On
this date, January 9, 2013, 70-year-old Dennis Stanworth phoned the Police to
confess that he had murdered his own mother. Keep in mind; he had murdered two
teenage girls in 1966. Those murders had all happened in the State of
California. The SAFE California and the A.C.L.U are as usual keeping quiet
about it. Dennis Stanworth’s case is similar to the one of Robert Lee Massie
who had his death sentence overturned, only to be paroled to kill again in
California.
I
will post the story of Dennis Stanworth from several internet sources.
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Dennis Stanworth in 2013, left, and in the
1960s ( (Mike Jory/Times-Herald; Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office)
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Dennis Stanworth. Police photo. (PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/blog/2013/01/11/released-killer-accused-of-murdering-own-mother/index.html)
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INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/blog/2013/01/11/released-killer-accused-of-murdering-own-mother/index.html
Released Killer Accused
of Murdering Own Mother
January
11, 2013 2:09 PM By Nastacia Leshchinskaya
In
1966, Dennis Stanworth shot and
killed two teenage girls. He had seen Susan Box, 15, and Caree
Collison, 14, walking in Pinole, Ca., and offered them a ride. He then forced
them to walk away from the road at gunpoint and ordered them to undress. When
Collison tried to escape, Stanworth told her that if she ran, he’d kill her
friend. She came back, and he shot them both in the head. He then performed sex
acts on Box’s body. Prior to the murders, Stanworth
raped two adult women and one 17-year-old girl. In 1969, Standworth pleaded
guilty to murder, kidnapping, rape and other charges.
Stanworth
was sentenced to death. He had confessed to everything and, while in prison,
was remorseful. He actively
objected to an appeal on his behalf, stating
“The fact is I did it and I am guilty as charged and there is no doubt to that
fact. I had a fair and impartial trial and swear that the conviction, which has
resulted in the sentence of death is valid.” However, state law requires
automatic appeals of death sentences, even against the wishes of the defendant.
Based on several issues, including the dismissal of numerous jurors who
objected to capital punishment, Stanworth’s death sentence was overturned. In
1979, he was released on parole under the condition that he register as a sex
offender. Now, decades later, he’s accused of killing his 90-year-old mother.
According
to Vallejo police, Stanworth, 70, called 911 Wednesday claiming
to have killed his mother, Nellie Turner Stanworth, known to friends
as “Nellie Belle.” A neighbor in the American Canyon mobile home park where
Nellie Stanworth lived believed that the woman had been dead for over a month,
because, according
to NBC, that’s what Stanworth had told him. Instead, say police, her body
was found in Stanworth’s home in the Hiddenbrooke neighborhood of Vallejo.
A
relative of Caree Collison had a feeling Stanworth would strike again, telling
ABC, “I knew, I knew something was going to happen; he’s such an evil man.”
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Dennis Stanworth is led from San Mateo County
Jail after he was arrested in the rape of a young woman in 1966. Photo: Barney
Peterson (PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Vallejo-man-allegedly-kills-mother-90-Ex-Death-4181570.php#photo-4013396)
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INTERNET SOURCE: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?id=9015836
1972 death penalty
decision has lasting impact
Monday,
March 04, 2013
It's
a shocking case: a convicted double-murderer is released from prison, and later
calls police to tell them he had killed again. Vallejo's Dennis Stanworth is
one of dozens of California inmates released from death row in the years after
a 1972 Supreme Court decision overturning the death penalty.
In
1966 Stanworth was sentenced to death for the brutal kidnapping, rape and murder
of two 15-year-old Pinole teens, Caree Collison and Susan Box. Their family
members are still haunted by the crime.
"He
had them strip and Caree ran and he yelled at her if you don't come back, I'm
going to kill your friend. She came back and he shot her in the head," a
family member said.
Stanworth
sat on San Quentin's death row for seven years. Then everything changed.
"The
first step was when the California Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court
determined that the death penalty was unconstitutional," Uncommon Law's
Keith Whattley said.
That
meant, by the mid-1970s, 174 death row inmates had their sentences reduced to
life in prison. At the time, California did not have life without parole, so
all were eligible for release.
Besides
Stanworth, the group included Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, who murdered
Robert Kennedy in 1968. Manson and Sirhan were not released, but Stanworth and
50 others were eventually set free.
Among
them was Robert Massie, who was convicted of murder in 1965 and sentenced to
death. In 1978 he was paroled; eight months later, he murdered a San Francisco
liquor store owner. In 2001, after the death penalty was reinstated, Massie was
executed.
"Even
if they're rehabilitated, they've already done something that can't be
undone," Parents of Murdered Children spokesperson misty Foster said.
"Those people are never coming back, so how do say their life is only
worth 20 or 25 years?"
Stanworth
was released in 1990. The parole board cited his good behavior and
"excellent work record." Stanworth settled in Vallejo, re-married and
lived a quiet life in a gated golf course community where some neighbors even
knew of his past.
"I
figured he had paid for his mistakes according to the law," neighbor
Irving Vanderberg said.
But
on Jan. 11, Vallejo police arrested Stanworth for killing his 90-year-old
mother Nellie Stanworth at his home.
While
the Stanworth case and a handful of others are certainly troubling, they are
also the exception when it comes to death row inmates and convicted murderers
who've been granted parole.
"I
think it's hard for the public to grasp this," UC Berkeley Death Penalty
Clinic Director Elisabth Semel said. "People who've been convicted of
murder have a better rate of success, that is a lower recidivism rate, than
individuals who commit other types of crimes."
A
2011 Stanford study found the recidivism rate for paroled murderers is less
than 1 percent, much lower than the 49 percent rate for California parolees.
Keith
Wattley is an Oakland attorney who represents lifers in prison, many of them
murderers. He says several factors contribute to their success if they are
released, much of it based on what they do, while behind bars.
"Decades
of self-help and therapy programs, dealing with addictions and alcoholism from
the past and finding support going forward," he said.
According
to the California Department of Corrections, of the 107 death row inmates in
Stanworth's "class of '72," 42 were paroled. Twelve of them committed
new felonies.
Some
worry the exceptions, like Stanworth's case, will prompt lawmakers to overreact
by passing new laws to keep prisoners behind bars a lot longer. But those
who've been touched by the violence of men like Stanworth say a sentence is a
sentence.
"I
know they don't have a lot of rooms there for them, but when they're that bad,
put them in a 6 by 10 foot cage and forget about them; they're animals,"
Caree Collison's family member said.
Stanworth
is awaiting trial for the murder of his mother. If convicted, he could receive
the death penalty.
(Copyright
©2013 KGO-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)
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In 1968, Dennis Stanworth was on Death Row
for killing two teenage girls he picked up hitchhiking in Pinole. Now 70,
Stanworth has reportedly told police that he killed his 90-year-old mother.
(PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Vallejo-man-allegedly-kills-mother-90-Ex-Death-4181570.php#photo-4013397)
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INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_22354305/vallejo-suspects-violent-past-spans-46-years-two
Vallejo suspect's past spans
46 years, two rejected death sentences
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/By Jessica A. York and Tony
Burchyns/Times-Herald staff writers
Vallejo Times Herald |
Posted:01/11/2013 01:01:45
AM PST
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A Vallejo man who gladly
accepted a death sentence after killing two Pinole teenagers more than 45
years ago, has been arrested at his home for killing his mother.
Vallejo Police said that
Dennis Stanworth, 70, called the Vallejo Police Communications Center about
11:55 a.m. Wednesday, and claimed during the span of about a seven- or
eight-minute call with a dispatch supervisor that he had killed his own
mother, Vallejo police Lt. Jim O'Connell said Thursday.
Officers responded to Stanworth's
home at 2500 block of Marshfield Road, near the Hiddenbrooke Golf Club, where
the suspect directed them to an undisclosed area where they discovered the
deceased victim.
Police said a search warrant
was obtained for the residence, a house Stanworth lives in with his wife and
father-in-law, and a subsequent search revealed evidence of the crime. Police
have refused to release details about where they found Stanworth's mother,
Nellie Turner Stanworth, 90. It also remained unclear Thursday why Stanworth's
mother was at the Vallejo home.
American Canyon resident
The victim had been a
resident of the Olympia Mobilodge of Napa in American Canyon. Ronda Bensing,
another park resident, told the Times-Herald that Stanworth had moved his
mother out of the park about 10 weeks ago and told her she was going to be
placed in an assisted living facility in Vallejo.
Bensing said Stanworth's
mother returned two weeks later, complaining about her new living situation.
Later, Bensing said
Stanworth told her he was taking her to live with her sister. Then, about six
weeks ago, Stanworth visited the mobile home park and said his mother had
passed away, Bensing said.
"We have been so
distraught," Bensing said. "We were friends and neighbors for eight
years ... we are just trying to find closure ... it is just wrenching."
Bensing said Stanworth had
frequently visited his mother, taking her shopping and administering insulin
shots in the afternoon.
On Wednesday, detectives
interviewed Stanworth, who O'Connell said was cooperative with police, and
later arrested him on suspicion of murder.
O'Connell declined to say
how or where police believe the victim was killed or where her body was
found. He said police investigators were still interviewing witnesses
Thursday and did not want any news reports to influence their answers.
As for motive, O'Connell
would not speculate, but said police "have a couple different
ideas" and expect witness interviews to flesh out the details.
Violent background
The suspect has a long and
violent criminal history that had apparently ceased, at least since his
arrival in Vallejo in the late 1990s, O'Connell said. Stanworth is apparently
unemployed, and described as retired on his sex offender registration,
O'Connell said.
"Our registration
detective talked to him every year, but no complaints regarding him had come
in," O'Connell said of Stanworth. "(He did not stand out) other
than for the nature of the crimes for which he was convicted. Those are
fairly egregious."
As Stanworth had completed
his parole, he would not have been under police oversight if it were not for
his sex offender status dating back more than four decades.
O'Connell was referring to
two murder convictions in 1966. Stanworth had pleaded guilty to kidnapping,
raping and shooting two Pinole girls, both 15, on Aug. 1, 1966 after he
picked them up hitchhiking.
According to Times-Herald
reports at the time, Stanworth, then 24, a Pinole house painter and cook,
admitted killing and raping Susan Box and Caree Lee Collison at a Point
Wilson beach area in Pinole. Their bodies were discovered two days after the
attacks. Found at the crime scene in a coma with head wounds, Collison never
recovered consciousness and died on Sept. 12, 1966.
Months after the attacks,
Stanworth also admitted abducting and raping at least four other women,
including three in Contra Costa County and one in San Mateo County, court
records show. He eventually was caught after raping one woman who, after
briefly passing out during the attack and coming to, untied herself, and
reported to police who arrested Stanworth several hours later in her car.
When Stanworth testified
during his trial's penalty phase, his defense attorney asked him why he had
confessed to police about the killings.
"I couldn't live with
it no more... I just had to tell somebody," Stanworth replied in a
sobbing voice. "I told them everything I done and wanted to get it all
off my chest. I was always sorry after I got through and even apologized
sometimes."
Stanworth mounted no
opposition to being sentenced to execution, and published reports at the time
said that after the jury voted to send him to the gas chamber, he gratefully
shook his lawyer's hand.
Fought appeals
Under California law, death
sentences are automatically appealed. Stanworth, according to court records,
wanted no part of an appeal, and said he wanted to die. He repeatedly said
the state should waste no more money on him, that he had accepted his death
sentence, and did not wish to contest it.
In a letter to the courts,
Stanworth, then 27, wrote: "I know that I will never see the freedom of
the outside world again, I have dishonored my family's name ... I understand
that I and I alone must suffer for my actions and I understand also that the
law holds me to task for my actions.
"I cannot continue
living with cloud over my head, please be merciful and give me an endless
sleep as soon as you cans...... all I want, is to die."
Despite Stanworth's pleas
the state Supreme Court reduced his death sentence to life imprisonment. The
Aug. 20, 1969 ruling cited a number of grounds, including that prosecutors
had rejected a dozen prospective jurors for cause because they expressed
opposition to capital punishment. The justices held that under a U.S. Supreme
Court decision, such opposition alone should not disqualify a juror from
considering a death penalty decision.
The following July, another
Contra Costa jury sentenced Stanworth to death, but that sentence was reduced
once again in June 1974 based on the state Supreme Court's ruling in 1972
that the state's gas chamber constituted "cruel and unusual
punishment."
He was eventually released
on parole in 1990, according to the state Department of Corrections.
Contributing to this article
were MediaNews Group staff writer Matthias Gafni and Times-Herald staff
writer Sarah Rohrs. Contact staff writer Jessica A. York at (707) 553-6834 or
jyork@timesheraldonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @JYVallejo.
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Dennis Stanworth in 1966 (Associated Press
file photo) (PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_22354305/vallejo-suspects-violent-past-spans-46-years-two)
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