On August 15th, 1987, three women -- 63-year-old Ann Morris, her 59-year-old sister, Sally Nicholson and Sally's daughter, Helen, 22 -- were savagely hacked to pieces from the blows of a madman with a hatchet. The sheer mutilation of the corpses was so severe that they were completely beyond recognition, and had to be positively ID'ed through post-mordem testing.
On August 16th, cops spotted one of the victims' car outside a home where one 16-year-old Clinton Bankston, Jr. resided. Immediately arrested on three counts of murder, Bankston watched the charges multiply the next day, when he was also charged with the merciless and grisly stabbings of Glenn and Rachel Sutton.
Our hero's relatives professed no knowledge of his violent tendencies, but Bankston readily confessed to participation in the slaughters, blaming the real evil on an elusive accomplice named "Chris". After months of investigation, cops concluded that he most likely imagined or concocted "Chris" to shift the blame away from himself.
May 12, 1988 (his seventeenth birthday) -- the young hero pleads guilty but mentally ill on five counts of murder. Rescued from Death Row by a state law forbidding execution of killers 16 or younger at the time of their crimes, he is now serving five consecutive life terms.
On August 15th, 1987, three women -- 63-year-old Ann Morris, her 59-year-old sister, Sally Nicholson and Sally's daughter, Helen, 22 -- were savagely hacked to pieces from the blows of a madman with a hatchet. The sheer mutilation of the corpses was so severe that they were completely beyond recognition, and had to be positively ID'ed through post-mordem testing.
On August 16th, cops spotted one of the victims' car outside a home where one 16-year-old Clinton Bankston, Jr. resided. Immediately arrested on three counts of murder, Bankston watched the charges multiply the next day, when he was also charged with the merciless and grisly stabbings of Glenn and Rachel Sutton.
Our hero's relatives professed no knowledge of his violent tendencies, but Bankston readily confessed to participation in the slaughters, blaming the real evil on an elusive accomplice named "Chris". After months of investigation, cops concluded that he most likely imagined or concocted "Chris" to shift the blame away from himself.
May 12, 1988 (his seventeenth birthday) -- the young hero pleads guilty but mentally ill on five counts of murder. Rescued from Death Row by a state law forbidding execution of killers 16 or younger at the time of their crimes, he is now serving five consecutive life terms.
