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SIMS Mitchell Carlton

*1960

...

PADGETT Ruby Carolyn

*1965

CA SC

Killing Team

1985

Verdict/Urteil:

A drifter from South Carolina, 25-year-old Mitchell Sims liked to call himself "a human ashtray," amusing his friends by stubbing out cigarettes on his bare chest. Self-mutilation was only one of his pastimes, however, and Sims also cultivated a deep interest in the occult . Along the way, he found time for Ruby Padgett, five years his junior, and developed a bizarre, abiding hatred for the nationwide chain of Domino's Pizza restaurants. The latter quirk may have been rooted in his own employment with the chain, which had been terminated in the fall of 1985. On December 3, 1985, Sims invaded the Dominos restaurant in Wanahan, South Carolina, where he had recently worked, holding two employees at gunpoint and torturing both before he shot them, execution-style. One victim was killed outright; the other - hit four times - managed to reach a police station, naming Sims as the gunman before he collapsed. The charge was double murder when his second victim died, a week later, but Sims and Padgett were already settled in Glendale, California, lining up their next crime. On December 10, Sims ordered a Domino's pizza delivered to his motel room. Upon arrival, deliveryman John Harrington was stripped, gagged with a washcloth, and drowned in the bathtub. Sims wore the dead man's uniform when he returned to the restaurant, looted its safe, and left two employees locked in the freezer, bound in such a way that they were forced to stand on tip-toe to avoid hanging themselves. This time, both victims managed to escape, and they identified a photograph of Sims as their assailant. Domino's offered a $100,000 reward for his arrest, but once again, the bird had flown. By December 11, Sims and Padgett were hiding in Las Vegas, where he registered as "Jeff Richardson" at a cheap motel. Harrington's stolen pickup was recovered from the parking lot of a casino on December 21, and mass publicity resulted in the arrest of both suspects on Christmas morning. (An unemployed iron worker had taken the couple home for drinks before seeing their published photographs, after which he promptly turned them in for the reward.) Sims and Padgett waived extradition to California, there pleading innocent to all counts in the Glendale robbery and murder. Fearful of execution in South Carolina, they resisted extradition to their home state, and California's governor agreed in February 1986, asserting Glendale's priority in placing the killers on trial. Mitchell Sims was convicted of Harrington's murder on May 20, 1987, and a month later his jury recommended the death penalty. On September 11, 1987, he was formally sentenced to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin.

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