(beating death)
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-beat28.html
Jury convicts dad of whipping girl to death
April 28, 2006
BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter
After flogging his 12-year-old daughter to death with an electrical cable, a somber Larry Slack told investigators he was disgusted with what he'd done. On that point at least, a Cook County jury appeared to agree with the man prosecutors called a "sick and sadistic" tyrant. In less than three hours of deliberating Thursday, the jury convicted Slack, 46, of first-degree murder in the death of Laree Slack on Nov. 11, 2001, at the family's South Side home. "When they showed the autopsy pictures of [Laree's] body after she was dissected, that was enough to really turn your stomach," said juror Tom Sullivan. Slack, sitting with his elbows on the table in front of him and his fingers interlocked, bowed his head when the verdict was read but otherwise displayed no emotion. The jury also found Slack guilty of aggravated battery to a child in the beating of Laree's younger brother, Lester Slack. During closing arguments, prosecutors told jurors that Larry Slack was someone who would inflict pain on a whim and was eager to beat Laree Slack the night she died. "The penalty for crossing this guy -- no matter for what silly thing -- was torture," Cook County assistant state's attorney Ted Lagerwall told the jury. When he beat Laree -- who was tied to a bare metal futon frame and gagged -- he did so "over and over and over again," Lagerwall said. The beating started because Laree and her five siblings had been unable to find a lost credit card. The beating continued because Larry Slack was furious that Laree wouldn't take the beating quietly, prosecutors say. "Ladies and gentleman, that isn't discipline," Lagerwall said. "That isn't corporal punishment. That's murder." Denise Streff, one of Slack's attorneys, argued that what her client had done was wrong, but he isn't a "sadistic killer." "Mr. Slack did not intend to kill his daughter," Streff said. "He knew it was bad . . . but he had no idea Laree wasn't going to get up and be OK." Faces 20 years to life in prison She reminded jurors that Slack was so upset when he realized he'd killed his daughter that he tried to commit suicide. In his videotaped statement to prosecutors played in court Thursday, the corpulent Slack said, "I bought [a knife] for the purposes of killing myself. I hid it under the fat folds of my stomach." But prosecutors asked jurors not to be distracted by the suicide attempt, calling it self-serving. Cook County assistant state's attorney Rick Cenar told jurors they only had to find Slack intended to inflict "great bodily harm" to convict him of first-degree murder. "This was a crime involving torture," Cenar said. "This was a house of pain. This was a house of torture. The king of pain is right over there." Sentencing is set for June 1. He faces 20 years to life in prison, Cenar said. |