Jesse Matthew Jr., walks out of court after pleading guilty to the abduction and murders of two college students, Hannah Graham and Morgan Harrington, at Albemarle Circuit Court in Charlottesville, Va., Wednesday, March 2, 2016.
Advertisement
The pleas take the death penalty off the table for Matthew, who was already serving three life sentences for the 2005 rape and attempted murder of a woman from India in Fairfax County, Virginia.
An imprisoned former hospital worker pleaded guilty on Wednesday to all charges in the high-profile murder and abduction of two Virginia university students.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci said the agreement ensures public safety and would spare the families renewed suffering that might be caused by a trial and years of appeals. Douglas Ramseur said his client wanted to convey that “he is very sorry for what happened and he loves his family very much”.
“She is a heroine”, Susan Graham said. She also said she misses snuggling on the couch with her daughter and having tea. “She did change the world, but at a bad price”.
Morgan Harrington’s mother, Jill, spoke about the long journey for justice her family had been going through. He said his family has felt the pain of Morgan’s murder “every second of every day in the past six-and-a-half years since that wicked act occurred”.
Harrington’s father, Dan, said he lives in “a world that’s gone gray, flat and devoid of joy”, now that his “beautiful, smart, talented and bright” daughter is gone. At one bar, prosecutors said Matthew took off a woman’s sock and grabbed her foot.
The parents of both Graham and Harrington were in the courtroom when the pleas were entered.
The disappearance of Hannah, a University of Virginia student, in 2014 prompted a national search for Matthew after police publicly identified him as the person last seen with her.
Sources told CBS affiliate WTVR Matthew is expected to plead guilty to first-degree murder and intent to defile in both cases.
Police soon found the surveillance footage of Matthew and Graham together, and he fled the area after being questioned.
Harrington was missing for more than 100 days following an October 17, 2009 Metallica concert at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville.
On Matthew, he added, “He robbed Morgan of her future”.
A bloody T-shirt that Harrington wore was discovered in Charlottesville the next month, and her remains were found on a farm in southern Albemarle County three months later.
“There are no winners here”, Gil Harrington told NBC.
Matthew, 34, is due in court early Wednesday afternoon.
Matthew was expected to go on trial in the summer and would have faced the death penalty. Evidence showed that DNA recovered from the victim’s fingernail was highly likely to belong to Matthew.
Advertisement
The DNA sample linked Matthew to a 2005 sexual assault case in the Fairfax County, which had remained open for nine years.
