* On March 22, 1985, Dennis Roscoe Jones , 18, of Dayton was sentenced to life without parole for 20 years and an additional three years for using a firearm after he pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and aggravated robbery in the Jan. 16, 1985, shooting of Mary Mitchell, 27, a clerk at a Lawson store at 4412 Linden Ave., Mad River Twp. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.
* On Oct. 5, 1985, Augustus Williams , 18, received a life sentence with possible parole after 30 years from a jury that convicted him in the fatal shooting of Mary Perrine, who was abducted from the Dayton Mall on Feb. 18, 1985. Her body was found in a Dayton sewer after the trial.
* On April 29, 1986, Samuel Moreland , 32, was sentenced to death by a three-judge panel after it convicted him of five capital charges in the Nov. 1, 1985, slayings of Glenna Green, 46; her daughter, Lana Green, 23; and three grandchildren - Daytrin Talbott, 7, Datwan Talbott, 6, and Voliana Green, 6. At the time, Moreland was convicted of killing more people than anyone who had been placed on death row before him.
* On March 9, 1987, Kellelee Kyle Allen , 20, got life in prison with eligibility for parole after 30 years by a three-judge panel after he pleaded no contest to the capital charge in the Aug. 6, 1986, strangulation of Vandalia barber Ted Cowell, 55, during a robbery. The judges who convicted him but spared his life referred to an account at the mitigation hearing that Allen's parents locked him in his room when he was 16 and kept him there for a year and a half except to go to school and work.
* On March 1, 1988, Ronald J. Christopher , 37, an Arizona drifter, got life with possible parole after 20 years. He pleaded no contest to the capital charge in the Aug. 30, 1987, suffocation and beating death of Elva Kuleck, 82, of Dayton, hours after she let him use her telephone. A three-judge panel spared Christopher's life and gave him the shorter period to parole, noting he had been a longtime alcoholic.
* On April 10, 1989, Eddie Robertson , 30, got life with possible parole after 30 years, plus another 30 years for other offenses including attempted murder, from Common Pleas Judge William MacMillan Jr. The judge did not follow a jury's death recommendation. Robertson was convicted in the Sept. 4, 1988, fatal shooting of Stephanie Hiatt, 21, during the robbery of a Harrison Twp. beer drive-through. Robertson was identified by a drive-through clerk who survived being shot several times in the head.
* On Sept. 1, 1989, Davel V. `Tony' Chinn , 31, was sentenced to death by Judge MacMillan, who this time followed a jury's recommendation. Chinn and co-defendant Marvin Washington, 15, abducted Brian K. Jones in his car from a downtown Dayton parking lot Jan. 30, 1989, and drove to Jefferson Twp., where Chinn shot Jones in the shoulder. The bullet traveled through Jones' chest, piercing a major artery. Washington admitted responsibility in juvenile court. In 1977, Chinn had been convicted on charges stemming from an argument at a bar, where he put a gun to the head of a Trotwood police officer. Less than three years later, Washington was a murder victim himself, one of the 1992 Christmas killings for which Marvallous Matthew Keene was sentenced to death.
* On June 26, 1992, Karl Vultee Jr. , 32, of Beavercreek was sentenced to 69 years to life plus 86 years in prison in the March 21, 1991, fatal shooting of Dayton police officer William Steve Whalen and wounding of another officer when Vultee's pickup truck was stopped at St. Paul and Xenia avenues. Police had been alerted that Vultee reportedly had shot up a Dayton motel door with a semi-automatic rifle. Vultee pleaded guilty to the capital charge and three other felonies. A three-judge panel spared his life, finding a mental illness impaired his understanding of the criminal act of shooting Whalen. A defense psychologist diagnosed Vultee as paranoid schizophrenic.
* On Nov. 5, 1993, Herman Harris Jr. , 34, of Dayton, was sentenced to 19 years to a maximum of life plus 10 years in prison after a three-judge panel convicted him of a lesser charge of murder in the March 30, 1992, slaying of Billy Lai Sr., a manager at Schear's Marketplace at Third and Ludlow streets. Lai's head was bashed with a salmon can and his throat was slashed with a shard of glass from a broken jelly jar. When he killed Lai, Harris had been free from parole for a month after a 6 1/2 -year prison stay for involuntary manslaughter, a stabbing death, his second prison stint. The judges said prosecutors failed to show Harris intended to rob the store or Lai before the killing, a requirement to prove the higher charge - and the only one that can carry a death penalty - of aggravated murder during the commission of an aggravated robbery.
* On Nov. 4, 1993, Heather Nicole Mathews , 21, was sentenced to a minimum of 154 years and two consecutive life sentences for her role in six killings over the 1992 Christmas holiday. The oldest of four co-defendants, including two juveniles tried as adults without exposure to the death penalty, Mathews saved herself from a possible death sentence by pleading guilty to the 13 charges against her, including two charges of aggravated murder with death penalty specifications removed, and testifying against the others. She testified that she never shot any victims. She had just been paroled from prison before she took part in the killings.
* On Dec. 10, 1993, Marvallous Matthew Keene , 20, was sentenced to death five times for his role in the 1992 Christmas killings that, in a 60-hour period, left six dead and one injured. Among the dead - some were strangers, some friends - was Marvin Washington, 18, released from the Ohio Department of Youth Services for his role in the 1989 shooting death of Brian K. Jones. Washington was killed along with his 16-year-old girlfriend, Wendy Cottrill, on Dec. 26, 1992, at a secluded city gravel storage area off the 1600 block of Richley Drive, when the four defendants suspected the pair might turn them in to police.
* On Feb. 10, 1996, Edmund Earl Emerick III , 31, was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison without parole for 30 years in the March 19, 1994, hammer slaying deaths of Frank Ferraro, 65, and Robert Knapke, 38, at Sloopy's Bar, 623 E. Fifth St. A jury declined to recommend death after Emerick continued to profess his innocence.
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