The Boston Herald
BOSTON, Mass. — The Washington-state prosecutor who locked up Mass. mom-killer Daniel T. Tavares Jr. last week is blasting Massachusetts for its lax oversight of violent ex-cons, who have now killed four innocent people in his Tacoma-based county in the past 14 years.
Fresh off putting away the Somerset-bred Tavares for life in the horrific double-slaying of vibrant young newlyweds, Pierce County Prosecutor Gerald A. Horne told the Herald: “Hopefully, the awful tragedy will move your state’s authorities to act more responsibly in controlling seriously violent criminals, rather than breathing a sigh of relief that an impulsively violent fugitive has taken residence in a distant state.”
In an extensive interview, the all-business Horne, who was elected in 2001, laid out his macabre experience with the Massachusetts criminals who have beaten a path to his state and left four people dead and one wounded since 1994.
“Massachusetts has that reputation for being that revolving door,” said Horne, who also was involved in the murder prosecutions of vicious Rockland biker-gang member Henry Lewis Marshall III and the Vickers brothers of Worcester, remorseless career criminals.
Horne is especially furious that Pierce County officials did not get the same warning about Tavares’ presence in the jurisdiction that was relayed to former Gov. Mitt Romney when he traveled to Washington state during his presidential campaign.
“The concern was well-founded because of reported threats to the former governor and because Tavares fits the description of a ‘homicidal maniac,’ ” said Horne.
“Yet, while showing a concern for the former governor, Mass. authorities showed little or no concern for unaware citizens in Pierce County. They never informed our local sheriff about this dangerous man, nor would they even issue an ‘arrest warrant’ that would be effective in our state,” Horne said.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Vicki Hogan sentenced Tavares, 41, to life in prison without parole for murdering Beverly and Brian Mauck in their home in Graham, Wash., Nov. 17. Tavares agreed to plead guilty in a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty.
Tavares spent 16 years in a Massachusetts prison for killing his mother Ann, 46, in 1991. He was released last July.
After Tavares flew to Seattle in late July, Bay State cops asked Washington authorities to locate him and monitor any white-supremacist activities, but not to contact him. Two arrest warrants issued on Tavares last July by the Worcester District Attorney’s Office did not give law enforcement in Washington state the power to pick him up, FBI officials have said.
Horne is painfully familiar with Bay State ex-cons running amok in his back yard.
Horne said in June 1994, he charged Henry Lewis Marshall III, 34, with aggravated murder for the shooting death of tavern keeper Dennis Griswold, 57, at the 38th Street Pub in Tacoma during an armed robbery.
Marshall, whose stepfather was the notorious Lover’s Lane serial rapist Carl E. Leavitt of Franklin, was a former motorcycle gang member who had been paroled in Massachusetts in January 1994 to serve as an FBI informant. He had been serving a four-to-six-year prison term for the April 1990 nonfatal shooting of a Taunton man, records show.
After he pleaded guilty, Washington prosecutors sought the death penalty for Marshall. But his guilty plea was overturned by the Washington Supreme Judicial Court. Prosecutors later dropped the death penalty request and Marshall pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life without parole. He died in prison in 2005.
The Massachusetts Parole Board and FBI paid Griswold’s survivors $358,000 to settle claims they mishandled Marshall’s release from prison, according to news accounts.
In another case, in January 1998, Horne charged brothers John and Paul Vickers of Worcester for the murder of Brenda M. Bottrell, 24, during an armed robbery, also at Tacoma’s 38th Street Pub.
Bottrell’s fiance, pub bouncer Robert Williamson, 34, was shot in the arm and leg, but survived.
The brothers, who moved to Anderson Island, Wash., where another brother ran a plant nursery, had lengthy criminal records in Massachusetts. Paul Vickers, then 30, had an open warrant for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in Worcester at the time of the robbery, according to news accounts. He had served jail time for assault and burglary convictions, criminal records show.
His brother John was sentenced in July 1993 to five-to-seven years in prison for an armed robbery while masked, said a spokesman for the Worcester DA’s office. They are both serving life in prison for the pub murder.
A spokesman for Massachusetts Public Safety Secretary Kevin M. Burke Friday acknowledged the pain Pierce County has endured at the hands of Bay State ex-cons.
“We express our sympathy to the residents of Pierce County. In each instance it was very tragic,” said Burke spokesman Terrel Harris. “We’re working to repair a system that has some flaws. It was the previous administration. We don’t want to point any fingers at anybody. We just want to fix the system.”