Guilty plea in Oregon triple killing
Friday, October 23, 2009 11:35 AM PDT
LA GRANDE (AP) — A self-employed La Grande house painter who told reporters he was responsible for killing three people last summer has pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in a plea agreement that spares him the possibility of the death penalty.
Gregory Alvin Cook pleaded guilty Thursday in Union County Circuit Court to three counts of aggravated murder, plus abuse of a corpse and a firearms count, county District Attorney Timothy Thompson said. The agreement calls for Cook to be sentenced to three consecutive life terms without possibility of parole, plus additional time on the corpse abuse and firearms counts. The prosecutor agreed not to seek the death penalty.
Cook acknowledged killing Shannon McKillop, 51, Frank Scaramuzzi, 50, and Jeremiah Johnston, 28, last July. McKillop died from multiple stab wounds to the neck and trunk, while Scaramuzzi and Johnston were shot to death. Cook told Judge Phillip Mendiguren he has cooperated with investigators and he denied being insane or suicidal, KGW-TV reported.
Formal sentencing is set for Nov. 9.
McKillop’s dismembered body was discovered July 24 in an Elgin pond. The bodies of Scaramuzzi and Johnston were subsequently found in woods north of Elgin.
The 42-year-old Cook said he killed McKillop during a fight and the two men because they were witnesses.
Cook was arrested Aug. 3 in Washington state. As he was being escorted into an Olympia, Wash., jail, he confessed on camera to a KING-TV news crew from Seattle.
He confessed to reporters again later that week as he was returned to La Grande, saying he was ‘‘high on drugs’’ at the time of the killings.
‘‘Methamphetamines were largely responsible,’’ he told reporters. ‘‘It changes who you are as an individual when you’re under the influence of that stuff for days and weeks at a time.’’
The four individuals all knew each other, Thompson said earlier.
Elgin is a town of 1,700 about 20 miles north of La Grande in Eastern Oregon.
