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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Buddhist Temple Killings (1991), Being Tried Yet Again |
| 2012-01-26 |
| Johnathan Doody was 17 when he was arrested in the August 1991 murders of six monks and three others at a Buddhist temple in the West Valley farming community of Waddell. On Tuesday, Doody, now 37, was back in Maricopa County Superior Court as prosecutors prepare to try him again for the killings that came to be known as the temple murders. The trial judge imposed nine consecutive life sentences. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the conviction, first in 2010, ruling that the confession had been coerced, and again in 2011 after the state asked the court to reconsider. Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, which sent it back to Maricopa County Superior Court for retrial. Prosecutors will retry the case without Doody's confession. The victims' bodies were found Aug. 10, 1991, face down in a circle, and each, six men, two youths and one elderly woman, had been shot in the head several times, execution style. At first, sheriff's investigators pursued four men from Tucson, then stumbled upon Doody and Alessandro Garcia. Garcia, who had committed a murder at a campground in Tonto National Forest, pleaded guilty and testified against Doody. It is generally believed that the murderers slaughtered these nine people on the belief that the temple contained a lot of gold. In fact, the only gold was a tiny amount of gold leaf applied to statues. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |