RANDY GREENAWALT (KILLED, ESCAPED AND KILLED AGAIN. EXECUTED IN ARIZONA ON 23 JANUARY 1997)

            On this day, 23 January 1997, a Prison escapee and repeat offender, Randy Greenawalt was executed by lethal injection in Arizona. This is another perfect example of letting a dangerous killer be kept alive. I took some information from murderpedia. 

http://www.azcorrections.gov/inmate_datasearch/results.aspx?InmateNumber=033088&LastName=GREENAWALT%20RANDY&FNMI=&SearchType=SearchInet

Randy Greenawalt was sentenced to life after the 1974 slaying of a trucker who was sleeping in his cab at an Interstate 40 rest stop near Winslow. 

Greenawalt drew an "X" on the trucker's door near his head then fired a round through it. Greenawalt later confessed to killing another trucker in Arkansas and a man in Colorado.

On July 30, 1978, Greenawalt and Gary Tison escaped from Arizona State Prison with the help of Gary's sons, Ricky, Ray, and Donnie. 

The next night, the group kidnapped and shotgunned to death John and Donnelda Lyons, their 2-year-old son Christopher, and their teenaged niece, Theresa Tyson, in Yuma County. 

They then drove north, changing cars several times, and apparently murdered a newly wed couple, James and Margene Judge, in Colorado. They then turned south again, driving the Judges' van. 

On August 11, 1978, they were able to run a roadblock that the authorities had established in Pinal County. At the next roadblock when the van would not stop, the authorities fired on it, killing Donnie Tison. The authorities captured Greenawalt and Ricky and Raymond Tison, but Gary Tison was able to escape into the desert. 

Gary Tison was found dead in the desert several days later. 

Ricky and Raymond Tison, who were under 20 years old at the time of the shootings, were also sentenced to death. On appeal, their sentences were reduced to life in prison.

The search for the Tison gang was the largest manhunt in Arizona history. The escape heaped scorn on an Arizona prison system where the warden's favorite ego-stroking inmates pretty much had the run of the place. It was turned into a Hollywood, made-for-TV movie starring Robert Mitchum as Gary Tison.

Greenawalt lived through 19 years of litigation before his execution.

PROCEEDINGS

Presiding Judge: Douglas W. Keddie
Prosecutor:  Michael Irwin
Start of Trial:  February 6, 1979
Verdict:  February 16, 1979
Sentencing: March 26, 1979 

Aggravating Circumstances

    Prior convictions punishable by life imprisonment
    Prior convictions involving violence
    Grave risk of death to others
    Pecuniary gain Especially heinous/cruel/depraved 

Mitigating Circumstances

    None 

PUBLISHED OPINIONS

State v. Greenawalt, 128 Ariz. 150, 624 P.2d 828 (1981).
Greenawalt v. Ricketts, 784 F.2d 1453 (9th Cir. 1986).
Greenawalt v. Ricketts, 943 F.2d 1020 (9th Cir. 1991).
Greenawalt v. Ricketts, 953 F.2d 1020 (9th Cir. 1991),
    reh'g en banc denied, 961 F.2d 1457 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 113 S. Ct. 117 (1992).

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Last Meal

Cheeseburger, Fries, Coffee with milk

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Arizona executed Randy Greenawalt

By Walter Berry - The Associated Press

Thu, 23 Jan 1997

FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) -- A man who spent 18 years on death row was executed by injection early Thursday for murdering four people after a prison break, including a 22-month-old boy.

Randy Greenawalt, 47, was serving a life sentence for a 1974 murder when he and fellow killer Gary Tison escaped from the state prison in Florence on July 30, 1978, with the help of Tison's three sons.

The next night, they kidnapped and killed a Yuma family and stole their car. The bodies of Marine Sgt. John Lyons, 24, his wife, Donnelda, 23, and their little boy, Christopher, were found near the fugitives' abandoned car. The body of the couple's niece, Theresa Tyson, 15, was found later a quarter-mile away.

After driving north and changing vehicles several times, the gang apparently killed Texas newlyweds James and Margene Judge near Pagosa Springs, Colo. That case was never prosecuted.

On Aug. 11, 1978, the Tisons and Greenawalt were back in Arizona, driving the Judges' stolen van. They ran one roadblock but were stopped at a second.

Police killed one of Tison's sons, and Tison fled into the desert, where he died of exposure. Greenawalt and the surviving sons, Raymond and Ricky Tison, were captured, tried and sentenced to death.

The Tisons' death sentences were overturned by the state Supreme Court in 1992, and they were resentenced to life in prison.

Greenawalt's lawyers had argued in appeals that the state's use of lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment.

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Gary Gene Tison & Randy Greenawalt (7+)

On July 30, 1978, Gary Gene Tison and Randy Greenawalt had enough of their life sentences at the Arizona state prison. The imposing Tison, feared and respected by fellow inmates, had killed a policeman for shoving his wife. Greenawalt, a pudgy man with a very high IQ, was doing time for serial-killing at least two, maybe four truck drivers, by shooting them in the head while they slept in their cabs. 

Transferred to the low-security Trusty Unit for excellent behavior, Tison and Greenawalt pulled off a daring escape in broad daylight. They were aided by Gary's young and near-brainwashed sons Donny, Ricky and Ray. After suffering two flat tires on rough Arizona back roads, they kidnapped a family of four for their car, then shotgunned the whole family to death. A week later, a game warden discovered the sun-bloated corpses in the desert. One of the victims had crawled a thousand feet before dying.

Failing to obtain a plane in which to fly to Mexico as planned, the gang tried to drive across the border in a stolen van. The owners of the van, a couple vacationing in Colorado, were later found dead in the woods. On the night of August 10 they met by a hail of gunfire that killed Donny, the van was forced off the road. Randy, Ricky and Ray were captured and sent to prison, but Gary, who had sworn he wouldn't be taken alive, died of dehydration in the desert, while hiding only a few feet away from a building where he could have turned himself in.

Mayhem.net

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Finally, in Arizona, the Murderer of Theresa Tyson May Die

By Vin Suprynowicz

THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 21, February 2, 1997. 

Nearly two decades ago, for 12 steamy monsoon days in August of 1978, police combed the Southwest for two escaped Arizona murderers and the three sons who sprung them from an Arizona state prison. 

In those more easygoing times, Arizona's medium security facilities apparently offered little trouble to Gary Tison's three sons -- Donald, 20, Ricky, 19, and Raymond, 18 -- when they decided to sneak in an ice chest containing revolvers and sawed-off shotguns on visitors' day. 

They broke out their father, Gary Tison, serving a life sentence for killing a Phoenix jail guard in 1967. Randy Greenawalt, serving his own life term for shooting a Flagstaff truck driver through the head in order to rob him in 1974, tagged along. 

The five raced for the California state line, but suffered a flat tire near Quartzite. When Marine Sgt. John Lyons, 24, of Yuma stopped with his family to help, the five fugitives shot and killed them all. 

Lyons' 15-year-old niece, Theresa Tyson, survived longest. Mortally wounded when a bullet shattered her thigh, sending bone fragments into her abdomen, she crawled a quarter mile into the desert to escape. Her body was found five days later, huddled over the small dog with whom the family had traveled, as though to protect it. The dog was also dead. 

In July, the Western Arizona sun can kill within hours. 

Also murdered were Sgt. Lyons' 23-year-old wife, Donnelda, and the 22-month-old infant she clutched in her arms. 

Eldest of three children, Theresa Tyson was the "star" of her family. After her death, her younger brother tried to fill her shoes, taking over the training of the family dogs. When one of the animals dashed out into the street a month after Theresa's death, her brother followed ... was himself struck by a truck and killed. 

The Tison gang are believed to have killed two more innocents to accomplish their next car switch -- a honeymooning couple from Amarillo who probably had the misfortune to encounter the gang at a construction roadblock in Colorado. 

The bodies of James and Margeen Judge were finally found in November, at a remote Colorado campsite. 

When the gang was finally stopped by a curtain of bullets at a police roadblock near Casa Grande on Aug. 11, 1978, driver Donald Tison was the first to die. His father, Gary, fled into the desert, perishing of exposure within two days. Greenawalt and the surviving Tyson brothers were convicted of four counts of murder, each, and sentenced to death in March, 1979. 

Now, 18 years later, multiple murderer Randy Greenawalt's appeals finally seem to have reached an end. Arizona might actually execute Greenawalt today, Jan. 23. 

It's easy to bellow bloodthirsty noises from a distance, if one is not personally required to throw the switch. Capital punishment is the ultimate use of the state's massive power, and there's no denying it has been misused in the past. 

On the other hand, those who argue that individuals deserve the liberty to bear arms and generally do as we please, up to the point where we assault the liberties of others, are fond of mouthing easy assurances that "All we have to do is hold people responsible if and when they do harm others." 

Hold responsible, how? Convict Greenawalt was already locked up "for life" for his first murder. Fat lot of good that did. 

In the words of Bob Corbin, who went on to head the NRA after serving as Arizona's attorney general from 1978 to 1990: "He deserves it. I hope the hell they carry it out this time. If they'd executed him for his crime the first time, those people might still be alive today." 

That's the context in which this terrible closure should be viewed. At each step, he and his accomplices had the option of not killing the people whose cars they stole. 

Will the late Sgt. Lyons ever have the "choice" whether to attend the high school graduation of his son Christopher ... his tiny head blown off by a shotgun blast as he lay clutched in his terrified mother's arms in their back seat on July 31, 1978? 

And what about Theresa Tyson, 15, mortally wounded and dragging herself off to die in the desert, removing her dog's collar and tags and placing them around her own leg as her last act in this world, in hopes that someone finding her bones would at least be able to tell her parents where she'd reached her final rest? 

The victims are too often forgotten, as the now-gray-haired prisoners "find religion," hone their book-learning, and while away their days authoring endless, ornate appeals based on every nuance of legal flummery. 

After 18 years, today is a good day for Randy Greenawalt to die.