On this date, August 13, 2019, Thomas Knuff was sentenced to death for fatally stabbing his former prison pen-pal and the man she lived with, then trying to hire a man to set fire to the home that housed their decaying bodies.
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Thomas Knuff brutally stabbed to death his pen pal Regina Capobianco, 50, and her 65-year-old boyfriend John Mann in 2017 after they gave him somewhere to stay when he was released from prison |
Jury recommends death sentence in Parma Heights prison pen-pal double-murders
Updated Jul 23, 2019; Posted Jul 23, 2019
Updated Jul 23, 2019; Posted Jul 23, 2019
By Cory Shaffer, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Jurors on Tuesday recommended that Thomas Knuff be executed for fatally stabbing his former prison pen-pal and the man she lived with, then trying to hire a man to set fire to the home that housed their decaying bodies.
The same jury that last month convicted Knuff of charges including aggravated murder that made him eligible for the death penalty took about three hours to determine that he should pay the ultimate penalty for the April 2017 crime spree that left John Mann and Regina Capobianco dead.
Common Pleas Court Judge Dena Calabrese, who presided over the six-week trial, will sentence Knuff in August. Calabrese can either accept the jury’s recommendation and impose a death sentence on Knuff, or sentence him to life in prison.
Knuff befriended Capobianco through an inmate-to-inmate pen-pal program in the 2000s and moved in with her and Mann on Nelwood Road in Parma Heights in April 2017 when he was released on parole, after serving 15 years for an aggravated robbery conviction.
Capobianco’s felony record meant that she and Knuff could not both stay in the same house, and prosecutors contended at trial that the two got into an argument after Mann chose to keep Capobianco in the house over Knuff. Knuff stabbed her to death and then killed Mann during the argument, prosecutors said.
Capobianco was stabbed six times, and Mann was stabbed 15 times, a pathologist from the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office testified.
Knuff and his lawyers maintained that he acted in self-defense after he stumbled upon Capobianco stabbing Mann. Knuff took the knife from her and tried to tend to Mann, but Capobianco grabbed another knife from the kitchen and attacked Knuff, cutting his finger, his lawyers said. Knuff killed Capobianco in self-defense, and Mann died from the injuries inflicted by Capobianco, his lawyers said.
Knuff sought to cover up the killings because he feared he would go back to prison for a parole violation, even though he acted in self-defense, his lawyers said.
In the weeks that followed, Knuff came up with several different cover stories to explain his injury and why he needed a new place to stay, prosecutors say. He told his girlfriend, Alicia Stoner, that he cut his finger in a bar fight, and told his son that a group of black drug dealers broke into the house and attacked him, Mann and Capobianco. He went to a Medina County hospital when his finger became and infected, and told the nurse that he stabbed two people in self-defense, prosecutors said.
Knuff eventually confided to Stoner that he had killed someone and needed to dispose of a body, and asked her to buy him power tools. He told her that he planned to cut them up like title character from the Showtime serial-killer series “Dexter” so police couldn’t find evidence on their fingertips, prosecutors said. He never made good on the plan.
Stoner, a former prison social worker who met Knuff while he was locked up the in Trumbull County Correctional Facility, pleaded guilty last year to charges that accused her of helping Knuff to dispose of the bodies and was sentenced to probation.
Knuff broke into two beauty stores and stole cash from the registers. He was arrested on June 13, 2017 in the break-ins, more than a week before police knew Mann and Capobianco were dead.
Knuff escalated his cover-up scheme after his arrest. He wrote to Robert De Lugo from jail, asking him in great detail to burn down the house, starting in the bedroom with “the most incriminating s—t,” which prosecutors said was a reference to the decaying bodies of Mann and Capobianco. He also directed Stoner to pay De Lugo and buy materials to help start the fire, prosecutors said.
De Lugo did not follow through with the plan.
While all this occurred, Parma Heights police had still not found the bodies of Capobianco and Mann.
Capobianco’s relatives reported her missing in the days after the killing, but Parma Heights police officers never tried to enter the home. They interviewed Knuff, who lied and said he believed the two had gone to stay with friends in Canton, prosecutors said.
Neighbors called police weeks after the killings to report a smell of rotting meat emanating in the neighborhood, and officers entered the home and found raw meat that had been left on the kitchen table, prosecutors said. Officers assumed the smell came from the meat and disposed of it, then left the house without searching any of the other rooms.
Police eventually went back into the house on June 21, and a detective discovered Capobianco’s skull buried under debris in the bedroom, prosecutors said. Authorities then found Mann’s body within minutes, and launched a homicide investigation.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2019/07/jury-recommends-death-sentence-in-parma-heights-prison-pen-pal-double-murders.html
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| Thomas Knuff |
Parma Heights man convicted in prison pen-pal murders sentenced to death vows ‘it’s not over’
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cuyahoga County Judge on Tuesday imposed the death sentence on a man who stabbed two people in their Parma Heights home and then tried to hire a man to burn their bodies in a failed cover-up in 2017.
Common Pleas Court Judge Deena Calabrese announced her sentence of Thomas Knuff Jr., convicted in the May 2017 killings of John Mann and Regina Copabianco.
Jurors recommended last month that Knuff be executed, and Calabrese accepted their recommendation.
“As a defendant in my courtroom, I’ve never seen someone with as little remorse as you,” she told Knuff.
Knuff, dressed in slacks and a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves exposing his tattooed forearms, vowed that his case was not over.
“When you show emotion and say you’re sorry, they say you’re lying. When you don’t, you’re a psychopath," Knuff said.
Knuff said Cuyahoga County Prosecutors and Parma Heights police officers lied during his trial to secure his conviction, and vowed that they would one day have to answer to those lies.
“I’m going to pursue every avenue to get the truth out,” Knuff said.
Knuff later shook his head and stared at Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Anna Faraglia as she told Calabrese that the prosecutor’s office does not “railroad people."
Faraglia began to tell Knuff that he could stare at her, just like he did during the eight weeks of trial in May, June and July.
Knuff blurted out “because you lied for eight weeks."
Knuff, who also broke into two hair salons before his arrest and plotting a jailbreak after he was taken into custody, became the third person this year to be condemned to death row from a Cuyahoga County courtroom.
Mann’s son Jonathan Mann, who lives in Columbus and did not attend the trial, spoke after Calabrese announced the death sentence. He said he personally had wanted Knuff to die for what he did to his father, and that he deserved no mercy from the court. But the younger Mann told Calabrese he did not want Knuff to be executed, citing the high cost of death-penalty appeals.
“I want you all to hear it from a man who wanted him dead,” he said.
Capobianco’s sister, Toni Bender, told Calabrese that she was glad Knuff was sentenced to the death penalty.
“I hope you die in prison a lonely, lonely man,” she said. “Your death cannot come soon enough for me.”
Knuff befriended Capobianco through an inmate-to-inmate pen-pal program in the 2000s and moved in with her and Mann on Nelwood Road in Parma Heights in April 2017 when he was released on parole, after serving 15 years for an aggravated robbery conviction.
Capobianco’s and Knuff’s convictions meant they could not live with each other while on parole. An argument over which one was going to stay with Mann ensued and escalated until Knuff stabbed them both, prosecutors said.
Capobianco was stabbed six times, and Mann was stabbed 15 times, a pathologist from the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office testified.
Knuff left the pair’s bodies in the bedroom for more than two months, as he concocted a series of lies to conceal his deeds. He then solicited the help of his girlfriend, a former social worker at the state prison where Knuff was housed, and a man named Robert DeLugo to dispose of the bodies.
After police arrested Knuff in break-ins at two beauty salons, Knuff penned a letter from jail to DeLugo asking him to burn the bodies. He directed DeLugo in the letter to go to the bedroom, where “the most incriminating s--t" was, a reference to Mann’s and Capobianco’s bodies, and to use kerosene because it “burns hotter."
DeLugo did not carry out the deed.
Capobianco’s family reported her missing in the days after the killings and police visited the home, but did not try to go inside.
Officers eventually went back into the house on June 21 and a detective discovered Capobianco’s skull buried under debris in the bedroom, prosecutors said. Authorities then found Mann’s body within minutes, and launched a homicide investigation.
Knuff’s lawyers maintained at trial that Knuff walked into the house and discovered Capobianco fatally stabbing Mann, and stabbed her in self-defense when she turned the knife on him. They criticized Parma Heights police’s investigation of the crime.
Knuff sought to cover up the killings because he feared he would go back to prison for a parole violation, even though he acted in self-defense, his lawyers said.
Knuff will be shipped to death row at the at a time when Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has halted executions statewide after a federal judge questioned whether the state’s lethal injection process was constitutional. DeWine ordered a review of the execution process and asked legislators to research a possible alternative method.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2019/08/parma-heights-man-convicted-in-prison-pen-pal-murders-sentenced-to-death-vows-its-not-over.html
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