Notes

On October 3, 1984, 15-year-old Kristina Hickey disappeared while walking home from a high school choir performance in Park Forest, Illinois. Her body was found two days later behind a shopping mall. She had been raped and stabbed.
More than a year later, on November 30, 1985, police brought in 18-year-old Christopher Abernathy for questioning after an acquaintance, Allan Dennis, told police that several months earlier Abernathy had admitted killing Hickey. Abernathy had attended Hickey’s funeral—as did several hundred other teenagers—and was heard saying that he had a gun in his car and intended to fire a salute afterward. Police checked Abernathy out at that time, but decided the comment was not serious.
After more than 40 hours of interrogation, Abernathy, a high school dropout who had been classified as learning disabled, signed a confession saying he saw her walking home and wanted to have sex with her. When she refused, he attempted to rape her and then accidentally stabbed her with a pocket knife he had in his hand. Almost immediately, Abernathy recanted the confession and said he signed the statement because police told him he could go home to his mother if he did.
Abernathy went to trial in Cook County Circuit Court in January 1987. The evidence against him was the testimony of Dennis, who said that Abernathy had admitted the crime to him, and Abernathy’s confession.
1. Life in prison
Because he said he saw her walking and wanted to have sex with her, I thought it was more of a spontaneous/emotional homicide instead of a premeditated murder (and he did say it was an accident). But his crime is severe enough for him to go to prison for life). And even though he raped and killed her, I think life in prison (like a bad prison) is worse than death.
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On July 17, 1982, a young woman was raped by a black man whom she said was a total stranger. After she reported the crime, a police officer singled out Anderson as a suspect because the perpetrator had told the victim that he “had a white girl,” and Anderson was the only black man the officer knew who lived with a white woman.
Because Anderson had no criminal record, the officer went to Anderson’s employer and obtained a color employment photo identification card. The victim was shown the color identification card, along with six black-and-white mug shots, and identified Anderson as her assailant. Within an hour of the photo spread, she was asked to identify her assailant from a lineup. Anderson was the only person in the lineup whose picture was in the original photo array shown to the victim and the victim identified him in the lineup as well.
At trial, the victim testified in detail regarding the assault and again identified Anderson as her assailant. The serology work completed by the Virginia Bureau of Forensic Science was uninformative.
2. Life in prison
He raped someone; I don't think he deserves the death penalty because he did it one time to one lady (as far as we know) and he didn't take her life (so the crime is bad but not as bad as it could have been/some of the other cases are)
Also, he's been found guilty but maybe he's actually innocent and life in prison will give him time for his family to try and prove his innocence somehow
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On the afternoon of June 24, 1980, Charise Kamps, a 19-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin was found strangled to death in her Madison, Wisconsin, apartment. She was naked and face-down in her bed with a bathrobe belt draped across her back.
Investigators collected clothing and other evidence from the victim’s apartment, including fingerprints and hairs.
The victim had drunk alcohol and used drugs with Ralph Armstrong, his brother Steve Armstrong and others on the night she died. Ralph Armstrong told police that he had used cocaine with Kamps that night and that the two had been in her apartment alone for a short time around 9:15 p.m. before joining friends elsewhere. Police learned that Armstrong owed Kamps’s boyfriend $400, and witnesses said they saw him hand her cash on the night of the crime.
A neighbor of Kamps’ told police he was sitting on his porch that night and saw a lean, muscular man with long, dark hair drive up to the area in a black and white vehicle around 12:30 a.m. and park out of sight. The witness said the man ran into and out of Kamps’ building three times before finally disappearing to the area where his car may have been parked.
3. Death penalty
This case really confused me because I'm not sure what happened. But if Ralph Armstrong was the one who killed her then I guess he should get the death penalty because he killed her. And it seems like he had time to think about his actions before murdering her so it seems kind of premeditated. (He said he was using drugs that night so maybe that influenced his actions, but still)
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On the morning of September 29, 1995, in Yakima, Washington, a young woman was in her living room feeding her one-month-old infant son when she heard an unfamiliar noise in the hallway. The woman saw a man approaching her wearing a white nylon-stocking mask. She tried to flee with her baby, but the man grabbed her from behind and tackled her. The man demanded that she not look at him but allowed her to put her baby back in his crib before he forced the woman into her basement.
In the basement, the man handcuffed the woman and put a Lone Ranger-style mask over her face before pushing her to the floor and raping her. Adhesive tape had been placed over the eyeholes in advance, apparently to prevent the victim from identifying the perpetrator. He later dragged the woman up the stairs and took her into the infant’s bedroom, where he tied her to the crib using a coat hanger and the loops in her belt. The man then left the woman, with her mask still on, in the infant’s room.
The woman told police that the man was wearing black jeans with a dull red and blue checkered flannel jacket and white gloves. Despite the stocking covering his face, the woman described the man as Caucasian or a light-skinned Hispanic, stocky, with dark hair or dark blond hair. She also described the man as about six feet tall or “half a head” taller than her husband. He was “was a giant to me,” she reportedly told police.
Bradford was arrested six months later in April 1996 in connection with a series of indecent exposure incidents in the victim’s neighborhood. Investigators believed Bradford may have been connected to the rape and interrogated him for eight hours and subjected him to a polygraph test
4. Death Penalty
Because the man put adhesive tape over the eyeholes of the mask, that means this was a pre-meditated crime that had been thought out in advance (this wasn't a spontaneous crime-- he had time to change his mind but he didn't). Not only that, but he's been involved in a series of these crimes before (and he might have done it again).