Background information for those who do not know:
Curtis Shane Thompson was raised by his JW mom. In 1985 he was arrested and subsequently convicted for four violent rapes in the Seattle area. Thompson served 18 years of a 25-year sentence before his release in 2003.
In 2003, King County prosecutors sought to have him locked away indefinitely at a treatment center for violent sex offenders, but his family and members of the Shoreline congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses said he had embraced the Jehovah's Witness faith and had turned his life around because JW "bible study" was better than psychiatric treatment. He was baptized as one of Jehovah's Witnesses in aq prison bathtub, making him an ordained minister of Jehovah's Witnesses, according to the teachings of the cult. Somehow Thompson's defense convinced a jury of local morons, and Curtis Shane Thompson was released into the community. Within one year he was back in prison.
Curtis Shane Thompson has a younger brother, Drew Richard Thompson, who has been confined to Washington State Penitentiary since 1991 for the murder of Rita Bartschot. He is scheduled for release from prison in 2022.
Jehovah's Witnesses are just like any other religion: a scam and a racket, unable to positively effect people.
So, with that background information, I offer:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www2.seattlepi.com/articles/407058.html
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 · Last updated 1:20 p.m. PT
Called 'devil', 'bogyman," Curtis Thompson sentenced to life BY LEVI PULKKINEN
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
As a child, as children are inclined to be, Debi Byars was afraid of monsters.
She saw bogymen when the lights went out, and turned to her older sisters for the reassurances that would bring her rest.
Those easing words came easy back then, Byars' sister Penny Collingridge said. That was before any of them knew Curtis Thompson, the Seattle serial rapist who killed Byars in 2004.
"There is a bogyman, a man with no human compassion or remorse," Collingridge told King County Superior Court Judge Palmer Robinson on Wednesday, minutes before the judge sentenced Thompson to life in prison without parole.
On May 27, a Seattle jury convicted Thompson, 49, of first-degree murder, finding that he'd strangled and stabbed Byars to death at her Ravenna home. In doing so, jurors essentially guaranteed that Thompson -- who'd already received four life sentences earlier in the year -- would receive yet another life term because of his previous nefarious acts.
Thompson's life story is a litany of often-sexual, always-violent attacks on women.
Convicted on four counts of rape in 1985, Thompson spent 18 years in prison before being freed in 2003 when a jury asked to decide whether he was a sexually violent predator worthy of indefinite confinement found that he was not. The following year -- during a six-day rampage -- the Seattle man killed Byars, raped another woman and tried to sexually assault two women in a University District elevator.
Thompson's bad behavior began well before he was caught raping strangers in 1985, a woman who lived with Thompson's family as a child told Judge Robinson.
Making claims backed by Thompson's own statements during the 2003 hearing, the woman described how Thompson and his cohort attacked her and other young girls in the home. Even then, she said, she knew he would kill.
"I didn't know when, but I did know how -- you loved suffocating us," said the woman, who asked that she not be identified. "My first memories are of you and your brothers. If I had any other memories, you've wiped them away."
Before Wednesday's sentencing hearing, Thompson tried to refuse his seat at the "banquet of consequences" described by Senior Deputy Prosecutor Scott O'Toole. Robinson ordered that he be dragged to the courtroom aboard a low-slung cart designed to keep Thompson restrained.
Once in court, though, Thompson seemed to relish the opportunity, demanding to make a final proclamation of his innocence to the gathered media. The shouted statement that followed was full of obscenities and free of remorse. In all, Thompson offered nothing he hadn't said a dozen times -- essentially, the world has conspired against him -- during his unceasing stream of outbursts since his arrest.
Thompson's wicked words continued sporadically as Byars' family addressed Robinson. After muttering less than civil words to Byars' grown daughter, Thompson appeared flustered when the young woman returned an equally un-publishable response.
Following a chastising from Robinson, Thompson kept his eyes on the counsel table while Byars' family demanded he never be freed.
"The devil exists, and his name is Curtis Thompson," Byars' niece Karrie Collingridge said in a letter read to the court by her mother. "I would have no remorse if he received the death penalty. The world deserves to be free of his evil."
Wednesday's ruling means Thompson has received five life sentences.
As is common, Byars' survivors thanked O'Toole and Robinson. In an unusual move, they also extended their gratitude to Thompson's attorneys, John Hicks and Phillip Tavell, who had the thankless task of defending the hot-tempered felon.
For her part, Penny Collingridge said she'll do her best to forget Thompson and the harm he caused.
"I've tried to forget the carpet cut out because of the blood. I've tried to forget the sadness," she said, speaking through tears. "His story will not go on for me. God will deal with him. I don't have to."
©1996-2009 Seattle Post-Intelligencer