EXCLUSIVE Mother livid at 'low life' Joe Biden for commuting sentence of her daughter's killer who shot her in cold-blooded bank robbery
By Laura Collins
Daily Mail
Dec 26, 2024
Brandon Council killed the two bank workers, Katie Skeen and Donna Major. The jury took just 32 minute to convict him. The victims' families learned via a conference call on Sunday that Council was one of 37 killers, whose death sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden
The family of a woman brutally gunned down alongside a co-worker during an armed bank robbery has slammed President Joe Biden as a 'low life,' for his decision to commute her killer's death penalty to a life sentence.
Mother-of-two Katie Skeen, 36, was an employee at CresCom Bank in Conway, South Carolina, when she and co-worker Donna Major, 59, became the victims of armed robber, Brandon Council, 38, during a robbery in 2017.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com Skeen's mother, Betty Davis, 78, said, 'He's a low life. Both Biden and Council, they're both low lifes.'
According to Davis, she and the rest of the family including Skeen's father, John, 78, her husband of 16 years Tracy, 52, and two sons Noah, 22 and River, 17, were informed of the President's decision in a conference call with victim advocates on Sunday.
Council, they were told, was one of 37 killers, rapists and career criminals to have their death sentences commuted to life without parole by the outgoing president.
Three others were not spared.
Davis said, 'I just felt heart-sick when they told us. It was like my world had just fallen apart all over again.'
Recalling the day her daughter was murdered Davis said, 'My husband received a phone call from the Sheriff, and he just went flying out the door. Me and River jumped in my car and followed him to the Sheriff's department and that's when they told us. That's when the hell began.'
Turning her attention to her daughter's killer she said, 'He deserved the sentence he got. My daughter had no choice over her fate, she didn't get to choose what he did to her.'
Katie Skeen, 36, was one of two workers at CresCom bank who was killed by armed robber Brandon Council, 38 – his death sentence is being commuted by President Joe Biden along with 36 others
Skeen and Major's murders were captured on the bank's security footage. They were played during Council's three-week trial in 2019, meaning their families had to witness the horror of the women's terrifying last moments
Skeen's mother said, 'Everyone should see the video of what he did to them. Everyone should see his face as he killed them, there was no emotion. There is no place for sympathy for that man.
'Him getting the death sentence meant everything to us. It meant justice for Katie and Donna.'
Davis said that the family – including Skeen's husband with whom they remain extremely close – has been buoyed by the messages of support they have received in the wake of Biden's announcement Monday.
The family has kept in touch with the investigators who arrested Council and the attorneys who prosecuted him and, Davis said, they are just as 'heart-sick' at the news as Skeen's own loved ones.
She said, 'The last couple of days have been depressing but the messages from friends moves you and shows you that you're not alone.'
She added that all the family would be together over the holidays and that Skeen who was a devout Born-Again Christian would be with them in spirit.
The small city of Conway in South Carolina was rocked by the women's senseless killings. With a population of just over 17,000 at the time, the violence hit the coastal town in Horry County hard.
President Biden made his announcement on Monday that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row – meaning they'll now serve life sentences without the possibility of parole
Samantha Burns, 19, was also killed by Basham and Fulks in November 2002. The following year, her mother Kandi and father John showed off a picture of their daughter whose body has never been found
Now, as a city it has been doubly impacted by Biden's commutation decision. Brandon Basham, 42, and Chadrick Fulks, 46, also had their death sentences overturned.
The two men escaped from a Kentucky jail and went on a 17-day crime spree in 2002. Along their way they abducted Alice Donovan, 44, from a Walmart parking lot in Conway. Fulks raped her and Basham shot her dead.
Her body was only found seven years latter when Fulks led cops to her remains.
Basham was also convicted of abducting and killing Marshall University student Samantha Burns, just 19 years old when she was last seen in November 2002. Her body has never been found.
For the city of Conway, Biden's decision has, according to an official statement, 'only served to reopen old wounds that our community has spent years trying to heal.'
The lengthy statement posted to the city's Facebook page on Monday stated, 'The City of Conway was shocked on August 21, 2017, in the homicides of Donna Major and Katie Skeen. Conway Police, other local agencies and the FBI worked tirelessly to bring the convicted and sentenced defendant to justice.'
Due to the senseless nature of the crimes, the statement notes, the lengthy criminal history of the offender 'and their disregard for others and the law, the death penalty was unanimously imposed.'
The city also extended sympathy to the family of Alice Donovan who, 'became a tragic victim of [two escaped convicts'] deadly journey.' The crime was in part investigated by Conway Police, because that is the city from which the Galivants Ferry, South Carolina, resident was abducted.
Kandi and John, parents of Samantha Burns, spoke to the media on June 12, 2003, at the Cabell County Courthouse in Huntington, West Virginia
It added: 'The federal court system properly weighed the evidence, ruled on each submission under the backdrop of its constitutional relevance and admissibility, and an impartial jury deliberated and rendered a verdict in keeping with the rule of law.
'We understand that [the] wounds will never heal for the loved ones of the victims. Our deepest sympathies remain with the Major, Skeen and Donovan families and friends. These cases have left an indelible mark on our community, and we remain committed to supporting victims' families and ensuring justice for all.'
Biden's decision to commute the death sentences of some of the country's most heinous criminals has been met with a firestorm of criticism.
On Tuesday, Michigan father Tim Timmerman added his voice to the throng slamming the president's move and its timing ahead of Christmas as 'despicable.'
Timmerman's daughter, Rachel, and granddaughter, Shannon Verhage, were both murdered by Marvin Gabrion, now 71, in 1997.
Rachel, 19, disappeared two days before she was due to testify against Gabrion for raping her. Gabrion restrained the teen, covered her eyes and mouth with duct tape, chained her to cinderblocks and threw her, still alive, into a lake. The body of 11-month-old Shannon, whom Gabrion is also believed to have killed, has never been found.
Speaking to WoodTV, Timmerman said, 'We thought the timing was despicable. We felt that President Biden could have waited until after the holidays.
'I think President Biden offered a Christmas gift to the perpetrators of murder, but he offered only pain to the victims of the families.'
Dylan Roof, 30, who was sentenced to death in 2017 for opening fire on the congregation of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, in 2015, killing nine was also not granted clemency
Robert Bowers, 52, who killed 11 worshipers in a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and was sentenced to death in 2023,was not spared by Biden
Timmerman revealed that Gabrion had killed 'at least five people,' adding that the killer's refusal to tell them what he had done with the baby, 'has always remained a hole in my heart'.
Out of a list of 40 death row inmates, the only ones to whom he did not grant clemency were Dylan Roof, 30, who opened fire on the congregation of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015, killing nine; Robert Bowers, 52, who killed 11 worshipers in a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev, 31, who, along with his brother, carried out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing in which three people were killed and more than 200 injured.
South Carolina Representative Russell Fry joined in the barrage of opprobrium heaped on Biden in a post on X earlier this week.
He wrote, 'Joe Biden's clemency for death row inmates disgraces victims' memories nationwide like Donna Major of Conway and Katie Skeen of Green Sea. This shows shocking disregard for innocent families' pain, right at Christmas. Jan 20 cannot come soon enough.'
For her part Skeen's mother could not agree more as she voiced her support for president-elect Donald Trump and her eagerness for his inauguration.
She said, 'This country's going to hell in a handbasket. I absolutely support Donald Trump; I can't wait till he's back in power.'
The 37 Death Row Inmates Granted Clemency
Shannon Agofsky, 53, abducted banker Dan Short from his home in Benton County, Arkansas and robbed and killed him - he was granted clemency by President Biden
Shannon Agofsky, 53: With his brother, Joe, he abducted banker Dan Short from his home in Benton County, Arkansas, and took him to Short’s bank across the Missouri border, where they stole $70,000. The brothers then killed Short and dumped him in a lake. Agofsky is on death row for stomping fellow prisoner Luther Plant to death inside a federal penitentiary in Texas in 2004. His brother died in prison in 2013.
Billie Allen, 46, and Norris Holder, 48: Holder was awarded $500 a month after losing part of his leg in a train accident, which he always withdrew from the Lindell Bank & Trust branch in the Forest Park area of St. Louis. In March 1997 he took Allen with him to get the money and they returned four days later armed with two assault rifles, a shotgun and 200 rounds of ammunition. They fired 16 shots in the robbery, killing security guard Richard Heflin. They got the idea for the raid from watching the movies Heat and Set It Off.
Aquilia Barnette, 51: He turned up at the Charlotte, North Carolina, home of his former girlfriend Robin Williams in April 1996 and threw in a firebomb, which failed to kill her. The next month he hijacked a car, killing the driver, leaving his body in a ditch, before driving to Williams’s mother’s home where he found his ex. She ran, he caught her and dragged her back to the house by her hair and then killed her with two shots.
Brandon Basham, 42, and Chadrick Fulks, 46: The two small-time criminals escaped from the Hopkins County Detention Center in Kentucky in November 2002, using a makeshift rope from bedwear. They then set off on a multi-state trip, stealing cars along the way, eventually ending up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where they followed Alice Donovan’s blue BMW into a Walmart parking lot. They kidnapped Donovan, 44, and after Fulks raped her, Basham took her into the woods where he shot her. Her body has never been found.
Anthony Battle, 61: Battle was serving a life sentence in federal prison in Atlanta for the 1987 murder of his wife, when he bludgeoned correctional officer D’Antonio Washington to death with a hammer because he was ‘tired of being bossed around.’ He confessed to the December 1994 murder of Washington with an insanity defense but was sentenced to death.
Meier Brown, 53: Brown went to the post office in Fleming, Georgia, in November 2002 to get his family’s mail. After going home, he got the idea to return, this time with a knife. He jumped over the counter, tripped and fell into postmistress Sallie Gaglia, cutting her. He then decided he had to kill her as she would recognize him, and he stabbed her 10 times, leaving her face down on the post office floor. The robbery netted Brown $1,175 in money orders.
Carlos Caro, 56: Caro was a drug smuggler, bringing narcotics over the border into Texas. He was sentenced to 30 years in 2001, his third conviction. In prison he became a leader of the violent prison gang, the Texas Syndicate. In December 2003, he strangled his cellmate Roberto Sandoval to death in prison in Jonesville, Virginia. He told investigators he had killed Sandoval because he had called him a ‘motherf***er.’
Wesley Coonce, 43, and Charles Hall, 52: Both men were in the mental health ward at the federal prison in Springfield, Missouri, when they attacked fellow prisoner Victor Castro, binding him and standing on his neck till he suffocated. Coonce, who was serving a life sentence for kidnapping and carjacking, was caught on camera making a throat-slashing sign to another inmate as he left Castro’s cell. Hall was behind bars for making threats against a federal judge and prosecutor.
Brandon Council, 38: Council shot bank tellers Donna Major, 59, and Katie Skeen, 36, dead during an armed bank robbery in Conway, South Carolina, in August 2017. ‘His actions were premeditated. They were deliberate and they were intentional,’ prosecutor Everett McMillan said. The jury took just 32 minutes to find him guilty.
Christopher Cramer, 41, and Ricky Fackrell, 39: The two Utah men, members of the Soldiers of the Aryan Culture were in prison in Beaumont, Texas, when, after months of planning, they stabbed fellow white supremacist Leo Johns to death in June 2014. Cramer was originally sentenced for bank robbery and was convicted several times for attacking other prisoners. Fackrell was serving time for armed robbery.
Ronald Mikos killed retired nurse Joyce Brannon who was planning to testify against him in a fraud trial
Len Davis, 59: Davis was known as ‘Robocop’ during his time in the New Orleans Police Department. He was suspended six times in a five-year period before receiving the Medal of Merit. A woman called Kim Groves filed a complaint saying she had seen him beat up a man who he thought had been involved in the shooting of a cop in October 1994. Davis was tipped off and ordered her murder. A local drug dealer shot and killed Groves less than a day after she made the complaint.
Joseph Ebron, 44: Ebron, a convicted murderer, killed fellow inmate Keith Barnes less than a day after Barnes had arrived at federal prison in Beaumont, Texas, in May 2005. Barnes had told correctional officers he feared he was in danger as he had given evidence against co-defendants in murder trials in Washington, D.C., but he was placed in the prison’s general population anyway. Ebron held Barnes down while another prisoner stabbed him to death.
Edward Fields, 56: The former prison guard hid in camouflage in Oklahoma’s Ouachita National Forest and shot campers Charles and Shirley Chick with a high-powered scoped rifle in July 2003. He shot Charles in the face and then as Shirley ran off, he shot her in the foot before catching her and dispatching her with a bullet to the back of the head. He later returned to the campsite and stole a few items from their van.
Marvin Gabrion, 71: Teenager Rachel Timmerman had accused Gabrion of raping her. Two days before he was due to stand trial in June 1997, Timmerman’s body was found in a lake, weighed down with cinder blocks. Her 11-month-old daughter Shannon has never been found. He is also suspected of murdering four other witnesses in the case, but their bodies remain missing.
Edgar Garcia, 44, and Mark Snarr, 48: The two were prisoners in the federal lock-up in Beaumont, Texas, in November 2007 when they both managed to slip out of their handcuffs. They stabbed prison officer DeWight Baloney 23 times with homemade shanks and then turned on another guard Josh McQueen, demanding his keys. Snarr ripped the keys from McQueen’s belt and they went to the cell of Gabriel Rhone, who they repeatedly stabbed, killing him.
Thomas Hager, 50: Hager was a major crack cocaine dealer in Washington, D.C., who went into hiding at his girlfriend’s apartment after shooting and injuring two rivals in November 1993. Barbara White, who had had a child with a member of the rival gang, visited Hager’s girlfriend, and he decided he had to kill her as she might give away his location. He and three others went to White’s apartment where they stabbed her more than 80 times.
Richard Jackson, 54: College graduate Karen Styles went missing on Halloween 1994 when she was hiking in the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina. Three weeks later her naked body was discovered by a hunter, duct-taped to a tree. Near her were a pornographic magazine and a single rifle casing. She had been shot in the head and suffered 10 stun gun wounds, nine of them to her pubic region. Jackson was caught when officers traced the sale of the duct tape back to a local K-Mart.
Jurijus Kadamovas, 57, and Iouri Mikhel, 58: The pair who had moved to the States from the former Soviet Union went on a four-month spree of kidnappings beginning in late 2001. They targeted wealthy Soviet immigrants and received more than $1 million in ransom money from relatives of their five victims – but they killed them anyway and dumped their bodies in New Melones Lake near Yellowstone National Park.
Daryl Lawrence will now be in prison for life after he was granted clemency for shooting and killing Columbus police officer Bryan Hurst after robbing four banks in central Ohio
Daryl Lawrence, 48: Lawrence robbed four banks in central Ohio between January 2004 and January 2005. During the last he shot and killed Columbus police officer Bryan Hurst, who fired back injuring Lawrence. He was arrested within days and immediately confessed to all four robberies.
Ronald Mikos, 75: Mikos, a podiatrist, known as the Medicare Murderer, killed retired nurse Joyce Brannon, who was planning to testify against him in a fraud trial. Mikos, the oldest man on death row, would forge patients’ signatures on documents saying he had performed surgeries on them. When he learned Brannon’s evidence could put him away in January 2002, Mikos took her to a church basement in Chicago and shot her six times at close range.
James Roane, 58, and Richard Tipton, 53: They, along with Cory Johnson who was executed in hte dying days of the first Trump administration, were part of the Newtowne Gang in Richmond, Virginia. They were convicted in February 1993 of several capital murders arising from their drug trafficking. In early 1992 alone they were responsible for 10 murders. In one case. Douglas Talley, an underling who had mishandled a drug deal, was stabbed 84 times.
Julius Robinson, 47: Known as Scarface, Robinson was a wholesale drug dealer based in Fort Worth, Texas, distributing narcotics to a five-state area. He killed one man who he mistakenly thought was behind a hijacking that cost him $30,000 and then the brother-in-law of a man who had persuaded him to pay $17,000 for a block of wood covered in sheetrock that he thought were drugs.
David Runyon, 53: The sole Asian on death row, Runyon was hired by Catarina Voss and her lover to kill her Navy Ensign husband Cory in April 2007, shortly after he returned from deployment in Korea. Catarina sent Cory to an ATM to get money from an account she had opened for him. He didn’t realize she had put just $5 in it. When he kept getting insufficient funds notices he hung around, giving Runyon time to find him and shoot him to death. Catarina then refused to pay Runyon a single cent. She is serving life in prison.
Ricardo Sanchez, 40, and Daniel Troya, 40: They were part of a drug cartel in Florida that got into a dispute with fellow kingpin Jose Escobedo. They followed Escobedo along the Florida Turnpike in October 2006 and opened fire, killing him execution style. Escobedo’s wife Yessica tried to shield their two sons, Luis Julian, 4, and Luis Damian, 3, but all three were killed. ‘I have no confidence Mr. Troya wouldn’t do this again,’ the judge said as he sentenced them.
Thomas Sanders, 66: Sanders shot and killed his girlfriend Suellen Roberts in the remote Arizona desert after a Labor Day outing to the Grand Canyon in 2010. He then kidnapped Roberts’s 12-year-old daughter Lexis, driving her cross-country to Catahoula Parish, Louisiana, where he shot the girl four times and cut her throat.
Kaboni Savage, 49: The aptly named Savage has 12 convictions for murder and was on death row for ordering the October 2004 firebombing of a Philadelphia house where a federal witness was living. The resulting blaze killed six people. Savage was a high-level drug dealer, delivering tons of cocaine throughout eastern Pennsylvania. He allegedly killed one man after they got involved in a minor fender-bender, but he was acquitted because the only witness was also murdered, supposedly by him.
Thomas Sanders shot and killed his girlfriend Suellen Roberts in the remote Arizona desert after a Labor Day outing to the Grand Canyon in 2010. He later killed her 12-year-old daughter Lexis
Rejon Taylor, 39: Taylor abducted Atlanta restaurateur Guy Luck from his driveway in August 2003, shoved him in the back of his van and drove him to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he shot him on a remote road. Taylor had broken into Luck’s Buckhead home several times. On the last occasion he found papers showing that Luck had decided to press charges against the then-19-year-old for stealing his credit cards.
Jorge Torrez, 35: Torrez joined the Marines in order to evade suspicion for the May 2005 murder of two young girls, Krystal Tobias, 9, and Laura Hobbs, 8, in Utah. He had sexually assaulted them and removed their eyeballs. His death sentence was imposed for a separate murder, the strangulation of Navy Petty Officer Amanda Snell in Arlington County, Virginia. He also abducted a woman in northern Virginia, raped her and left her for dead in the snow.
Alejandro Umana, 39: A member of the notorious MS-13 gang, Umana shot and killed brothers Ruben and Manuel Salinas at Los Jarochitas restaurant in Greensboro, North Carolina, in December 2007 after an argument about what music should play on the jukebox. Umana, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, is also suspected of at least four murders in Los Angeles.
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