On
this date, August 13, 2019, Thomas Knuff was sentenced to death for fatally
stabbing his former prison pen-pal and the man she lived with, then trying to
hire a man to set fire to the home that housed their decaying bodies.
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Thomas Knuff brutally
stabbed to death his pen pal Regina Capobianco, 50, and her 65-year-old
boyfriend John Mann in 2017 after they gave him somewhere to stay when he was
released from prison
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Jury recommends death sentence in Parma
Heights prison pen-pal double-murders
Updated Jul 23, 2019; Posted Jul 23, 2019
Updated Jul 23, 2019; Posted Jul 23, 2019
By Cory Shaffer, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND,
Ohio – Jurors on Tuesday recommended that Thomas Knuff be executed for fatally
stabbing his former prison pen-pal and the man she lived with, then trying to
hire a man to set fire to the home that housed their decaying bodies.
The
same jury that last month convicted Knuff of charges including aggravated
murder that made him eligible for the death penalty took about three hours to
determine that he should pay the ultimate penalty for the April 2017 crime
spree that left John Mann and Regina Capobianco dead.
Common
Pleas Court Judge Dena Calabrese, who presided over the six-week trial, will
sentence Knuff in August. Calabrese can either accept the jury’s recommendation
and impose a death sentence on Knuff, or sentence him to life in prison.
Knuff
befriended Capobianco through an inmate-to-inmate pen-pal program in the 2000s
and moved in with her and Mann on Nelwood Road in Parma Heights in April 2017
when he was released on parole, after serving 15 years for an aggravated
robbery conviction.
Capobianco’s
felony record meant that she and Knuff could not both stay in the same house,
and prosecutors contended at trial that the two got into an argument after Mann
chose to keep Capobianco in the house over Knuff. Knuff stabbed her to death
and then killed Mann during the argument, prosecutors said.
Capobianco
was stabbed six times, and Mann was stabbed 15 times, a pathologist from the
Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office testified.
Knuff
and his lawyers maintained that he acted in self-defense after he stumbled upon
Capobianco stabbing Mann. Knuff took the knife from her and tried to tend to
Mann, but Capobianco grabbed another knife from the kitchen and attacked Knuff,
cutting his finger, his lawyers said. Knuff killed Capobianco in self-defense,
and Mann died from the injuries inflicted by Capobianco, his lawyers said.
Knuff
sought to cover up the killings because he feared he would go back to prison
for a parole violation, even though he acted in self-defense, his lawyers said.
In
the weeks that followed, Knuff came up with several different cover stories to
explain his injury and why he needed a new place to stay, prosecutors say. He
told his girlfriend, Alicia Stoner, that he cut his finger in a bar fight, and
told his son that a group of black drug dealers broke into the house and
attacked him, Mann and Capobianco. He went to a Medina County hospital when his
finger became and infected, and told the nurse that he stabbed two people in
self-defense, prosecutors said.
Knuff
eventually confided to Stoner that he had killed someone and needed to dispose
of a body, and asked her to buy him power tools. He told her that he planned to
cut them up like title character from the Showtime serial-killer series
“Dexter” so police couldn’t find evidence on their fingertips, prosecutors said.
He never made good on the plan.
Stoner,
a former prison social worker who met Knuff while he was locked up the in
Trumbull County Correctional Facility, pleaded guilty last year to charges that
accused her of helping Knuff to dispose of the bodies and was sentenced to
probation.
Knuff
broke into two beauty stores and stole cash from the registers. He was arrested
on June 13, 2017 in the break-ins, more than a week before police knew Mann and
Capobianco were dead.
Knuff
escalated his cover-up scheme after his arrest. He wrote to Robert De Lugo from
jail, asking him in great detail to burn down the house, starting in the
bedroom with “the most incriminating s—t,” which prosecutors said was a
reference to the decaying bodies of Mann and Capobianco. He also directed
Stoner to pay De Lugo and buy materials to help start the fire, prosecutors
said.
De
Lugo did not follow through with the plan.
While
all this occurred, Parma Heights police had still not found the bodies of
Capobianco and Mann.
Capobianco’s
relatives reported her missing in the days after the killing, but Parma Heights
police officers never tried to enter the home. They interviewed Knuff, who lied
and said he believed the two had gone to stay with friends in Canton,
prosecutors said.
Neighbors
called police weeks after the killings to report a smell of rotting meat
emanating in the neighborhood, and officers entered the home and found raw meat
that had been left on the kitchen table, prosecutors said. Officers assumed the
smell came from the meat and disposed of it, then left the house without
searching any of the other rooms.
Police
eventually went back into the house on June 21, and a detective discovered
Capobianco’s skull buried under debris in the bedroom, prosecutors said.
Authorities then found Mann’s body within minutes, and launched a homicide
investigation.
INTERNET
SOURCE: https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2019/07/jury-recommends-death-sentence-in-parma-heights-prison-pen-pal-double-murders.html
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| Thomas Knuff |
Parma Heights man convicted in prison pen-pal murders sentenced to death vows ‘it’s not over’
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cuyahoga County
Judge on Tuesday imposed the death sentence on a man who stabbed two people in
their Parma Heights home and then tried to hire a man to burn their bodies in a
failed cover-up in 2017.
Common Pleas Court Judge Deena Calabrese
announced her sentence of Thomas Knuff Jr., convicted in the May 2017 killings
of John Mann and Regina Copabianco.
Jurors recommended last month that Knuff
be executed, and Calabrese accepted their recommendation.
“As
a defendant in my courtroom, I’ve never seen someone with as little remorse as
you,” she told Knuff.
Knuff,
dressed in slacks and a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves exposing his
tattooed forearms, vowed that his case was not over.
“When you show emotion and say you’re sorry, they say you’re lying. When
you don’t, you’re a psychopath," Knuff
said.
Knuff
said Cuyahoga County Prosecutors and Parma Heights police officers lied during
his trial to secure his conviction, and vowed that they would one day have to
answer to those lies.
“I’m going to pursue every avenue to get the truth out,” Knuff said.
Knuff
later shook his head and stared at Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Anna
Faraglia as she told Calabrese that the prosecutor’s office does not “railroad
people."
Faraglia
began to tell Knuff that he could stare at her, just like he did during the
eight weeks of trial in May, June and July.
Knuff
blurted out “because you lied for eight weeks."
Knuff,
who also broke into two hair salons before his arrest and plotting a jailbreak
after he was taken into custody, became the third person this year to be
condemned to death row from a Cuyahoga County courtroom.
Mann’s
son Jonathan Mann, who lives in Columbus and did not attend the trial, spoke
after Calabrese announced the death sentence. He said he personally had wanted
Knuff to die for what he did to his father, and that he deserved no mercy from
the court. But the younger Mann told Calabrese he did not want Knuff to be
executed, citing the high cost of death-penalty appeals.
“I want
you all to hear it from a man who wanted him dead,” he said.
Capobianco’s
sister, Toni Bender, told Calabrese that she was glad Knuff was sentenced to
the death penalty.
“I
hope you die in prison a lonely, lonely man,” she said. “Your death cannot come soon enough
for me.”
Knuff
befriended Capobianco through an inmate-to-inmate pen-pal program in the 2000s
and moved in with her and Mann on Nelwood Road in Parma Heights in April 2017
when he was released on parole, after serving 15 years for an aggravated
robbery conviction.
Capobianco’s
and Knuff’s convictions meant they could not live with each other while on parole.
An argument over which one was going to stay with Mann ensued and escalated
until Knuff stabbed them both, prosecutors said.
Capobianco
was stabbed six times, and Mann was stabbed 15 times, a pathologist from the
Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office testified.
Knuff
left the pair’s bodies in the bedroom for more than two months, as he concocted
a series of lies to conceal his deeds. He then solicited the help of his
girlfriend, a former social worker at the state prison where Knuff was housed,
and a man named Robert DeLugo to dispose of the bodies.
After
police arrested Knuff in break-ins at two beauty salons, Knuff penned a letter
from jail to DeLugo asking him to burn the bodies. He directed DeLugo in the
letter to go to the bedroom, where “the most incriminating s--t" was, a
reference to Mann’s and Capobianco’s bodies, and to use kerosene because it
“burns hotter."
DeLugo
did not carry out the deed.
Capobianco’s
family reported her missing in the days after the killings and police visited
the home, but did not try to go inside.
Officers
eventually went back into the house on June 21 and a detective discovered
Capobianco’s skull buried under debris in the bedroom, prosecutors said.
Authorities then found Mann’s body within minutes, and launched a homicide
investigation.
Knuff’s
lawyers maintained at trial that Knuff walked into the house and discovered
Capobianco fatally stabbing Mann, and stabbed her in self-defense when she
turned the knife on him. They criticized Parma Heights police’s investigation
of the crime.
Knuff
sought to cover up the killings because he feared he would go back to prison
for a parole violation, even though he acted in self-defense, his lawyers said.
Knuff will be shipped to death row at the at a time
when Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has halted executions statewide after a federal
judge questioned whether the state’s lethal injection process was
constitutional. DeWine ordered a review of the execution process and asked
legislators to research a possible alternative method.
INTERNET
SOURCE: https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2019/08/parma-heights-man-convicted-in-prison-pen-pal-murders-sentenced-to-death-vows-its-not-over.html
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