PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Two men, one of them a former policeman, were sentenced Monday to death in the gas chamber for the 1980 New Year's Eve execution-style murder of a Phoenix businessman and his mother-in-law.
In ordering the death penalties for Robert CharlesCruz, 34, and former policeman Edward Lonzo McCall Jr., 40, Superior Court Judge Paul LaPrade said their victims 'were put to death by human-like animals.'
The judge said the slayings of William Patrick Redmond, 48, and his mother-in-law, Helen G. Phelps, 70, Lytton, Iowa, were 'senseless, cowardly and wanton.'
McCall and Cruz also were given life sentences without possibility of release for 25 years for conspiracy to commit murder. They were given 21-year sentences on three counts of kidnapping, three counts of armed robbery and one count of burglary with the sentences to be served after the life term.
McCall and Cruz, dressed in suits and handcuffed, watched the proceedings without expression.
McCall stood but Cruz, a former Tempe businessman, remained seated as LaPrade proclaimed, 'You shall suffer the penalty of death to be inflicted by lethal gas under the direction of the Department of Corrections.'
LaPrade said the murders were 'especially heinous, cruel and depraved' because the victims were 'herded about the house' and then bound and gagged and shot in the back of the head.
The judge noted Mrs. Phelps 'most certainly' suffered great pain and was an innocent house guest and Redmond's throat was 'cut right open from ear to ear with a large butcher knife.'
McCall and Cruz were convicted Dec. 10 of killing Redmond and Mrs. Phelps and of attempting to kill Redmond's wife, Marilyn, 47, who survived a gunshot to the head and identified McCall as one of the gunmen.
Prosecuting attorney Joseph Brownlee claimed that Cruz hired McCall and two hit men from Chicago to murder Redmond. He said the slaying occurred because Redmond, co-owner of Graphic Dimensions, a Phoenix printing shop, refused to sell an interest in the business which Cruz wanted to use to 'launder' money from Las Vegas connections.
The two Chicago men, Billy Bracy, 39, and Murray Hooper, 35, are on death row in Illinois for the unreleated slaying of three alleged drug dealers.
Another defendant, Joyce E. Lukezic, 36, wife of Ronald Lukezic, Redmond's business partner, is awaiting trial in the case.
