by Nathan Natas 12 Replies latest watchtower scandals
http://www.kval.com/news/93705914.html
Looks like the shooter is married to the deceased's ex-wife..........is said to no longer be a jw.......by the shooter's decision or was he da'd?
I doesn't look like it was a JC since he was already "out" but like someone else suggested it was an elders meeting, quarterly.
The victim had a restraining order drawn up in 2002 and cancelled in 2003....
Update with a twist:
Man admits Lowell killing
By Jack Moran
The Register-Guard
Published: Thursday, Feb 17, 2011 05:01AM
A Lowell man on Wednesday admitted to murdering his wife’s ex-husband last May inside a local Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Robert Riley Gonzales, 35, pleaded guilty in Lane County Circuit Court to a charge of murder with a firearm in connection with the fatal shooting of Fall Creek resident Kenneth Henry Mort.
Gonzales also entered guilty pleas to four felony counts of second-degree kidnapping for holding Mort, 47, and three other Kingdom Hall elders hostage inside the Lowell building before the shooting. The Kingdom Hall is a block from the home that Gonzales shared with Mort’s ex-wife.
The motive for the killing remains unclear, although details should become known next Thursday, when Gonzales is scheduled to return to court for sentencing.
Gonzales will spend at least 25 years in prison for murdering Mort. The guilty pleas to the kidnapping charges could lead to additional time behind bars.
Lane County sheriff’s deputies arrested Gonzales about three hours after he shot Mort several times inside the Kingdom Hall on the evening of May 12.
Gonzales fled the area after the shooting, but deputies captured him in the woods about three miles east of Lowell. He has been held in the Lane County Jail since then.
In addition to the murder and kidnapping charges, Gonzales faces new criminal charges that could lead to an even lengthier stay in prison.
Just last week, Lane County prosecutors charged Gonzales with two counts of first-degree sexual abuse and two counts of sodomy for allegedly assaulting two children, one of whom was younger than 12, court documents show.
Under state Measure 11, all of those charges carry mandatory minimum prison terms upon conviction.
It is not known whether the new charges relate to the murder case.
Before being charged with murdering Mort, Gonzales had no criminal record in Oregon. He worked before his arrest as a heavy-equipment operator for a local company.
Mort, meanwhile, co-owned Hitch Pro & Tow on West 11th Avenue in Eugene for about nine years.
Court records show that Mort and his ex-wife were married nearly 17 years before divorcing in 2002. On the same day he filed divorce papers, Mort also filed for a restraining order against Gonzales. In the filings, Mort characterized his eventual killer as the “son of a friend who asked me to befriend him.”
Gonzales married Mort’s ex-wife in about 2005, Gonzales’s brother said during an interview last May with The Register-Guard.
So much for the Kingdom Halls having special protection.
