He took a hammer and with 13 blows smashed his 92-year-old grandmother’s head to a pulp because ‘she accidentally kneed me in the groin’
William Spengler, who shot dead two firefighters and wounded two others Christmas Eve in Webster, New York, received a prison sentence of 8 years 4 months to 25 years in 1981 for manslaughter in the killing of his 92-year-old grandmother.
Even Spengler was concerned about the possibility of repeat behavior. During his first parole hearing at New York’s Attica prison in 1989, one of the commissioners asked him, “What if it will happen again?” Spengler replied, “That’s the thing that does worry me in terms of if you’re capable of it once, are you capable of it again.”
In 1995, during his fourth parole hearing, while referring to the killing of the grandmother, one of the commissioners asked Spengler, “How do you, to yourself, how do you kind of justify it?” Spengler replied, “She accidentally kneed me in the groin.”
During that same hearing, the commissioner said: “Well 13 shots on the head. The grandmother. You killed a 92-year-old woman. We are worried about that. There might be another occasion where you lose your temper and you might repeat that behavior. That is what frightens us. That frightens us.” His parole was again denied.
Despite those frightening concerns, Spengler was paroled in 1998. His sentence was to expire in 2006. It would seem to me that, with all the concerns about repeat behavior, he should not have been paroled before 2004. And yet, that would not have prevented him from ambushing those firefighters on Christmas Eve.
1 comment:
There you go Howie, introducing reason and logic into the argument. It SHOULD work that way, but it often doesn't.
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