Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
37 death row inmates
were granted clemency by
President Biden.
Their sentences were reduced tolife in prison.
Some of the crimes that werecommitted are beyond horrific.
Welcome to this episode ofHuman Wreckage.
Thank you for joining me.
Let's get into it.
(00:34):
Shannon Agofsky 53.
Shannon Agofsky, 53.
With his brother, joe, heabducted banker Dan Short from
his home in Benton County,arkansas, and took him to
Short's bank across the Missouriborder where they stole $70,000
.
The brothers then killed Shortand dumped him in a lake.
(00:56):
Agofsky is on death row forstomping fellow prisoner Luther
Plant to death inside a federalpenitentiary in Texas in 2004.
His brother died in prison in2013.
Billy Allen, 46, and NorrisHolder, 48.
Holder was awarded $500 a monthafter losing part of his leg in
a train accident, which healways withdrew from the Lindell
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Bank and Trust Branch in theForest Park area of St Louis.
In March 1997, he took Alanwith him to get the money and
they returned four days laterarmed with two assault rifles, a
shotgun and 200 rounds ofammunition.
They fired 16 shots in therobbery, killing security guard
Richard Heflin.
They got the idea for the raidfrom watching the movie's heat
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and set it off.
He turned up at the Charlotte,north Carolina home of his
former girlfriend, robinWilliams in April 1996 and threw
in a firebomb which failed tokill her.
The next month he hijacked acar, killing the driver, leaving
his body in a ditch, beforedriving to Williams' mother's
home where he found his ex.
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She ran, he caught her anddragged her back to the house by
her hair and then killed herwith two shots.
Brandon Basham, 42, and ChadrickFulks, 46.
The two small-time criminalsescaped from the Hopkins County
Detention Center in Kentucky inNovember 2002, using a makeshift
rope from bedware.
They then set off on amulti-state trip, stealing cars
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along the way, eventually endingup in Myrtle Beach, south
Carolina, where they followedAlice Donovan's blue BMW into a
Walmart parking lot.
They kidnapped Donovan, 44, andafter folks raped her, basham
took her into the woods where heshot her.
Her body has never been found.
Anthony Battle, 61.
Battle was serving a lifesentence in federal prison in
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Atlanta for the 1987 murder ofhis wife when he bludgeoned
Correctional Officer D'AntonioWashington to death with a
hammer because he was tired ofbeing bossed around.
He confessed to the December1994 murder of Washington with
an insanity defense but wassentenced to death.
Meyer Brown, 53.
Brown went to the post officein Fleming, georgia, in November
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2002 to get his family's mail.
After going home, he got theidea to return, this time with a
knife.
He jumped over the counter,tripped and fell into
postmistress Sally Gaglia,cutting her.
He then decided he had to killher as she would recognize him,
and he stabbed her ten times,leaving her face down on the
post office floor.
The robbery netted Brown $1,175in money orders.
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Carlos Caro, 56.
Caro was a drug smugglerbringing narcotics over the
border into Texas.
He was sentenced to 30 years in2001, his third conviction In
prison.
He became a leader of theviolent prison gang, the Texas
Syndicate.
In December 2003, he strangledhis cellmate, roberto Sandoval,
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to death in prison in Jonesville, Virginia.
He told investigators he hadkilled Sandoval because he had
called him a motherfucker.
Wesley Koontz, 43, and CharlesHall, 52.
Both men were in the mentalhealth ward at the federal
prison in Springfield, missouri,when they attacked fellow
prisoner Victor Castro, bindinghim and standing on his neck
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till he suffocated.
Koontz, who was serving a lifesentence for kidnapping and
carjacking, was caught on cameramaking a throat-slashing sign
to another inmate as he left.
Castro's cell.
Hall was behind bars for makingthreats against a federal judge
and prosecutor.
Brandon Council, 38.
Council shot bank tellers DonnaMajor, 59, and Katie Skeen, 36,
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dead during an armed bankrobbery in Conway, south
Carolina, in August 2017.
His actions were premeditated,they were deliberate and they
were intentional.
Prosecutor Everett McMillansaid the jury took just 32
minutes to find him guilty.
Christopher Kramer, 41, andRicky Fackrell, 39.
The two Utah men, members ofthe Soldiers of the Aryan
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Culture, were in prison inBeaumont, texas when, after
months of planning, they stabbedfellow white supremacist Leo
Johns to death in June 2014.
Kramer was originally sentencedfor bank robbery and was
convicted several times forattacking other prisoners.
Thackrell was serving time forarmed robbery.
Len Davis, 59.
Davis was known as Robocop.
(05:18):
During his time in the NewOrleans Police Department.
He was suspended six times in afive-year period.
Before receiving the Medal ofMerit, a woman called Kim Groves
filed a complaint saying shehad seen him beat up a man who
he thought had been involved inthe shooting of a cop in October
1994.
Davis was tipped off andordered her murder.
A local drug dealer shot andkilled Groves less than a day
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after she made the complaint.
Joseph Ebron, 44.
Ebron, a convicted murderer,killed fellow inmate Keith
Barnes less than a day afterBarnes had arrived at federal
prison in Beaumont, texas, inMay 2005.
Barnes had told correctionalofficers he feared he was in
danger as he had given evidenceagainst co-defendants in murder
trials in Washington DC, but hewas placed in the prison's
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general population anyway.
Ebron held Barnes down whileanother prisoner stabbed him to
death.
Edward Fields, 56.
The former prison guard hid incamouflage in Oklahoma's Wachita
National Forest and shotcampers Charles and Shirley
Chick with a high-powered scopedrifle in July 2003.
He shot Charles in the face andthen, as Shirley ran off, he
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shot her in the foot beforecatching her and dispatching her
with a bullet to the back ofthe head.
He later returned to thecampsite and stole a few items
from their van.
Marvin Gabrian, 71.
Teenager Rachel Timmerman hadaccused Gabrian of raping her
Two days before he was due tostand trial.
In June 1997, timmerman's bodywas found in a lake weighed down
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with cinder blocks.
Her 11-month-old daughter,shannon, has never been found.
He is also suspected ofmurdering four other witnesses
in the case, but their bodiesremain missing Edgar Garcia, 44,
and Mark Snarr, 48.
The two were prisoners in thefederal lockup in Beaumont,
texas.
In November 2007, when theyboth managed to slip out of
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their handcuffs.
They stabbed prison officerDwight Bologna 23 times with
homemade shanks and then turnedon another guard, josh McQueen,
demanding his keys.
Snarr ripped the keys fromMcQueen's belt and they went to
the cell of Gabriel Roan, whothey repeatedly stabbed, killing
him.
Thomas Hager, 50.
Hager was a major crack cocainedealer in Washington DC who
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went into hiding at hisgirlfriend's apartment after
shooting and injuring two rivalsin November 1993.
Barbara White, who had had achild with a member of the rival
gang, visited Hager'sgirlfriend and he decided he had
to kill her as she might giveaway his location.
He and three others went toWhite's apartment apartment
where they stabbed her more than80 times.
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Richard Jackson, 54.
College graduate Karen Stileswent missing on Halloween 1994
when she was hiking in thePisgah National Forest in North
Carolina.
Three weeks later her nakedbody was discovered by a hunter,
duct-taped to a tree.
Near her were a pornographicmagazine and a single rifle
casing.
She had been shot in the headand suffered 10 stun gun wounds,
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nine of them to her pubicregion.
Jackson was caught whenofficers traced the sale of the
duct tape back to a local Kmart.
Jurij is Katamuvas, 57, and YuriMikul, 58.
The pair, who had moved to theStates from the former Soviet
Union, went on a four-monthspree of kidnappings, beginning
in late 2001.
They targeted wealthy Sovietimmigrants and received more
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than $1 million in ransom moneyfrom relatives of their five
victims.
But they killed them anyway anddumped their bodies in New
Melones Lake near YellowstoneNational Park.
Darrell Lawrence, 48.
Lawrence robbed four banks inCentral Ohio between January
2004 and January 2005.
During the last, he shot andkilled Columbus Police Officer
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Brian Hurst, who fired back,injuring Lawrence.
He was arrested within days andimmediately confessed to all
four robberies.
Ronald Mekos, 75.
Meekos, a podiatrist known asthe Medicare murderer, killed
retired nurse Joyce Brannon whowas planning to testify against
him in a fraud trial.
Meekos, the oldest man on deathrow, would forge patients'
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signatures on documents sayinghe had performed surgeries on
them when he learned Brannon'sevidence could put him away.
In January 2002, meekos tookher to a church basement in
Chicago and shot her six timesat close range.
James Roan, 58, and RichardTipton, 53.
They, along with Corey Johnson,who was executed in HDE dying
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days of the first Trumpadministration, were part of the
Newtown gang in Richmond,virginia.
They were convicted in February1993 of several capital murders
arising from their drugtrafficking.
In early 1992 alone they wereresponsible for 10 murders.
In one case, douglas Talley, anunderling who had mishandled a
drug deal, was stabbed 84 times.
(10:02):
Julius Robinson, 47.
Known as Scarface, robinson,was a wholesale drug dealer
based in Fort Worth, texas,distributing narcotics to a
five-state area.
He killed one man who hemistakenly thought was behind a
hijacking that cost him $30,000,and then the brother-in-law of
a man who had persuaded him topay $17,000 for a block of wood
(10:23):
covered in sheetrock that hethought were drugs David Runyon,
53.
The sole Asian on death row.
Runyon was hired by KaterinaVoss and her lover to kill her
Navy ensign husband, corey, inApril 27, shortly after he
returned from deployment inKorea.
Katerina sent Corey to an ATMto get money from an account she
had opened for him.
(10:43):
He didn't realize she had putjust five dollars in it.
When he kept gettinginsufficient funds notices, he
hung around giving Runyon timeto find him and shoot him to
death.
Katerina then refused to payRunyon a single cent.
She is serving life in prison.
Ricardo Sanchez, 40, and DanielTroia, 40.
They were part of a drug cartelin Florida that got into a
(11:05):
dispute with fellow kingpin JoseEscobedo.
They followed Escobedo alongthe Florida Turnpike in October
2006 in open fire, killing himexecution style.
Escobedo's wife, jessica, triedto shield their two sons, Louis
Julian, 4, and Louis Damien, 3,but all three were killed.
I have no confidence Mr Troiawouldn't do this again.
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The judge said, as he sentencedthem Thomas Sanders, 66, as he
sentenced them.
Thomas Sanders, 66.
Sanders shot and killed hisgirlfriend, sulin Roberts, in
the remote Arizona desert aftera labor day outing to the Grand
Canyon in 2010.
He then kidnapped Roberts's12-year-old daughter, lexis,
driving her cross-country toCatahoula Parish, louisiana,
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where he shot the girl fourtimes and cut her throat.
Cabone Savage, 49.
The aptly named Savage has 12convictions for murder and was
on death row for ordering theOctober 24 firebombing of a
Philadelphia house where afederal witness was living.
The resulting blaze killed sixpeople.
Savage was a high-level drugdealer delivering tons of
cocaine throughout easternPennsylvania.
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He allegedly killed one manafter they got involved in a
minor fender bender, but he wasacquitted because the only
witness was also murdered,supposedly by him.
Rejon Taylor, 39.
Taylor abducted AtlantaRestorateur Guy Luck from his
driveway in August 2003, shovedhim in the back of his van and
drove him to Chattanooga,tennessee, where he shot him on
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a remote road.
Taylor had broken into Luck'sBuckhead home several times.
On the last occasion, he foundpapers showing that Luck had
decided to press charges againstthe then 19-year-old for
stealing his credit cards.
Jorge Torres, 35.
Torres joined the Marines inorder to evade suspicion for the
May 2005 murder of two younggirls, crystal Tobias, 9, and
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Laura Hobbs, 8, in Utah.
He had sexually assaulted themand removed their eyeballs.
His death sentence was imposedfor a separate murder the
strangulation of Navy PettyOfficer Amanda Snell in
Arlington County, virginia.
He also abducted a woman inNorthern Virginia, raped her and
left her for dead in the snow.
Woman in Northern Virginiaraped her and left her for dead
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in the snow.
Alejandro Umana, 39.
A member of the notorious Ms 13gang.
Umana shot and killed brothersRuben and Manuel Salinas at Los
Cherichitas restaurant inGreensboro, north Carolina, in
December 27 after an argumentabout what music should play on
the jukebox.
Umana, an undocumentedimmigrant from El Salvador, is
also suspected of at least fourmurders in Los Angeles.
That wraps up this episode.
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I am sure you are shaking yourhead as much as I am.
If you like what I do, pleaselike and subscribe.
Leave a comment about how youfeel about these individuals
getting reduced sentences.
Justice till next time.
Take care of yourselves soThank you you.