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Dorinda Carter, Holton declined the special “last meal” afforded to Death Row
inmates and opted to eat the standard prison fare of baked beans, riblets on a
bun, mixed vegetables, and cake.
Before the execution, a wet sponge was placed on Holton’s face. When officials
used a towel to wipe away the water left from the sponge, Holton is said to have
declared: "Don't worry about it” (Hall, 2007).
After the execution, a statement was read on behalf of the children’s mother,
Crystal Holton: “Today all the anger, hatred and a long time of nightmares can
finally leave me. It will be replaced by all the sweet innocent wondrous love that
only a child can give. And I am blessed that I have and will always have that
love times four” (Hall, 2007). In addition to the sorrow over her own loss, she
spoke of her ex-mother-in-law, too, stating: “Marie has not only had to deal with
the death of four grandchildren, but now is dealing with the death of her own
son. You are in my thoughts and prayers. You will always be a mother figure for
me. I still love and miss you very much” (Burke, 2007).
Thomas Bonney
On November 21, 1987, Thomas Bonney murdered his 19-year-old daughter
Kathy. His eventual defense was multiple personality disorder (“MPD”), a fact
that makes this case unique. Although he was originally sentenced to death, that
sentence was overturned and now he’s serving life in prison.
The Murder
Thomas Bonney took his teenage daughter with him to look at a truck. When he
returned home hours later, she wasn’t with him. Her body was discovered the
next day in a canal close to the Virginia-North Carolina line. She was naked and
had been shot 27 times with a .22 caliber revolver.
The Aftermath
Bonney admitted to killing his daughter. However, the aftermath of the murder
was interesting, to say the least. When a psychiatry professor at Norfolk's
Eastern Virginia Medical School named Paul Dell saw newspaper reports about
Bonney’s memory lapses regarding the murder, he got involved with Bonney's
defense team. As an expert on MPD, he believed Bonney might suffer from the
disorder.
Although MPD had been previously used as a defense, there were problems with
Dell’s involvement with the case. For one thing, Dell approached the defendant
with the idea that he already suffered from the disorder without first conducting
an official evaluation. This potentially clouded Dell’s judgment. In addition,
Dell’s initial assessment was based on newspaper reports and not a clinical
assessment. In fact, he’d never even met Bonney. At the time of the trial, MPD
was under scrutiny because it was felt that mental health workers regularly
looked for symptoms of the disorder and, as a result, ended up seeing them in a
variety of unrelated conditions and behaviors, including simple daydreaming.
One of the reasons Dell believed Bonney might have MPD is because in a news
report it stated Kathy Bonney had been shot 27 times. Dell believed that this
level of violence or overkill could only be the upshot of a psychotic or
dissociative person. He was also tipped off by Bonney’s behavior on news
footage, particularly the way he often hid his face or, conversely, would ask to
talk to the press. This going back and forth was, to Dell, a sign that Bonney
might suffer from more than one personality.
In his early interviews with Bonney, Dell discovered him to be uncooperative
and demonstrating no observable signs of MPD. To move the evaluation along,
Dell hypnotized Bonney and had him use finger responses to answer questions.
Still, no evidence of an MPD apparent. He continued to press on with hypnosis,
however, and tried “talking” to the different personalities he was convinced lived
inside of Bonney. He warned the different “personalities” that if they didn’t
cooperate and answer back, Bonney could be found guilty and sentenced to
death. Of course, it could be argued that this approach could have given Bonney
the incentive to “develop” MDP since he now understood what his options were.
Not long after, Dell found the evidence he needed to fully convince himself that
Bonney suffered from the disorder. There were supposedly many personalities
present: Tom (a childlike personality), Satan (a “protector”), Mammy”
(Bonney’s grandmother), Demian (an angry and violent personality), Viking
(friendly and kind), Preacher (a religious personality), Hitman (a personality
who sought revenge and stood up to those who caused Bonney hurt). Dell’s
official findings included three formal diagnoses: multiple personality disorder,
post-traumatic stress disorder, and mixed personality disorder.
The prosecution found many flaws with Dell’s diagnoses. For starters, he hadn’t
witnessed Bonney taking a lot of the written tests that were used to determine his
diagnoses. Then there was the fact that he’d met Bonney with preconceived
ideas. There were also notable inconsistencies in Dell’s report. Even Dr. Phil
Coons, a well-known psychiatrist influential in writing the analysis of MPD for
the manual of mental disorders for the American Psychiatric Association and an
expert on the disorder, discredited Dell’s methods.
The jury ultimately found Thomas Bonney guilty of first-degree murder. He was
originally sentenced to death, but the verdict was later overturned when the
North Carolina Supreme Court saw evidence that he was mentally incompetent
(Hampton, 2007). He now faces life in prison.
John List
One of the most bizarre, and famous, murder cases that rocked the country
involved John List and the slaughter of his entire family. The crime, dubbed
“The Ballroom Murders,” took almost twenty years to solve and inspired movies
and television show plots, including the famous 1980s horror film “The
Stepfather.”
Who was John List?
John List was accused of murdering his wife, mother, and three children on
November 9, 1971. Born in 1925, he is sometimes known as the “Bogeyman of
Westfield,” although he certainly didn’t come across as malicious or evil before
the murders.
As a devout Lutheran, List regularly attended church and even taught Sunday
school. In WWII, he served in the US Army and later attended the University of
Michigan, earning a BA in Business Administration and later a master’s degree
in Accounting. He and his wife, Helen, had three children: Patricia, John Jr., and
Frederick.
He was said to be a controlling man who rarely smiled and was fastidious. He
was even known to mow his yard wearing a suit and tie. At the time of the
murders, the List family lived in a nineteen room Victorian mansion, complete
with ballroom. The house, referred to as “Breeze Knoll,” was the most expensive
house in its Westfield, New Jersey neighborhood. List was facing financial
difficulties, however, and was unemployed. His family didn’t know he’d lost his
job, he later admitted at the trial, because he still pretended to go to work every
day.
Patricia, his sixteen-year-old daughter, was going through some challenging
times at the time of her death. She’d been picked up by the police just two
months before. They found her walking along the streets after midnight,
smoking cigarettes. List, a deeply religious man, was troubled by her new
attitude and feared for her soul. He was also angry with his wife for no longer
going to church and trying to shield Patricia from his anger.
There were signs that things were not going well in the List household. Patricia
had told her drama coach that her father was going to kill her. At dinner one
night, List had even asked his family how they’d like their remains to be dealt
with after death – buried or cremated.
The Murders
List killed his wife and mother first, while his children were in school. His
mother was shot above the left eye while his wife was hit in the back of the head.
Both Patricia and Frederick were shot in the backs of their heads when they
returned from school. After these murders, List made himself some lunch and
then went to the bank where he closed his and his mother’s accounts. Next, he
waited for John Jr. to finish a soccer game. When he arrived home, List shot him
several times in the face and chest.
Once he was certain they were all dead, List took all the bodies, except for his
mother’s, to the ballroom. He left his mother’s body in the attic where she had
lived. He also took the time to write a five-page letter to his pastor as a type of
explanation for his actions. In the letter, he stated that there was “too much evil
in the world” and that he had killed his family in order to “save their souls.” In a
postscript, he included “Mother is in the attic. She was too heavy to move.” He’d
written his boss a letter as well, stating, “I'm sorry that it all had to end this way
but with so little income I just couldn't go on keeping the family together. And I
didn't want them to experience poverty.”
After cleaning up the different crime scenes he turned all the lights on, loudly
turned up the radio on a religious station and left.
It took almost a month for anyone to discover what had happened. Since the
family didn’t socialize much to begin with, and because he’d sent letters to the
schools saying the family would be out of town for a few weeks, nobody saw finally called the police when they realized the lights
in the house were burning out and there hadn’t been any activity inside for a
long time.