Even as a district judge sentenced him to die, Roberto Arguelles appeared controlling to the end.
"I would elect to be executed by firing squad. And I'd rather not have a hood," Arguelles said to 3rd District Judge David S. Young at the capital murder sentencing hearing Friday.Ed Brass, the prison inmate's advisory attorney throughout the three-day penalty phase of the trial, said he interpreted Arguelles' rejection of a black hood as an obvious statement.
"He wants to see it coming. And he wants (the executioners) to see him," Brass said later.
Whether the 35-year-old serial killer will actually receive that request didn't seem to bother the surviving family members of three Salt Lake County teenagers and a West Valley woman who died at his hands.
"We're elated," said Jeff Roberts, whose 15-year-old sister, Tuesday, was abducted with her friend Lisa Martinez, strangled and then buried in a pig farm ditch in 1992.
"This has been a long time coming, and we think the prosecution did a wonderful job. . . . I think we got what we wanted," he said.
Martinez's grandmother, Rose Edwards, attended the proceedings because the victim's mother could not endure it, Edwards said.
"What do you think? She wanted to come here and listen to them talk about what that animal did to her daughter, my granddaughter?" she asked. "No, I came because I have to be strong for her and for the family."
Martinez, 16, was brutally stabbed 43 times with a wood chisel by Arguelles before being buried at the West Salt Lake pig farm.
The killer's death sentence "will help us get on with our lives and help us heal together," said Jennifer Blundell, a sister of Stephanie Blundell, who was 13 at the time of her death.
But Jennifer Blundell said she wanted to know how Arguelles sexually assaulted her sister before he strangled her with her own clothing and buried the body in a remote section of American Fork Canyon.
Although he confessed in April 1996 to all of the killings and led officers to three bodies, Arguelles refused to divulge that information, saying he wanted to spare families further pain.
"It would have helped us in not leaving it up to our imagination as to what he did to her," Jennifer Blundell said.
As the judge delivered his 10-page memorandum decision, he appeared emotional at one point, saying 11 aggravating factors "eclipsed" beyond a reasonable doubt the few mitigating issues that were presented.
Young recounted Arguelles' life of crime, beginning with car and gas thefts at age 15, sexual assaults of four girls in the late 1970s, the four murders in the spring of 1992, including Margo Bond, 42, and sexual assaults on two children later that year.
"The defendant has shown a horrific brutality" and engaged in a "reign of horror and terror," the judge said.
After the hearing, Young left the bench and walked into the courtroom, meeting and talking with tearful family members. He thanked each for his or her courage and wished them the best for the future.
Then Young approached Arguelles, and the two shook hands. Young thanked the inmate for his behavior during the trial. The killer thanked Young for the verdict.
Although he deferred using the term "victory," Deputy District Attorney Richard Hamp said prosecutors fulfilled their role "for the victims."
While family members, prosecutors and even the defendant were satisfied with the verdict, the American Civil Liberties Union was not.
"This was a one-sided battle," said Jensie Anderson, staff attorney for the Salt Lake chapter of the ACLU, on Friday afternoon. "We've been concerned about (Arguelles') decision to not fight the death sentence, and he set it up in such a way that that's what he got."
Arguelles accomplished that by refusing to give the judge the option of sentencing him to life in prison without the possibility of parole - a choice given to killers whose crimes were committed before April 1992.
Brass was also troubled by the outcome.
"I'm most concerned about the integrity of the judicial process, that both sides were not represented," he said. "The thing I take away from this that bothers me is that if someone had paid more attention to him early on in life, maybe we wouldn't be here.
An Aug. 22 execution date was set for Arguelles but was immediately stayed per state law, pending an automatic appeal to the Utah Supreme Court.