Judge Sentences Terminally Ill Woman to Prison for 2 Murders

A woman who has sickle-cell anemia and says she will die within five years was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years to life in prison for killing her former lover and his new girlfriend.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Judith Ashmann imposed the maximum penalty for second-degree murder on Charisse Lewis, 33.

Lewis originally was charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of her ex-boyfriend, Jewel Purde, 34, with whom she had lived for two years, and Shirley Marie Johnson, 35, both of Panorama City. If found guilty of those charges, Lewis could have received the death penalty.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Baron agreed to allow the defendant to plead guilty to the lesser charge. He said that considering Lewis’ expected life span, she received what amounted to a death sentence. “She will die before she gets out of prison,” he said.

The earliest Lewis could be paroled would be in about 14 years, Baron said.

Treated at Age 9

According to court documents, Lewis first received treatment for sickle-cell anemia, a usually fatal degenerative disease, when she was 9. She told authorities she had suffered two serious heart attacks caused by the disease and would die within five years.

Lewis was arrested last October when she sought treatment for the disease in Chicago, where she had fled after the July 17 killings. Lewis had moved her belongings out of the Panorama City apartment she and Purde shared July 15, authorities said.

She became angered when she saw Purde and Johnson returning from a trip to the grocery store and killed them, police said. Both were shot in the back.

Baron said the weapon used in the killings, a .38-caliber revolver, is believed to have belonged to Purde. The gun was never recovered, he said.

Public Defender Dennis G. Cohen, who defended Lewis, asked the judge for leniency because he said Lewis feared Purde. He said Purde had threatened Lewis with a gun shortly before the slayings.

But Baron called the slayings “cold-blooded murders.”