Larry Bright to serve life sans parole

[RebLem]

I think I posted about this before here; I certainly did in other forums, including my own. You all know how concerned we are about Chandra Levy, and stories of murders of white women in Mediterranean climates especially, where reporters love to go for little trips. But here is a white guy in Peoria (no Mediterranean climate, alas!) who murdered eight black women that nobody outside Peoria is interested in.

The only reason I know about it is that when the investigation started, a chat friend of mine who lives in the Peoria area told me about it. She owns a sewer cleaning business and her office shares a rear property line with Mr. Bright's, where the police were digging for bodies. She investigated, and told me and others in a chat room about it. I have been following the case ever since. RebLem


Bright pleads guilty to eight homicides

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

By ANDY KRAVETZ

of the Peoria Journal Star

PEORIA - Larry Bright will never leave prison.

With a simple signature, the former concrete worker agreed Tuesday to spend the rest of his life in prison in return for not facing the death penalty.

After months of legal twists and turns, the area's latest serial killer admitted in open court that he killed seven women and caused the death of an eighth through a drug overdose.

Under the agreement, Bright, 39, admitted that he strangled Linda Neal, 40; Brenda Erving, 41; Shirley Ann Trapp (Carpenter), 45; Shaconda Thomas, 32; Laura Lollar, 33; and Tamara "Tammy" Walls, 29, to death over a 15-month period in 2003 and 2004.

He then admitted that he provided enough cocaine to Barbara Williams, 36, to cause her death. Each time Circuit Judge James Shadid asked Bright whether he was guilty of the women's death, Bright said yes.

Drug-induced homicide carries a maximum 30-year prison term which Bright will serve at the same time as seven concurrent life sentences. Bright also waived all appeal rights, meaning he will likely never appear in court again on this case, which was Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons' goal.

People will remember that there was a serial killer in Peoria, but "I can bet you quite a bit that they will not remember his name," the county's top prosecutor said.

Bright spoke very little during the hour-long hearing and only in response to Shadid's questions. One of his attorneys, Jeffrey Page of Springfield, read a one-paragraph statement penned by Bright.

"I know that I have committed some horrific and unthinkable acts. I am very sorry for the grief and the heartache that I have caused," Page said, reading Bright's statement.

That wasn't enough for Kevin Armstrong, Neal's brother.

"He could have at least read it in court himself," Armstrong said after the hearing. "I wanted something personal from him."

Shadid's second-floor courtroom was packed with several members of the task force that spent months investigating the deaths and disappearances of the eight women. Also present were many employees from the courthouse as well as family and friends of the victims. Absent, however, was Bright's family, who have been to every hearing until Tuesday.

"I think it's a fair resolution," Jay Elmore, another of Bright's attorneys, said recently. "This guy is never going to see the light of day and he knows he should never see the light of day."

The deal brings to an end one of the most exhaustive criminal investigations locally in years. The task force had more than a dozen officers from several departments who spent hundreds of hours on the case. Defense attorneys have said the evidence against their client was several thousand pages long, and DNA labs from across the country spent months unsuccessfully trying to identify the charred remains Bright led authorities to.

As Lyons told Shadid the evidence against Bright, a picture of each woman appeared on the courtroom's two television monitors. Lyons said he chose to do that so they wouldn't get lost in a jumble of names. Rather, he said, it was important for the community to remember each woman.

"It was important to me that this case not be a melting pot for eight women," Lyons said.

For all seven murder charges, Bright admitted he choked the women, but told authorities he couldn't remember names and dates. Some of them he remembered by their clothing. Others he remembered because of the struggle they put up in the minutes before their deaths. One woman he remembered because he saw her driver's license.

For months, the case had been in a holding pattern as Bright's defense team had to determine whether he was first fit to stand trial and then if he was sane at the time of the deaths. But when the latest psychiatric report came back showing that Bright was sane, the logjam broke.

Still, the court case has held a certain level of fascination with people, and not just because of the number of murders. Bright himself added much to the ongoing drama by repeatedly trying to plead guilty during his first few court appearances only to be rebuffed by judges who said they needed to protect his rights.

The case also opened up some longstanding resentments with Peoria's African-American community, which initially accused police of not devoting enough resources to solve the women's deaths because of their street-centric lifestyles.

"The task force and Kevin did extend themselves to the community. The only regret I and others have is that it took quite a while for them to form it (the task force)," said Percy Baker, who has acted as a spokesman for the black community and some of the victims.

All the women were black and had ties to drugs and prostitution, but authorities have not divulged a motive for the slayings. Lyons said more than a year ago that Bright, who is white, apparently had a fetish for black women but that he didn't believe race was a factor in the deaths.

No motive was revealed during Tuesday's hearing. Lyons said afterward that it appeared Bright didn't start out to kill the women but after one or two deaths, things changed. Bright told authorities that he was "hunting."

Bright was initially charged with only three murders - Erving, Walls and Neal - and authorities were awaiting results from forensic DNA labs for additional evidence in others. Bright had confessed dozens of times to all eight murders, but his confessions were rambling and lacked enough detail to rise to a level for conviction, prosecutors have said in the past.

However, as Lyons went through each woman's death, it was apparent that for some of the deaths - Thomas in particular - authorities had no leads on the case until an interview in late January 2005 with Bright in which he, in effect, confessed to everything.

"The families who have suffered tremendous ... this, in no way will make up for the loss of a loved one, but to know that Larry Bright will never be on the street again, that is comforting," said Tazewell County Sheriff Bob Huston.

Police apparently latched onto Bright as a suspect in November 2004 when, while questioning him on another matter, they collected two cigarette butts he had smoked and used DNA from those to match it to semen found on Neal's body.

Andy Kravetz can be reached at 686-3283 or akravetz@pjstar.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report

http://www.pjstar.com/stories/053006/-T ... .NW1.shtml

[Corlyss_D]

Larry Elder, the libertarian lawyer and talk show host, often raises this issue of MSM fascination with comely young blue-eyed blond white girls who disappear while completely ignoring the far more numerous black girls, many of whom are but children, in similar circumstances.

I object to such 24/7 coverage as that girl in Aruba has gotten, thanks largely to her mother's diligence, but if the white girls deserve that kind of coverage, then so do the black girls. It just confirms the MSM impression that people don't care about what happens in the black community. Well, one of the reasons that people don't care is because they don't know, and they don't know because the MSM don't care.

The Chandra Levy case got so much attention because a Congressman was under suspicion. Murder, at least by their own hand, is unusal even for Congress.

[jbuck919]

I find it interesting that the death penalty is being used as a plea bargaining chip in order to avoid bothering to take the severest criminal to trial. Very economical, I'm sure. Same thing happened with Theodore Kozinski and doubtless many others. Certainly justifies actually exectuing hundreds of criminals per year in whom the state according to its mood has no arbitrary interest in expediency.

[Corlyss_D]

I find it interesting that the death penalty is being used as a plea bargaining chip in order to avoid bothering to take the severest criminal to trial. Very economical, I'm sure. Same thing happened with Theodore Kozinski and doubtless many others.

That's one of the death penalty's most effective uses, if not the most effective use. I suspect that when DNA is recovered from arrestees and the science of lie detection by MRI or whatever it is they are investigating now becomes routine, there will be very few criminal trials and far fewer opportunities for the Henry Wades and Mike Nifongs to work their devil's brew of ruthlessness, indifference to guilt, and publicity to send innocent men to prison or death.

Certainly justifies actually exectuing hundreds of criminals per year in whom the state according to its mood has no arbitrary interest in expediency.

You must be talking about some other place. If you are talking about the US, you should at least bother to find out how many perps are actually executed annually. If it amounts to 10, I'd be surprised.

[jbuck919]

There have been 22 in 2006 so far, 1026 since 1976, there were 55 in 2005.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article ... =8&did=186

The number is not the point. The point is that putting people to death through judicial means puts any modern country that does it in the position of acting as savages and brutes. It is not what we are doing to them, it is what we are doing to us.

If the state has to spend money to prosecute a clear serial murderer and put him behind bars for life, just too bad. One doesn't kill dozens or hundreds of others who are arguably in the balance less culpable than the criminal at hand to save money.

[Corlyss_D]

There have been 22 in 2006 so far, 1026 since 1976, there were 55 in 2005.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article ... =8&did=186

Oh, thanks! That's a great site. I am surprised. I thought the MSM covered every one copiously. Well, it's not hundreds.

It is not what we are doing to them, it is what we are doing to us.

Thanks for your concern, but I can take it. So can a lot of other folks. Remember who we are. If we weren't completely deranged by the 90 years of Democratic devotion to lynching, by which thousands also died, we'll survive and if the Dems success at monopolizing blacks is any clue, we'll be all the more loved for our toughness.

If the state has to spend money to prosecute a clear serial murderer and put him behind bars for life, just too bad. One doesn't kill dozens or hundreds of others who are arguably in the balance less culpable than the criminal at hand to save money.

? English please.

[jbuck919]

? English please.

Remember who we are. If we weren't completely deranged by the 90 years of Democratic devotion to lynching, by which thousands also died, we'll survive and if the Dems success at monopolizing blacks is any clue, we'll be all the more loved for our toughness.

I have the same problem with this.

[Corlyss_D]

Remember who we are.

Certainly. I'll be happy to explain it.

We are excessively generous hearted people. We also happen to have brought more prosperity, more freedom, and more democracy to more people than any other nation on the planet. And we did it while in our darker corners lynchings happened on a daily basis. If that cognitive disconnect didn't derange us, I'd like to know what you think the death penalty can possibly do to us as a nation that having a Democratic program of black extermination, while the rest of polite society looked the other way, didn't do to us. And on top of that disconnect, there's the even more stunning disconnect that no matter how bad it got for blacks under Democrats in the past, all was forgiven to the extent that blacks in the 2000 election voted 96% for Gore. So if executions are so damaging to us as a people, how? By making us an object of disapproval by states whose opinions mean nothing to us? How? I mean, it makes cute copy that "what it is doing to us" but just what is it doing to us? I want to hear your sociology or psychology or whatever it is.

[RebLem]

Remember who we are.

Certainly. I'll be happy to explain it.

We are excessively generous hearted people. We also happen to have brought more prosperity, more freedom, and more democracy to more people than any other nation on the planet. And we did it while in our darker corners lynchings happened on a daily basis. If that cognitive disconnect didn't derange us, I'd like to know what you think the death penalty can possibly do to us as a nation that having a Democratic program of black extermination, while the rest of polite society looked the other way, didn't do to us. And on top of that disconnect, there's the even more stunning disconnect that no matter how bad it got for blacks under Democrats in the past, all was forgiven to the extent that blacks in the 2000 election voted 96% for Gore. So if executions are so damaging to us as a people, how? By making us an object of disapproval by states whose opinions mean nothing to us? How? I mean, it makes cute copy that "what it is doing to us" but just what is it doing to us? I want to hear your sociology or psychology or whatever it is.

Whatever happened to the "decent respect to the opinions of Mankind," of which the Founders wrote?

[Corlyss_D]

Remember who we are.

Certainly. I'll be happy to explain it.

We are excessively generous hearted people. We also happen to have brought more prosperity, more freedom, and more democracy to more people than any other nation on the planet. And we did it while in our darker corners lynchings happened on a daily basis. If that cognitive disconnect didn't derange us, I'd like to know what you think the death penalty can possibly do to us as a nation that having a Democratic program of black extermination, while the rest of polite society looked the other way, didn't do to us. And on top of that disconnect, there's the even more stunning disconnect that no matter how bad it got for blacks under Democrats in the past, all was forgiven to the extent that blacks in the 2000 election voted 96% for Gore. So if executions are so damaging to us as a people, how? By making us an object of disapproval by states whose opinions mean nothing to us? How? I mean, it makes cute copy that "what it is doing to us" but just what is it doing to us? I want to hear your sociology or psychology or whatever it is.

Whatever happened to the "decent respect to the opinions of Mankind," of which the Founders wrote?

What happened to "the opinions of Mankind?" When their values are so f**d up, we should adopt the same opinions just so they will think well of us, when they never have unless we're shedding American blood to pull their butts out of one of their arson experiments? Do you adopt your your mother-in-law's view of you as a huge disappointment just so she won't think worse of you? Of course you don't. You ignore it.