Jan. 16
CALIFORNIA:
Enigmatic killer down to final days ----- Unless the governor grants
clemency, a troubling saga will end in San Quentin
Donald Beardslee has been a stranger to virtually everyone -- including
himself -- for the 61 years of his life, a life the state plans to end at
12:01 a.m. Wednesday.
The man family members say has been gentle, withdrawn, socially inept and
supremely gullible since he was a child had no record of violence until
1969, when he was 26 and living in Missouri. By his own admission, he then
choked, stabbed and drowned a woman he had just met. No one, including
Beardslee, ever came up with a motive for the murder.
After 7 years in prison and 4 mostly uneventful years on parole, during
which he moved to Redwood City, Beardslee killed 2 more women in April
1981. He shot one and slit the other's throat. The apparent motive was
revenge -- not by Beardslee but by drug-dealing associates of the teenager
he had taken into his home to help her recover from an overdose. This
time, the sentence was death.
After 2 more decades of exemplary prison behavior and unsuccessful appeals
by Beardslee, his lawyers say new psychiatric tests have finally produced
an explanation for his personality and actions: lifelong brain damage,
compounded by a crushing head injury caused by a tree that fell on him
when he was 21.
San Mateo County prosecutor Martin Murray derides that claim and says
Beardslee, whose IQ is above the national average, is simply "ruthless and
cunning."
Both sides have some evidence for their conflicting portrayals. If
Beardslee is executed as scheduled at San Quentin State Prison, he will go
to his death as an enigma.
Donald Jay Beardslee was born in St. Louis on May 13, 1943, the oldest of
three children. The portrait that emerges from his youth -- sketched by
lawyers looking for evidence to save his life -- is that of a misfit.
"His communication was weird, he could not express emotion, he said
socially awkward things, and he was forever naive,'' his sister, Carol
Miller, said in a declaration that was part of the clemency request his
attorneys submitted to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "All of the qualities
that made him an oddball remained through the years as did his childhood
vulnerabilities. He seemed to stay stuck at age 13 or 14."
A cousin, Lynne Stephenson, said in another declaration that "the other
kids noticed there was something 'off' about Don and teased him
unmercifully. Don just took it. ... He would just become sad and quiet."
She said he had no friends of his own, suffered from facial tics -- of
which he seemed unaware -- and was eager to please and "easily duped and
taken advantage of."
Karen Kelly, who was married to Beardslee from 1966 to 1968, said he "had
a hard time understanding other people, and other people had a hard time
understanding him, mostly because he could not explain himself." He was
passive, dependent, vulnerable and the last person she would expect to
commit murder, she said.
Unlike the typical impoverished death row inmate, Beardslee grew up in a
middle-class family. But his lawyers said he was traumatized as a youth,
particularly by his father's death from cancer shortly before Beardslee's
11th birthday. At 15, he was sent by his mother to a military academy,
where he was hazed relentlessly for 3 years, relatives said.
He enlisted in the Air Force at 19, spent 4 years as an aircraft mechanic
and had his first serious run-in with the law when he was caught with
another airman trying to steal a vehicle. While serving his sentence in
1965 on a work farm in Minnesota, he was hit in the head by a falling
tree, which fractured his skull and put him in a coma for days.
In December 1969, Beardslee met Laura Griffin, 54, at a St. Louis-area
bar, where they drank and danced for a half-hour and then went to her
apartment. Two days later, police found her nude body in her bathtub.
After talking with his minister and a lawyer, Beardslee went to the police
and confessed. A psychiatrist and a social worker who interviewed him in
prison quoted him as saying he had no reason to kill her and must have
been addled by alcohol.
Beardslee pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served seven years of
an 18-year sentence before being paroled to California, where his mother
lived. Several therapists in prison diagnosed him as schizophrenic, and
one referred to possible brain damage; Beardslee sought counseling, but
records indicate little was available.
He settled in Redwood City, got a job as a machine operator with Hewlett-
Packard and stayed out of trouble until 1981. Then one day he saw Rickie
Soria hitchhiking on El Camino Real and gave her a ride.
Soria was a street-tough 18-year-old who financed her drug habit by
selling narcotics and sex, according to records provided by Beardslee's
lawyers. Through her, Beardslee met her friends Stacey Benjamin, Ed
Geddling and his wife, Patty, and Frank Rutherford, a drug dealer with a
violent reputation.
When Soria was given a near-fatal overdose of drugs by Rutherford and
another man in March 1981, she phoned Beardslee, who took her to an
emergency room, then brought her home and nursed her back to health, she
said in a recent statement from prison.
Evidence about the events that led to the murders is conflicting. There
was testimony that another friend of Soria's, Bill Forrester, was angry at
Benjamin and possibly Patty Geddling for cheating him in a drug deal and
that Ed Geddling had found his wife in bed with Benjamin.
One witness said Ed Geddling brought Rutherford a shotgun and asked him
for help in taking revenge on both women. How much Beardslee knew about
the plans in advance is still in dispute.
On April 23, 1981, Soria invited Benjamin, 19, and Patty Geddling, 23, to
Beardslee's apartment for a purported drug sale. When they arrived,
Rutherford and Forrester were there.
Rutherford shot Patty Geddling in the shoulder and both women were tied
up. Winking at Beardslee, he said Geddling would be taken to the hospital.
Forrester, Beardslee and Soria then drove her to a spot near Half Moon
Bay, where -- according to prosecution testimony -- Forrester shot
Geddling twice with the shotgun, then handed it to Beardslee, who reloaded
and shot her twice more. They left her body in a ditch.
Rutherford then summoned Beardslee and Soria to his girlfriend's
apartment, where Benjamin was still tied up. The 3 drove her to Lake
County, where Rutherford tried to strangle her with a wire. According to
trial testimony, Benjamin looked pleadingly at Beardslee, who punched her
in the head, then tried to help Rutherford strangle her. Beardslee then
got a knife from Rutherford and slit her throat.
Beardslee, whose phone number was found on a piece of paper near
Geddling's body, was contacted by a detective, confessed his role, led
police to Benjamin's body, named his cohorts and testified against them
without any promise of leniency.
Rutherford was convicted of Benjamin's murder and sentenced to life. He
died in prison 2 years ago. Soria pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree murder and
is still behind bars. Forrester, who denied shooting Patty Geddling, was
acquitted, and charges against Ed Geddling were dropped.
Only Beardslee was sentenced to death in March 1984 for Patty Geddling's
murder. He was the only participant in both killings and the only one with
a murder on his record.
Throughout his trial and appeals, Beardslee's lawyers have portrayed him
as a dupe in crimes orchestrated by others, chiefly Rutherford. Soria, in
her recent statement from prison, said that after Rutherford first fired
the shotgun in the apartment, Beardslee "became unnaturally quiet and
robotlike'' and "just did what he was told."
But prosecutors argued that Beardslee had a motive: Once the first shot
was fired, he knew he was violating his parole and would be sent back to
prison unless he got rid of the witnesses.
Rutherford was not present when Patty Geddling was killed, and Beardslee,
in light of his record, "needs no encouragement from others to kill
women," Murray said in a filing opposing the clemency request that went
before the state Board of Prison Terms on Friday. The governor is still
considering the request.
Beardslee's mental health was an issue from the start -- 1 juror said it
was the chief concern of jurors who initially voted 10-2 to spare his life
-- but it was only in the last month that his lawyers produced a diagnosis
from a neuropsychologist, Ruben Gur of the University of Pennsylvania, of
severe brain damage.
Gur said Beardslee was prone to confusion and paranoia during unfamiliar
events and exhibited a "constricted emotional range'' that might be
misinterpreted as aloofness or callousness. His lawyers say the diagnosis
also explains why Beardslee has done well in highly structured settings,
such as the Air Force and prison. While it's too late for courts to
consider the evidence, the lawyers hope it will move the governor to
mercy.
Murray, who represents the prosecutor's office, isn't buying it. Beardslee
has been examined by legions of analysts who never detected any such
thing, he said, and also has performed intricate tasks as a machinist and
taken college courses, both inside and outside prison, with no sign of
mental deficiencies.
"While psychiatrists, lawyers and judges carefully scrutinized every
detail of this case," Murray said, "the families of his victims have
patiently awaited justice for over 2 decades."
(source: San Francisco Chronicle)
********************
Appeals court denies killer's latest appeal
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday declined to rehear an
appeal from condemned killer Donald Beardslee, moving him a step closer to
becoming the 11th person executed in California since it reinstated the
death penalty.
Beardslee had challenged the state's method of execution by lethal
injection, saying it constituted cruel and unusual punishment and will
violate his free speech rights because it won't allow him to scream in
pain.
The 9th Circuit refused to rehear Beardslee's appeal with an 11-judge
panel, dismissing his case. The decision came a day after a 3-judge panel
ruled against him.
Beardslee's attorneys will now ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their
challenge and stay the execution, which is scheduled for 12:01 a.m.
Wednesday.
Beardslee, 61, was convicted of killing 2 Northern California women in
1981, 3 years after the state's death penalty was reinstated.
In one of his appeals, he claimed lethal injection would cause him to
suffer from torturous pain. Beardslee's attorneys also claimed that the
combination of a sedative and a paralyzing agent would mask whether he is
experiencing excruciating pain while prohibiting him from crying out. They
contend that is a violation of his freedom of speech.
The procedure is done in 26 of the 36 states that employ lethal injection.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never directly addressed whether death
sentences carried out by lethal injection are cruel and unusual
punishment, but have been asked repeatedly. The justices, however, have
upheld executions in general despite the pain they might cause inmates.
When Beardslee's appeal reaches the justices, it will be their 1st to
confront a claim that lethal injection violates the First Amendment.
The murders of which Beardslee was convicted began when an accomplice,
Frank Rutherford, shot Patty Geddling in the shoulder when she came to
Beardslee's apartment in Redwood City. The defendants lured the 2 women
there to seek revenge for being stiffed out of drugs.
Beardslee and Rutherford took the wounded Geddling, 19, to a roadside
along Highway 1 in San Mateo County, where she was shot several times. Her
friend, Stacey Benjamin, 23, was strangled and her throat slit. Her body
was dumped hundreds of miles away in a secluded area in Lake County.
Rutherford got a life term and died in prison.
The condemned man's only other remaining court challenge already has been
lodged with the Supreme Court. In that appeal, Beardslee claims jurors,
when rendering a death verdict, were prejudiced into voting that way.
In that challenge, the 9th Circuit ruled that jurors wrongly considered
that the murders were carried out to kill his two victims from being
witnesses in court against Beardslee and Rutherford. But the circuit, in
dismissing the challenge, ruled that the error didn't prejudice the jury's
unanimous conclusion that Beardslee should die for the murders.
(source: Associated Press)
