Marvallous Keene

1992 Christmas killings were for ‘fun’
Dayton detective: Keene bragged about his crimes

By Tom Beyerlein
Staff Writer 10:26 PM Wednesday, May 6, 2009

It isn’t uncommon for Dayton homicide detectives to be called out on holidays. But there was something about the crime scene on Christmas Eve 1992 that “was just not right,” retired detective Doyle Burke said.

An 18-year-old woman had been shot five times while talking on an outdoor pay phone. The only things stolen were her jacket and her gym shoes.

Police didn’t know it at the time, but Danita Gullette was the second victim of the gang called the Downtown Posse — the first lay dead in his home, his murder not yet discovered. By the end of Dec. 26, 1992, six people would be either dead or dying in a series of mostly random killings by a group of young people.

“They actually enjoyed it,” Burke said of the so-called Christmas killers: Marvallous Keene, DeMarcus Smith, Laura Taylor and Heather Matthews. “They truly exemplified the spree killer. It was just fun — it was their 15 minutes of fame.”

The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday, May 6, set a July 21 execution date for Keene, now 35 and the only one of the killers eligible for the death penalty.

Burke, now chief investigator for the Warren County coroner’s office, said the murders were puzzling because there seemed to be no motive and nothing to connect the victims to each other or to a suspect.

But it was obvious as the killings unfolded that they were the work of the same killer or killers: each scene was littered with aluminum casings from .25-caliber Blazer bullets, which usually are used for target practice.

“To keep finding that ammunition at crime scenes, it was clear it was the same gang,” Burke said.

Police cracked the case after a tipster identified DeMarcus Smith, and police learned the killers were driving a black Dodge Shadow. Officers stopped the car, and found Keene’s .25-caliber handgun under the driver’s seat. Keene was wearing Danita Gullette’s jacket and another victim’s necklace, and carried yet another victim’s pocket knife.

“He admitted it. He bragged about it,” Burke said.

Burke said “you hate to rank tragedies,” but the Christmas killings were especially haunting. “They could care less about their victims’ lives ... or their own lives. Life had no value to them.”

He said he doesn’t think the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, but it’s appropriate in Keene’s case.

“I don’t think the execution of Marvallous Keene will prevent the rising up of the next Marvallous Keene,” Burke said. “But it’s a punishment. There have to be consequences for those actions.”
www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/1992-christmas-killings-were-for-fun-110328.html

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Prosecutors call him a cold-blooded killer, and some of the victims’ family members beg for the “Christmas Thrill Killer” to be put to death.

On Wednesday, the Ohio Parole Board met in Columbus to decide if 35-year-old Marvallous Keene should be granted clemency in his death row case.

Keene was found guilty of murdering five people over a two-day period in 1992. It is regarded as the worst killing spree in local history.

Loved one of the five people who were killed in the 1992 Christmas Killings attended the hearing and asked the judge for the death penalty.

Keene’s attorneys said their client does not want clemency. The Parole Board will make a recommendation to Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland on June 25.

If the board does not grant Keene clemency, he is scheduled to be executed on July 21.

www.whiotv.com/news/19788553/detail.html

Execution Confirmed For Dayton Thrill Killer

Posted: 1:43 pm EDT July 13, 2009
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Officials at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction have confirmed the execution of Marvallous Keene for Tuesday, July 21.

Keene, one of Dayton's notorious Christmas "Thrill Killers" will be executed at 10:00 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville.

Keene was sentenced to death in Montgomery County for the 1992 deahs of five people.

The victims included Joseph Wilkerson, Danita Gullette, Sarah Abraham, Wendy Cottrill and Marvin Washington.l

www.whiotv.com/news/20039667/detail.html

EVENT: Protesting execution No. 1000

Georgians For Alternatives to the Death Penalty (GFADP) is holding a Speak Out at Woodruff Park in downtown Atlanta on Tuesday July 21 to protest the U.S.’ 1,000th scheduled execution by lethal injection.

The state of Ohio plans to execute Marvallous Keene on the same day by lethal injection. Should Ohio moved forward with the execution, it would mark the 1,000th execution by lethal injection carried out in the United States.

GFADP had planned to hold their event Thursday July 16 but Texas issued a stay of execution for death row inmate Kenneth Mosely.

Organizers are asking participants to gather in front of the Five Points MARTA station across from Underground Atlanta at 6 p.m. From there, participants will march down the street to Woodruff Park for a rally with as-yet undetermined speakers.

Organizers invite citizens to the Amnesty International Southern Regional Office (730 Peachtree St. Suite 1060) tomorrow night to make signs from 7-9 p.m.

Stay with Atlanta Progressive News for coverage of next week’s event.

www.atlantaprogressiveblog.com/tag/marvallous-keene/

DAYTON, Ohio — The murders began on Christmas Eve.

An 18-year-old mother gunned down at a pay phone. A store clerk shot in the face after handing over $30 from the cash register. A 16-year-old girl yanked from a car and shot at a gravel pit.

But even more shocking was this revelation: The gun was wielded by a churchgoing teenager who sang in the choir and had no previous criminal record.

Marvallous Keene, now 36, is scheduled to be executed Tuesday for killing five people during the 1992 crime rampage that became known as the "Christmas killings."

The rampage took place over the Christmas holidays when Keene and five accomplices began a robbing and killing binge. After killing three people, Keene and one accomplice killed two of their other accomplices to prevent them from snitching about the crimes.

"Such senseless violence was unthinkable," recalled Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias Heck Jr. "Who would have thought that a group of young people could commit such a number of cold-blooded murders with such wanton disregard for human life they killed a teenage girl for her jacket and shoes?"

A year before the slayings, Keene's brother was shot and killed.

"He had been despondent over his brother's death," recalled attorney Michael Monta, who represented Keene during his trial. "I think he sort of felt he was just alone."

Keene, 19 at the time, and two companions gained entrance to the home of Joseph Wilkerson under the pretext of wanting to take part in an orgy on Christmas Eve. Wilkerson was tied to the bed and his home ransacked. Investigators say Keene discovered a pistol in the man's garage and shot him with it.

Later that day, Keene approached Danita Gullette, the mother of a 2-year-old child, as she was using a pay phone in an alley. He forced her to remove her red and black jacket and tennis shoes, shot her and took them.

Two days later, Keene robbed a convenience store, shooting clerk Sarah Abraham in the head after she handed him $30 from the cash register. Later that day, Keene drove Wendy Cottrill, who had seen Keene unload items he had stolen during the crimes, to a gravel pit. Investigators say he pulled her from the car by her hair and shot her.

Keene pulled the trigger in four of the five deaths of which he was convicted. Three other people — two of them juveniles — were also convicted for their part in the crime spree.

Former Dayton police homicide detective Doyle Burke said the case was challenging because the killings appeared to be random. He said investigators realized the shootings were connected after finding an unusual, aluminum-shelled ammunition next to the first two bodies that were discovered. Then police got a 911 phone call from a witness identifying some of the suspects.

"You have a group of people with no respect for life whatsoever. It's just a group of demons," Burke said. "This guy deserves the death penalty if anybody does."

During his trial, Keene told the three-judge panel that the shooting death of his older brother and a falling out with his father left him in a troubled emotional state. He said that about 10 days before the shootings, he bought some pills from a friend and began taking them, even though he did not drink or take drugs.

In the middle of the shooting spree, Keene visited his brother's grave, Monta said.

"The world was kind of coming to an end," Monta said. "He went out, and that kind of made it worse. He was at a loss as to what his life meant, at that point."

During his June 17 clemency hearing, Keene asked his attorneys not to present any evidence on his behalf.

"Marvallous knows that he committed horrible, horrible crimes, and he regrets every single bit of it," said public defender Rachel Troutman. "But he is not the person he was at that moment in time. And the only thing he can offer the victims' families and his family at this point is to make the rest of this as easy as possible on them."

During the clemency hearing, Rhonda Gullette said Keene's murder of her sister wounded her family beyond repair.

"My mother grieved herself to death," Gullette said. "I may look OK, but if you could open me up and see my broken heart, you'd see how much my 18-year-old sister meant to me."
www.daytondailynews.com/news/ohio-news/ohio-inmate-faces-death-for-christmas-killings-211368.html

Ohio killer's lethal injection marks 1,000th in US
By MATT LEINGANG (AP) – 10 hours ago

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — A man who went on a 1992 Christmas holiday killing spree that left six people dead, including an 18-year-old mother gunned down at a pay phone, was executed Tuesday, the state's second execution in two weeks and the 1,000th lethal injection in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Marvallous Keene, 36, who was convicted in five of the murders, chose not to file a late appeal over his death sentence.

He died by lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville — seven days after Ohio's last execution. It was the fastest turnaround since the state executed two inmates in six days in 2004.

The Ohio Supreme Court, in denying a request last month to delay Keene's execution, said it would schedule future executions at last three weeks apart so that public defenders will have more time to prepare clemency cases for inmates who wish to pursue it.

Ohio has one execution scheduled per month through February 2010.

Keene and three accomplices went on a three-day murder and robbery rampage in Dayton that began on Christmas Eve 1992.

Victims included Sarah Abraham, 38, a convenience store clerk shot in the head after handing over $30 from a cash register, and Marvin Washington and Wendy Cottrill, two teenage acquaintances who Keene feared would tell police about his crimes.

Cottrill's mother, Donna Cottrill, stood when Keene entered the death chamber, but he didn't acknowledge her or look directly at anyone as he lay on the gurney.

When the prison warden asked Keene if he wanted to make a final statement, Keene replied, "No, I have no words."

He stared at the ceiling, then closed his eyes. His chest slightly heaved as the drugs were administered.

Seven members of the victims' families who witnessed the execution declined to speak to reporters afterward, as did Keene's attorneys.

According to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., Keene's was the 1,171st execution — and the 1,000th by lethal injection — since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

The European Union presidency, currently held by Sweden, released a statement noting the number and calling on the U.S. to halt executions, pending the abolition of the death penalty.

"The European Union is opposed to the use of capital punishment in all cases and under all circumstances," the statement said. "We believe that the abolition of the death penalty is essential to protect human dignity, and to the progressive development of human rights."

The death penalty is abolished in the European Union, and the United Nations General Assembly has called upon all countries that use it to stop executions and end the practice.

Keene did not fight his execution. At a June 17 clemency hearing, he directed his attorneys not to present evidence on his behalf, saying he didn't want to cause additional pain to his family or to the victims' families.

Gov. Ted Strickland last week denied clemency for Keene, who didn't request it.

Defense attorneys have said Keene, who was 19 at the time of the slayings, was despondent over the death of his brother, who was shot and killed a year earlier. At his trial, Keene also told a three-judge panel that a falling out with his father contributed to his troubled emotional state.

Prosecutors described Keene as the ringleader of a group that called itself the Downtown Posse. The killings began with 34-year-old Joseph Wilkerson.

Keene and his accomplices arrived at Wilkerson's home under the pretext of wanting to participate in an orgy, prosecutors said. They tied Wilkerson to his bed and ransacked the house, and when Keene found a .32-caliber handgun in the garage, he returned to the bedroom and shot Wilkerson twice.

Later Christmas Eve, Keene and accomplice DeMarcus Smith approached 18-year-old Danita Gullette at a pay phone, took her jacket and shoes and fatally shot the woman, prosecutors said. Gullette was the mother of a 2-year-old girl.

Washington, 18, and Cottrill, 16, were acquaintances who sometimes stayed at Keene's apartment and observed Keene returning with stolen items, prosecutors said. They were shot and killed behind a gravel pit.

Keene's accomplices are serving life sentences.

Ohio has put 31 men to death since it reinstated the death penalty in 1999. John Fautenberry, 45, a former Oregon truck driver who went on a multistate killing spree in the early 1990s, was executed last week.
www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h18cDX6PuFXpdEc3JIHpQRFMapvAD99J0FL01

Updated 11:34 PM Tuesday, July 21, 2009

LUCASVILLE — Marvallous Keene, notorious leader of the “Christmas killers” who murdered six people in December 1992, was pronounced dead at 10:36 a.m. Tuesday, July 21, after receiving an intravenous cocktail of lethal drugs at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility here.

“Marvallous, do you have a statement?” Warden Phillip Kerns asked before the drugs were administered.

“No,” Keene said, “I have no words.”

It was a somber affair. Seven relatives of Keene’s victims witnessed the half-hour execution process attentively but with little emotion. They said nothing throughout the execution. Keene’s two chosen witnesses, his attorneys from the Ohio Public Defender’s office, occasional dabbed at their eyes with tissues.

None of the witnesses made a statement after the execution.

Keene’s body was to be released to the House of Wheat Funeral Home. His family was to take responsibility for disposition of his remains. He gave his personal effects to his attorneys and instructed they be destroyed, said Julie Walburn, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. She said Keene wrote what appeared to be letters during the night and gave them to his attorneys.

Sporting a mustache and goatee, Keene was obese, but it didn’t take an unusually long time for prison staff to insert intravenous ports.

As part of a recent prison policy to ensure the inmate is completely unconscious after the first drug, thiopental sodium, Kerns shook Keene’s shoulder and called his name twice. Then two other drugs were administered to stop his breathing and his heart.

On the last night of his life, Keene made a single call, to his stepfather, Walburn said. He watched television all night and got no sleep.

“The (execution) team said he appeared to be restless,” she said.

Keene phoned his stepfather, Marvin Parker of Dayton, from 8:01-10:29 p.m. Monday, Walburn said. Rev. Gary Sims, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction’s religious services administrator, was in the death house from 4:18-7:58 p..m. Monday and again Tuesday morning, but “the offender declined to speak or pray with Rev . Sims,” Walburn said.

Keene, convicted of murdering five of the six victims in Dayton’s worst murder spree, requested and was given a muscle relaxing drug at just after 11 p.m., she said.

He took a shower and declined to eat breakfast Tuesday morning. He visited with his attorneys.

Keene, ringleader of Dayton’s worst murder spree known as the 1992 “Christmas killings,” was transferred to the death house at the state prison here Monday.

Keene, 36, arrived at Lucasville at 9:43 a.m. Monday from death row at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. Staff members gave him a medical evaluation and checked his veins to be sure they could accept the intravenous lines containing a lethal cocktail of three drugs.

He received a “special meal” of his choice about 4 p.m. consisting of a porterhouse steak cooked medium with A-1 steak sauce, a pound of deep-fried jumbo shrimp, fries, onion rings, dinner rolls with strawberry preserves, two plums, a mango, a pound of white seedless grapes, two bottles of Pepsi, two bottles of A&W cream soda and German chocolate cake.

Keene, head of a self-proclaimed Downtown Posse of juveniles and young adults, was convicted of aggravated murder in five of the gang’s six killings. He did not fight his execution.

Outside the prison Tuesday morning, about 30 death penalty opponents held a vigil, carrying signs such as “Execute Justice, Not People,” and “Stop the Killing Now.”

The Associated Press reported that Keene was the 1,000th U.S. convict to be executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. He was the 31st Ohio inmate to be executed since the state resumed executions in 1999.

The pace is picking up: Keene’s was the third execution this year — Daniel Wilson died June 3, and serial killer John Fautenberry died one week before Keene.

Five more killers are scheduled to die this year: Jason Getsy on Aug. 18, Romell Broom on Sept. 15, Lawrence Reynolds on Oct. 8, Darryl Durr on Nov. 10 and Kenneth Biros on Dec. 8. But the Ohio Parole Board recommended Friday that Gov. Ted Strickland commute Getsy’s sentence to life in prison. Getsy committed murder for hire, but the man who ordered the killing received a life sentence, not the death penalty.

Contact this writer at (937) 225-2264 or tbeyerlein@DaytonDailyNews.com.

www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/christmas-killer-put-to-death-213719.html

Advocates Mourn 1000th Lethal Injection in US

The State of Ohio executed death row inmate Marvallous Keene, 36, on Tuesday, July 21, 2009, marking the 1,000th time in the United States that the government has killed a prisoner by lethal injection.

Georgians For Alternatives to the Death Penalty (GFADP) marked the occasion with a rally and march against the death penalty, from Atlanta's Five Points MARTA station to downtown Woodruff Park, redoubling their calls to end the practice of state-sponsored executions.

"On this terrible anniversary, [GFADP] remains steadfast in building a movement in Georgia and beyond to abolish the death penalty," Sara Totonchi of GFADP said. “We know now more than ever that there must be an immediate halt to the use of the death penalty to study of the wide-ranging, well-documented problems with capital punishment."

Such problems, she said, include arbitrary sentencing based on race and class biases, inadequate funding for indigent defense, a failure to guarantee defense counsel in state habeas corpus proceedings, and even problems with the three-drug method used during lethal injections.

"Mounting evidence suggests some prisoners may have suffered horribly and needlessly before they died because executioners use a bizarre three-drug protocol hastily concocted 30 years ago and never revised," Totonchi said.

The drug mix starts with an anesthetic, moves to a paralytic, and concludes with potassium chloride to stop the heart. Totonchi argued the use of the paralytic makes it impossible to determine if the anesthetic keeps the person from suffering.

"The idea of humane execution is a contradiction in terms," she said. "All executions are inherently cruel."

Oklahoma became the first state to adopt the lethal injection method in 1977. Five years later, Texas became the first state to perform an execution using the method.

Thirty-six states plus the U.S. government and U.S. military now use lethal injection.

Keene became prisoner 1,000 after Texas granted a stay of execution last week for Kenneth Mosely.

Keene and three accomplices went on a killing spree starting on Christmas Eve 1992 and did not stop for three days, leaving six people dead and two wounded.

A jury convicted Keene of five murders and sent him to death row while sending his three accomplices to jail for life.

During a June 17, 2009, clemency hearing, Keene told his attorneys not to present evidence on his behalf because he did not want to cause more pain for the victims’ families, the Associated Press reported Monday.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland denied clemency for Keene last week but Keene did not bother to ask for it, according to the AP.

Despite the brutality and cold-blooded nature of the crime, activists said no person should ever be put to death.

"I don’t think there are any circumstance under which execution is justified," James Clark, coordinator with GFADP, said. "Devaluing any human life ends up devaluing the victims’ lives. The fact that we hold those five people that he killed as so valuable – I think that applies to every human life, including his."

Keene declined to meet with any religious officials before the execution, the AP reported. While nine members of the victims’ families were on hand for the execution, two defense attorneys were the only witnesses for Keene.

"I don’t think it really makes much sense or [is] just to judge the value of a person’s life by the worst moment of that life," Clark said.

The United States has five total methods of execution, more than any country in the world. Since the death penalty became legal again on July 2, 1976, there have been 1,000 lethal injections, 155 electrocutions, 11 deaths by gas, three hangings, and two shootings by firing squads.

About the author:

Jonathan Springston is a Senior Staff Writer of Atlanta Progressive News and is reachable at jonathan@atlantaprogressivenews.com

www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/news/0482.html