The murders happened in my city. I know the person who was the regional manager for Casey's at the time and had to deal with the aftermath including cleaning the crime scene. It affected a lot of people here.
A lot has been said of his mental state, but I don't believe that he didn't know what he was doing. He visited the store 4 times that day before the murders. He asked the day time clerk what time the shift change was. He had told his girlfriend's son a month earlier he was planning on robbing the store. The day of the murder, he bought 4 rocks of crack, asked the girlfriend's son to borrow a gun he had traded for crack earlier in the month. He brought the gun back, but the last time he went to the store, he picked it up again and he was dressed differently, in layers of clothes, black tennis shoes, and a mask over his face. After the murders, he returned to his girlfriend's house in bloody clothes. He cleaned his shoes, removed the clothes and had his girlfriend's other son get rid of the clothes, the shoes, the gun and ammunition. He also had the money from the robbery which he hid in the house.
He beat these people to death with a claw hammer, one of the women had 10 stab wounds from a flat head screwdriver in her left hand and the male had been shot in the face, although the wound was non-lethal
All this being said, even though I believe that he knew what he was doing, that he knew it was wrong, and he was purposefully intoxicated on crack, I have a lot of doubts as to whether he could have, in what was his current state after the brain surgery, understood why he was being put to death. I would not have had a problem with, at some point in all the appeals, if they had changed his sentence to life without parole.
I also think Parson is a worthless POS.
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