Killer of Gays Gets 30 Years as Judge Criticizes Victims
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DALLAS — A judge says he sentenced an 18-year-old killer to 30 years in prison instead of the maximum life term partly because the two men he shot to death were homosexuals inviting trouble.
“These two guys that got killed wouldn’t have been killed if they hadn’t been cruising the streets picking up teen-age boys,” District Judge Jack Hampton told the Dallas Times Herald in an interview published today.
“I don’t much care for queers cruising the streets picking up teen-age boys,” Hampton said. “I’ve got a teen-age boy.”
Hampton said he rejected a prosecution request to sentence Richard Lee Bednarski to life imprisonment because, in his opinion, Bednarski’s victims were not entirely blameless.
The sentence would have been much stiffer, Hampton said, had the victims been “a couple of housewives out shopping, not hurting anybody.”
“These homosexuals, by running around on weekends picking up teen-age boys, they’re asking for trouble,” Hampton said. “They really are.”
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