TX Adventist Faces Jail for Multiple Crimes

[Key Guy]

From The Dallas / Forth Worth Star Telegram

Full text: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/local/16246993.htm

Quote:

It took 20 years for DNA technology to catch up with Juan Segundo and connect him to the rape and slaying of an 11-year-old girl.

It took jurors three hours of deliberation to convict him of capital murder.

[cricket]

Converted or not, he has a sentence to serve.

[Dottie]

How converted was he, truly? If so, he should have confessed to the crimes when he accepted Jesus.

[Key Guy]

Defendant Sentenced to Death

Full story: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/local/16285238.htm

Quote:

FORT WORTH — Juan Meza Segundo, who prosecutors say is a serial killer and rapist, was sentenced to death Wednesday for raping and strangled an 11-year-old girl 20 years ago.

After deliberating about six hours, the panel of five women and seven men recommended that Segundo, 43, receive the death penalty for his crime.

When state District Judge Elizabeth Berry formally sentenced Segundo, he stood stoically next to his defense attorneys and appeared to show no reaction.

To assess the death penalty, jurors had to find that Segundo killed Vanessa Villa intentionally; that he was likely to commit future acts of violence; and that there are no factors in his character or background that would make a life sentence more appropriate.

During his closing argument Wednesday morning, prosecutor Alan Levy called Segundo a sexual serial killer who refined his techniques with each new victim.

After killing Vanessa inside her north Fort Worth house in 1986, Levy reminded jurors, Segundo attempted to rape and strangle two other women inside their homes in 1987 and 1990.

Those women managed to fight him off and get away. Segundo was captured and convicted for those crimes.

By the mid-1990s, Levy suggested, Segundo was no longer entering women’s homes to rape and kill them.

He captured them some other way.

In 1994, Levy said, Segundo raped and strangled Francis Williams, 30, and dumped her body in a bar ditch on Cold Springs Road. The following year, he raped and strangled Maria Navarro, a 32-year-old mother of three from Corpus Chrisi, and dumped her body in Buck Sansom Park.

Both were found nude, or partially nude, with no identification.

“He has refined his technique now,” Levy told the jury. “He’s killing women, getting away with it and leaving their bodies.”

During their final summation, defense attorneys Mark Daniel and Wes Ball did not downplay Segundo’s past but said he was a changed man who deserved a life sentence.

After Segundo was released from prison in 1995 for driving-while-intoxicated conviction, he moved to Keene and became an active member of the Seventh-day Adventist church. He married, developed a strong relationship with his son and became an adoring grandfather to his granddaughter.

He has been a model citizen for five years, they said.

[Stan]

Hopefully he can develop a Ministry in Jail.

The inFamous Hill Street Strangler also did that in prison.

[Jeannieb43]

No kidding, Stan!!??

I'm not sure whether the Hill Street Strangler is the same one I'm thinking of. What city was he in?

There was a HillSIDE Strangler killing women in the night, in Los Angeles in the '70s. Is that the one you're thinking of??

I was newly divorced, living alone, just petrified with fear, because he did his dirty work in the suburbs not far from my house.

I NEVER heard that he'd found religion in prison.