REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- A judge Tuesday sentenced an ex-police officer to die in California's gas chamber for the 1983 cocaine- and prostitution-linked slayings of five women and a man.
Anthony Sully, 42, smiled at one of his attorneys as sheriff's deputies escorted him out of the courtroom. That was in contrast to June 3 when a jury convicted him of six counts of first-degree murder and he reacted in obscenty-shouting rage.
'If he doesn't get a new trial,' defense attorney John Balliet said, 'he would rather be executed than spend the rest of his life in prison.'
Before his sentencing, Sully read a 14-page statement seeking a new trial, blaming his conviction on 'a bunch of sleazy prosecution witnesses, a lot of perjury, a multitude of surprise guilt by inference and character assassination that went beyond the limits of truth.'
'I know I didn't kill these people,' Sully, a former Millbrae police office, insisted.
San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Gerald E. Ragan ordered Sully to death row in San Quentin to await an automatic appeal of the death sentence after denying his 30-minute appeal for a new trial.
Sully testified during the trial that the deaths occurred at his electrical supply warehouse in Burlingame without his knowledge.
Prosecutors alleged that three of the victims were prostitutes killed during cocaine and sex binges. They said the other victims were a drug courier who was robbed and two people who had angered a friend of Sully.
Sully admitted having sex with prostitutes who were handcuffed or tied up while he free-based cocaine.
The jury deliberated only 3 hours on June 18 before recommending Sully be put to death.
The bodies of Michael Thomas, 24, Phyllis Melendez, 20, and Brenda Oakden, 19, were found stuffed in steel barrels in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
Gloria Fravel and Barbara Searcy, both 22, and Kathryn Barrett, 24, were found at different San Mateo County locations.
