Posted on 02/12/2006 6:07:04 AM PST by bwteim
Teen accused of stabbing mother 111 times pleads guilty
2/10/2006, 2:41 p.m. ET The Associated Press
PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) A 16-year-old boy agreed Friday to serve 22 1/2 to 34 years for murder in the death of his mother, who was found with 111 stab wounds.
Christopher Dankovich pleaded guilty as charged to open murder in Oakland County Circuit Court.
"He didn't want to leave prison in a casket," said Assistant Oakland County Prosecutor Lisa Ortlieb Gorcyca.
Open murder includes first-degree and second-degree murder, and the sentence Dankovich agreed to corresponds to second-degree murder. If convicted of first-degree murder, he would have faced a mandatory life sentence. Dankovich was 15 when his mother, Diane Michele, 50, was found dead in her Rochester Hills home on April 25. The teen was arrested later that day at his family's cabin in St. Helen, more than 100 miles to the north in Roscommon County.
Defense attorney Mitchell Ribitwer said there was never any question that Dankovich had killed his mother, though there were questions regarding his mental health and whether he could be held responsible.
"The family desired that the matter be resolved without a trial," Ribitwer said of Friday's guilty plea. "There's been enough trauma, misery and anguish already."
Dankovich also pleaded guilty Friday to using a computer to commit a crime, a four-year felony. Gorcyca said he had been using his computer to learn how to make a bomb to threaten someone and then killed his mother after she found out what he was doing.
Gorcyca declined to identify the target of the threat.
Sentencing is scheduled for March 6 before Judge John McDonald.
She was an Psychotherapist/Speaker/Teacher/Trainer/Minister?
Well, yeah. What was he going to say..."I didn't do it"? Or "I didn't mean to do it"?
Headline is enough to turn your stomach. The eye stabbing factoid was in another news source. It happened in 2005 April, but the young lad with his lawyer just pleaded guilty to the 22 1/2 - 34 year term a few days ago.
Awwwwwww! Poor little thing. Betcha his mom didn't want to leave home in a casket either.
And hypnotherapist, according to one website. In any event, she died a horrible death.
Regardless of what the mother did in her career, the son did the killing.
From the size of those arms, Chrissy's gonna have a tough time inside.
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
No mention of his father?
Oh, forgot having a father in a boy life don't matter anymore in the U.S.
He'll probably do nearly all of that. Mich. changed its truth in sentencing guidelines a few years ago. Sentence minimums tend to be close to minimum time served.
CC
Very un-PC of you to speak the truth here.
Course not. Besides, as one of these articles emphasizes, the parents had an "amicable" divorce and were very concerned for the "best interests" of their son.
Does this qualify as a "Hate Crime" ?
OK, so he gets out when he's 40. What then? What will we be releasing into society, other than another liberal voter?
Oh, don't be so sure. It sounds like he came from a Republican family.
Why do I think drugs were involved here? Drugs can bring on a schitzophrenic reaction like this.
I just got an email from Teddy Kennedy re-assuring me that this grisly killing doesn't count as a "hate crime" because both mother and son were of the same race.
Whew, that is a relief!
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