his life in prison,’ Protess said. ‘(But) he doesn’t deserve to die.’
Prosecutors point out that claims of rehabilitation are nothing new coming from inmates and question how someone described by defense attorneys as borderline mentally retarded at the time of his arrest went on to earn his high school equivalency and ordination. Von Nida sarcastically suggested Davis was a ‘medical marvel,’ while Madison County State’s Attorney William Haine said he was a ‘liar and a street-smart criminal.’ ‘Girvies Davis is not the mythical figure created by Jenner & Block and a few Chicago newsmen,’ Haine said.
James Free was executed by the State of Illinois for the murder of Bonnie Serpico
According to court documents James Free would go into a data processing office where he attempted to sexually assault Bonnie Serpico and another woman. When Bonnie Serpico attempted to escape she would be fatally shot. The other woman would also be shot but thankfully survived her injuries
James Free would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
James Free would be executed by lethal injection on April 6 1995
James Free Case
The circumstances of the crimes were testified to by Lori Rowe. The defendant testified but claimed not to have any actual recollection of the circumstances surrounding his criminal acts.
Lori Rowe began work shortly before midnight on April 24, 1978, at the M-2 Service Center, an all-night keypunch business. It is located in a large office complex known as the Glen Hill Office Complex in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Shortly before 4 a.m., while Lori Rowe was sitting at her desk, she saw a stranger, later identified by her as the defendant James Free, standing just inside the door. Bonnie Serpico, the only other employee present, was in a back room. The defendant held a gun in his left hand and a cloth bag in the other.
As Lori Rowe approached the defendant, Bonnie Serpico came out of the back room. The defendant James Free ordered both women into the back room. He forced them, at gunpoint, into the lunchroom and ordered them to lie down on their stomachs, which they eventually did.
The women asked him what he was there for and if he wanted their money. The defendant stated that he did not want their money, but that they should take off their clothes because he wanted to rape them. Rowe started to cry, and Serpico tried to persuade the defendant to take their money and leave the office. The defendant again stated that he did not want their money and turned toward Rowe, telling her to remove her clothes. *389 Serpico continued trying to reason with the defendant, but he stated, “I’ve done this before.” As he made that statement, he moved toward Rowe and took some twine out of the cloth bag he was carrying. He told her to put her hands behind her back.
After securely tying Rowe, the defendant took Serpico into the other room. As they were going into the other room, Serpico looked in his bag and commented, “You came prepared for this.” The defendant replied, “Yes, I’ve all sorts of stuff in there.”
After Serpico and the defendant went into the next room, Rowe began struggling to get loose. She heard Serpico say that she had her clothes off and the defendant responded, “Get on your stomach, put your hands behind your back. I want to tie your hands.” Serpico urged the defendant not to tie her hands, pointing out that she had not resisted the defendant.
In the meantime, Rowe managed to get her shoes off and was attempting to get the rope off her feet. The defendant came into the room to check on Rowe, and he saw that Rowe had loosened the rope. He became angry and yanked the rope, pulling her sideways until she fell onto her side.
While lying on her side, Rowe heard Serpico get up and run. The defendant started running after her. Seconds later Rowe heard a gunshot. The defendant then ran back into the room where Rowe was lying. Rowe was sitting up now and the defendant pointed his gun at her and she cried, “Oh no.” As she lowered her shoulder and turned away from the defendant, he shot her and ran from the building.
With her hands still tied behind her back, Rowe managed to crawl out to the main office area where Serpico lay dead. Rowe was able to pull the telephone off a desk and contact the police. She remained there until the police arrived about 15 minutes later.
*390 An autopsy revealed that the cause of Serpico’s death was exsanguination, or severe loss of blood, related to a gunshot wound.
Through a police investigation, suspicion focused on the defendant James Free, who was arrested early the next morning, April 25, 1978, in a house owned by his father in Dubuque, Iowa. He was charged with one count of murder and attempted rape against Bonnie Serpico and one count of attempted murder and attempted rape against Lori Rowe.
The jury found the defendant James Free guilty on all counts. At a sentencing hearing on the murder conviction, as noted, the jury found that Bonnie Serpico was killed in the course of a rape and a burglary and that no mitigating factors existed sufficient to preclude imposition of the death sentence. The trial judge entered a judgment sentencing the defendant to death. At a later sentencing hearing, on the other convictions, the court sentenced the defendant to serve two concurrent 15-year prison terms for the two counts of attempted rape and a consecutive 30-year sentence for the attempted murder.
