Death for Christmas Eve Killings

David Lewis Rice was sentenced to death today for beating and stabbing to death the four members of the Charles Goldmark family on Christmas Eve in the mistaken belief that they were Jewish and communists.

Rice, 27, stood quietly and declined to make a statement before receiving the sentence from King County Superior Court Judge Jim Bates. The jobless loner told police after his arrest that he posed as a deliveryman to bluff his way into the Goldmark home with a toy gun in order to gather information about a communist conspiracy in which he believed Goldmark was involved.