CANON CITY – Family members of murdered Mandy Folsom and her two young children, Marissa and Mason, wept as they addressed the judge during a sentencing hearing for a man who pleaded guilty to the killings.
Jaacob Van Winkle, 31, a convicted sex offender pleaded guilty to all 36 charges against him in exchange for a life sentence.
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On Monday, Van Winkle was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences for stabbing and killing 35-year-old Mandy, 9-year-old Marissa and 5-year-old Mason on March 9 in Canon City. Police say Mandy's 16-year-old daughter escaped and ran to a neighbor's for help.
During the Monday sentencing hearing, Mandy's brother Danny Stotler called Van Winkle a "sub-human" with a third-grade mind. Stotler also talked about the horrific details of Mandy's, Marissa's and Mason's killings. They are too horrible to publish.
Mandy's mother told the judge she didn't care about the defendant, calling his actions "pure evil."
"As long as he's gone, locked away, [that] will be fine with me," Dawn Wissel said.
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The plea deal was presented in court on June 30.
Back then, some family members told the judge they agreed with the decision to take the plea deal, saying years of court proceedings would be worse for them and there were no guarantees Van Winkle would be put to death.
"I think the death penalty is suitable, but in Colorado, we don't kill people, and it's not a guarantee," said Dawn. "So if we went for the death penalty, we'd be in court three to five years."
Another side of the family disagreed, telling the judge if any crime deserved the death penalty, this was the one.
"I feel like if he was 300 miles south in Texas, we would be on an escalator to death row, and I think that's appropriate," said Mandy's brother Stotler. "I also think it's appropriate on the other side that our family has an opportunity to heal."
District Attorney Thom LeDoux said the cost of litigation in a death-penalty case was a factor, one of many. He also said Governor John Hickenlooper's decision in the Nathan Dunlap case played a role in his office's move to accept the plea deal.
Dunlap was scheduled to die for killing four people at an Aurora restaurant in 1993. In May, Hickenlooper granted a "temporary reprieve" - a decision that likely means Dunlap won't face execution as long as Hickenlooper is governor.
"We did analysis of cases where the death penalty was sought and the outcome in those cases," LeDoux said. "Took those outcomes into account when deciding whether to accept his [Van Winkle's] plea."
Eric Brown, spokesman for Gov. Hickenlooper, told 9NEWs the death penalty was still an option for district attorneys to pursue and is still the law in Colorado.
Stotler told the judge "my family is broken. It's broken beyond being fixed. It won't be the same without Mandy."
"I respectfully disagree with the outcome that I feel like the death penalty is warranted, but I also agree with my mother to the fact that it will allow healing," Stotler said. "It will allow time. I don't believe it will allow justice."
Van Winkle was previously convicted in Indiana of child molestation and other sex crimes involving girls as young as 5 and 7 in 2004. He failed to register as a sex offender after moving to Canon City.
(KUSA-TV © 2014 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)
