1998: Jeremy Vargas Sagastegui
1 comment October 13th, 2020 Headsman
On this date in 1998, Jeremy Vargas Sagastegui completed his suicide-by-executioner.
Babysitting on November 19, 1995, for a friend in the small town of Finley, just east of the Tri-Cities, Sagastegui raped and drowned his three-year-old charge Kievan Sarbacher, then awaited the return of Kievan’s mother to shoot her dead too, along with her friend.
As a capper, he stole Melissa Sarbacher’s truck, too — but he wasn’t trying to flee. The next morning when detectives showed up at Sagastegui’s Kennewick apartment, he had his bloody clothes, his rifle, and the stolen vehicle waiting to turn over to them. From that time until he was stretched on a gurney at the Walla Walla penitentiary, he had one steadfast refrain: he wanted the death penalty, as soon as possible.
Sagastegui acted as his own attorney, and put on no defense save to encourage his jurors to end his life. “I killed the kid, I killed the mother and I killed her friend,” he advised them. “And if their friends had come over, I would’ve killed them, too.” He pursued no appeals, and fought off attempts by his mother to make legal interventions on his behalf — her arguments were that he was severely mentally ill, and had been abused as a child — and used the legal capital punishment apparatus to do himself in. There was no final statement.
On this day..
- 1941: Bronislava Poskrebysheva - 2019
- 1762: James Collins, James Whem, and John Kello - 2018
- 1960: Tony Zarba, anti-Castro raider - 2017
- 1871: James Wilson, steely burglar - 2016
- 1909: Francisco Ferrer, martyred teacher - 2015
- 1990: The October 13 Massacre - 2014
- 1944: Six German POWs, for Stalingrad's Dulag-205 - 2013
- 1933: Morris Cohen, medicine-taker - 2012
- 1864: Ranger A.C. Willis, parabolically - 2011
- 1846: William Westwood, aka Jackey Jackey - 2010
- 1815: Joachim Murat, Napoleonic Marshal - 2009
- 1660: Major-General Thomas Harrison, the first of the regicides - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Diminished Capacity,Execution,Lethal Injection,Murder,USA,Volunteers,Washington
Tags: 1990s, 1998, jeremy sagastegui, mental illness, october 13, suicide by executioner
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