Gary Lee Sampson killed three men in eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the last week of July 2001. Philip McCloskey, 69, of Taunton, died first. Jonathan Rizzo, 19, of Kingston, died a few days later. Robert Whitney, 58, a former Concord city councilor, died on July 30 in Meredith, New Hampshire. The next day Sampson surrendered to Vermont state troopers. Each killing took place on a different day and at a different site, and in each of them Sampson took, or meant to take, the dead man's car.
Massachusetts abolished its death penalty in 1984, so the two Massachusetts killings were prosecuted in federal court under a carjacking statute that allows a death sentence when the crime causes a death. Sampson pleaded guilty and the only question left for juries was whether he should live or die. Two federal juries chose death, the first in 2003 and the second in January 2017. The first sentence was thrown out in 2011 because a juror had lied during jury selection. The second was on appeal when Sampson died in a federal medical center in December 2021. The First Circuit then decided, in February 2022, that the appeal was moot and that it would not vacate the death sentence, a ruling that the United States Attorney in Massachusetts described as the end of the legal process.
Sampson grew up in Abington, a town about 25 miles south of Boston, the Associated Press reported in 2016. In the later phases of the case prosecutors called him a drifter and a career criminal, and his lawyers described a childhood marked by abuse and head injuries. His date of birth has not been made public; he was 57 when the second jury sentenced him in January 2017 and 62 when he died.
What the courts and the press say about his earlier life comes mostly from the penalty trials, where each side had reason to shape it. At the first sentencing his lawyers argued that he had been abused as a child and had bipolar disorder, frontal lobe damage and addiction to drugs and alcohol, the Associated Press reported in 2011. At the second they argued that he had suffered a traumatic brain injury from a series of childhood falls, that he was mentally ill, and that his lifelong difficulty controlling his behavior was rooted in those injuries; they also cited severe dyslexia and antisocial personality disorder. Before the retrial his lawyers submitted a list of 217 mitigating factors, and at closing the jury was asked to weigh 115. They told the jury that the way the killings were carried out showed that there was something wrong with Sampson. Prosecutors answered that the accounts of his childhood were fiction and called the brain-injury claim "the most convenient brain injury you will ever see," the Associated Press reported.
In 2003 a jury that heard the same kind of evidence rejected the mental-illness mitigating factors the defense proposed. The First Circuit, reviewing that verdict in 2007, said the evidence supported the jury's decision to reject them, even though the trial judge had disagreed with the jury on one narrow point about bipolar disorder.
In May, June and July 2001, according to the First Circuit's 2007 opinion, Sampson carried out a series of bank robberies in North Carolina. He then went to Massachusetts, and by the middle of July he was back in the area where he had grown up. Federal prosecutors later used four of the robberies as non-statutory aggravating factors, and the First Circuit described the robberies as individualized evidence of escalating criminality.
On July 23, 2001, the court recorded, Sampson telephoned the FBI's Boston office and offered to surrender. The call was cut off. He waited for officers, but none came for him. In the recorded statements he gave police after his arrest, he said he had hoped to meet agents in Abington and that nobody arrived, WHDH reported. At the second penalty trial the prosecution argued that this frustration set off a violent rage. The defense argued that a damaged brain was the explanation. A recording played to the jury in November 2016, the Associated Press reported, had Sampson saying that he had come back to Abington intending to kill the town's police chief, and that when he could not find him he began to move on foot and by road. What, if anything, he did to look for the chief is not known.
Philip McCloskey was 69 and lived in Taunton. The jury in 2003 found that he was especially vulnerable because of his age and infirmity. His family spoke for him through his son, who attended the trials and who, after the second jury's verdict in 2017, said the family had won the outcome it wanted, whichever way the split went. Little of McCloskey's own life has been made public, and the record that survives is largely the record of how he died.
McCloskey was killed in Marshfield on July 24, 2001, the Justice Department said, and Sampson took his money, the First Circuit recorded in its 2007 opinion. Sampson told investigators that he killed because he did not want a witness.
Jonathan Rizzo was 19 and from Kingston. His father and mother followed the case through nearly twenty years of litigation, and his father spoke to reporters after the 2017 sentencing and again after Sampson's death.
Two days after McCloskey's death, the Associated Press reported in 2003, Sampson turned up at a state park in Plymouth and told an attendant he was going to work for the CIA. The attendant alerted superiors, and police escorted him to the park gates. He was not held.
Rizzo was killed in Abington the following evening. The 2003 jury found substantial planning and premeditation as an aggravating factor in Rizzo's death, and prosecutors argued the same point to the jury in 2016 and 2017. Sampson took Rizzo's car and money and drove north into New Hampshire. Afterward he told investigators that nothing Rizzo might have said or done could have saved him.
Robert Whitney, known as Eli, grew up in Penacook, a village of Concord, in a house across the road from a dairy farm where he milked cows as a boy and young man, his son told the Concord Monitor in 2016. He served on the Concord City Council. He and his wife of more than thirty years ran the family business together, and his son remembered him as a "typical New England Yankee," hard-working, direct, fair, and ready to use his practical skills to help neighbors who needed it. He followed NASCAR and the driver Ricky Craven. He left a wife, a son and a daughter.
Court papers and most early reports called him the caretaker of a property in Meredith; his son said he was a friend of the owner who had been asked to help. Whitney was killed in Meredith on July 30, according to the Associated Press, and Sampson took his car and drove toward Vermont.
The federal jury that sentenced Sampson in 2003 heard about Whitney's death as a non-statutory aggravating factor, and the trial judge admitted the evidence while excluding victim-impact testimony about Whitney. The First Circuit upheld both rulings in 2007. Whitney's death was prosecuted separately by New Hampshire.
On July 31, 2001, in Vermont, Sampson tried to take a car from a driver who escaped unharmed and left Sampson with the vehicle, according to the First Circuit. Later that day he broke into a house near the Killington ski area and called 911, offering to turn himself in for the attempted carjacking and for the bank robberies. In a recording played to the 2016 jury he can be heard saying, "I'm in a lot of trouble," WHDH reported. Vermont state troopers arrested him at the house.
He waived his rights and gave several detailed confessions to Vermont and Massachusetts investigators. In 2003 the Associated Press reported from a prosecution filing that a Vermont sergeant asked whether he knew he was being recorded, that he said he did and was confessing, and that he told officers he was "not a sadist" but "just a sick murderer." Prosecutors said they would also offer DNA and fingerprint evidence.
A federal grand jury in Boston indicted Sampson on October 24, 2001, on two counts of carjacking resulting in death, for the killings of McCloskey and Rizzo. He offered through his lawyers to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life without release. The government rejected the offer and, after a superseding indictment returned to meet the Supreme Court's decision in Ring v. Arizona, served notice that it would seek the death penalty.
Judge Mark L. Wolf of the District of Massachusetts presided. The defense filed motions attacking the constitutionality of the Federal Death Penalty Act, which Wolf rejected in a series of published opinions. Sampson pleaded guilty to both counts in September 2003, the Justice Department said. His lawyer, David Ruhnke, had acknowledged to the court that Sampson committed the killings, and the defense never disputed his responsibility in later proceedings.
A death-qualified jury was seated for a penalty trial that lasted about six weeks, beginning in December 2003. The government asked for death on the basis of statutory aggravating factors that the killings had been committed in an especially cruel and depraved manner, that McCloskey was particularly vulnerable because of his age, and that Rizzo's killing had followed substantial planning and premeditation, and on non-statutory factors including the Whitney killing, the bank robberies, future dangerousness and the killing of witnesses to obstruct justice. The defense argued mental impairment and remorse; the government met the claim of remorse with the evidence about Whitney.
On December 23, 2003, the jury unanimously recommended death on both counts. Judge Wolf imposed the sentences on January 29, 2004. Sampson became the first person sentenced to death under federal law in Massachusetts, the Associated Press noted in 2013. The jury, according to the First Circuit, did not unanimously find that the government had proved two of the non-statutory factors, future dangerousness and the killing to obstruct justice, a point that would matter again in 2015 and 2016.
In June 2004, the Associated Press reported from Nashua, Sampson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the killing of Robert Whitney. The sentence was the mandatory one for that charge, life without parole. He told the court that he took the plea because he was guilty and because prosecutors had agreed to keep him out of New England while he awaited execution. In the courtroom he interrupted the judge to complain about the restraints at his waist and to ask to be returned to the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Some later reports date the plea to 2003; the Justice Department and the Associated Press place it in 2004.
Sampson appealed only the sentence. The First Circuit, in an opinion by Judges Selya, Lynch and Lipez, decided the appeal on May 7, 2007, the first time that court had examined a federal death sentence on appeal. It affirmed. The panel rejected the argument that Ring v. Arizona required aggravating factors to be found by a trial jury and not charged by a grand jury, and the argument that the federal death penalty was arbitrary because it was seldom sought. It rejected claims based on race, geography and the risk of executing the innocent, and the broader claim that the death penalty could never be constitutionally imposed.
On the trial itself, the court found no error in instructions on weighing aggravating and mitigating factors, in the instructions defining the cruelty factor, in the dismissal for cause of six jurors whose views on capital punishment would have substantially impaired their service, or in the admission of photographs and other evidence about the scenes. It also approved the decision to keep a juror, called Juror 109, who had briefly complimented an expert witness on his memory as the witness left the courthouse; the trial court had questioned that juror and the others individually, and the First Circuit found no abuse of discretion. It upheld the exclusion of verdicts in 47 other federal capital cases offered by the defense as mitigation, and it rejected a request for a mistrial over reactions from spectators in the courtroom.
Rehearing en banc was denied. The sentence stood.
After sentencing Sampson was held at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. His litigation continued under 28 U.S.C. section 2255, the federal procedure for challenging a sentence after direct appeals end, which he began in 2009. The prison years also produced evidence that the government would use later. In May 2011, at Terre Haute, Sampson tried to attack a prison worker who was bringing food to his cell, reaching through the opening in the cell door, and a video of the incident was played to the 2016 jury, WHDH reported. The worker testified that Sampson became angry when told that certain special commissary orders were not being delivered.
In the section 2255 proceeding Sampson argued that a juror in the first trial had answered questions dishonestly during jury selection. On October 20, 2011, after proceedings in the district court, Judge Wolf ruled that perjury by a juror had violated Sampson's constitutional right to an impartial jury and vacated the death sentence, the Associated Press reported.
Wolf found that the juror had intentionally and repeatedly given false answers, on her written questionnaire and in the courtroom, to avoid discussing painful experiences. She had not disclosed that her husband had threatened her life, that her marriage had ended because of his substance abuse, or that her daughter had served time in prison for a drug problem. Wolf concluded that there was a high risk that her own history would have influenced her decision on the sentence, and that she would most likely have been excused if she had told the truth. U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said her office would meet with the families and consider every option. Michael Sullivan, who had prosecuted the case, said he was disappointed and still believed Sampson deserved the sentence.
The government appealed. In 2013, in Sampson v. United States, the First Circuit affirmed the decision to vacate the death sentence and ordered a new penalty-phase hearing, though it reached the result on different reasoning than the district court had used. As the district court later put it in 2015, the First Circuit held that the sentence "must be vacated and a new penalty-phase hearing undertaken."
On December 20, 2013, the Associated Press reported that federal prosecutors would again seek the death penalty, rather than accept a sentence of life in prison. Ortiz said her office would ask for a new penalty hearing. A prosecutors' memorandum maintained that the 2003 jury had reached the correct decision. In March 2014 the government filed an amended notice of intent. It repeated the two non-statutory factors that the first jury had not found proved, future dangerousness and killing to obstruct justice, and added evidence of Sampson's conduct in prison from 2004 onward.
The defense moved in 2015 to strike those two factors, arguing that the first jury's failure to find them was an acquittal that barred relitigation under the Double Jeopardy Clause. Judge Wolf denied the motion. In an order dated August 4, 2016, the First Circuit affirmed: the first jury's failure to find the factors was not an acquittal, and the factors had not been essential to the earlier death judgment, so collateral estoppel did not apply. Separately, on October 28, 2015, Wolf denied a group of constitutional challenges to the new penalty proceeding.
The judge who eventually presided at the retrial was Leo T. Sorokin. The CBS Boston report of March 2014 recorded a scheduled retrial date of February 2015, which the defense said it could not meet; jury selection began in the fall of 2016.
The retrial began with opening statements to the jury on November 2, 2016. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Zachary Hafer and Dustin Chao tried the case for the government, with a lawyer from the Justice Department's Capital Case Section. Michael Burt was among the defense lawyers. Sampson's guilt was not in dispute, so the jury was to decide between a sentence of life in prison without release and death, separately for each of the two federal counts.
Over several weeks the jury heard the recorded confessions, a recording of the 911 call, expert testimony on Sampson's brain and mental health, and evidence of his conduct in prison. The prosecution argued that Sampson had planned the killings, that he had killed to leave no witnesses, and that his prison record showed he would remain dangerous. Hafer called the defense accounts of a damaged brain unreliable. The defense argued that the way the killings were carried out pointed to a mind that was broken, and that by confessing and pleading guilty Sampson had accepted responsibility. In closing arguments on January 4, 2017, Burt called the decision before the jury "about as stark and gray a moral question as anybody could ask any human being to decide," the Associated Press reported.
The jury of five women and seven men began deliberating on January 5. After about three days, on January 9, 2017, it sentenced Sampson to death for the killing of Jonathan Rizzo. On the McCloskey count the jurors could not reach a unanimous decision, so the sentence for that killing was life in prison. Sampson, then 57, showed no reaction when the verdict was read, the Associated Press reported. Federal law required the judge to impose the sentence the jury chose.
McCloskey's son said the split verdict was a little disappointing but that it did not change what the family had fought for. The Whitney family, whose loss had been dealt with in New Hampshire, said through Whitney's son that a man could only be put to death once and that the result was satisfactory. He had stayed in touch with the Rizzo and McCloskey families during the trial, and called the relationship a bond built on shared grief.
On February 3, 2017, CBS Boston reported, Judge Sorokin formally imposed the sentence in court. The Rizzo family's father said the families would not have any real solace until the sentence was carried out.
Sampson appealed only the death sentence. He did not challenge his convictions or the life sentences. That appeal was pending when he died on December 21, 2021, at a federal medical center in Springfield, Missouri. The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed the death and did not give a cause. The Associated Press later reported that he had suffered for years from end-stage liver disease. He was 62.
The First Circuit ordered the parties to address the effect of his death. His lawyer, Madeline Cohen, said that the appeal had challenged only the sentence, so the result should be straightforward. The Rizzo family opposed any review that might disturb the convictions; the victim's father spoke of extreme anger and disbelief that the court was considering it.
On February 22, 2022, a panel of Judges Lynch, Thompson and Barron issued a per curiam opinion. All parties agreed that the convictions and life sentence could not, as a matter of law, be vacated. The government argued that the appeal of the death sentence was moot and that the court should not use its discretion to vacate the sentence. The defense asked the court to vacate the death sentence under the doctrine of abatement ab initio, relying on the Fifth Circuit's en banc decision in United States v. Estate of Parsons. The First Circuit held that the appeal was moot, because Sampson's death left no way to give relief to a prevailing party. The defense had offered no argument under United States v. Munsingwear, which governs the vacating of moot judgments, and the court declined to vacate the death sentence in its equitable discretion. The appeal was dismissed. The convictions, the life sentences and the death sentence remained in place.
Rachael Rollins, then the United States Attorney for Massachusetts, named the three men, called their deaths three stolen lives, and said that the ruling definitively ended the legal process and that Sampson remained a convicted serial murderer sentenced to death. She added that court opinions do not erase trauma and pain.
Sampson cannot be executed or released. He died in 2021, and the First Circuit's 2022 decision means that his federal death sentence for the Rizzo killing, his federal life sentence for the McCloskey killing and his New Hampshire life sentence for the Whitney killing were all left standing when he died. No later court proceedings concerning him were reported.
The deaths became, for three families, a legal case that lasted twenty years. They went through the trial of 2003, the reversal in 2011, a second trial in 2016 and 2017, and an appeal that ended only with the defendant's death. After the second trial the families embraced outside the courtroom, CBS Boston reported. Whitney's son described them as a "quasi-family, but not for a great reason." The Rizzo family's response to the appeal after Sampson's death showed how much the repeated proceedings had cost them.
Sampson's responsibility for the three killings was never contested after his confessions and pleas. The disputes concerned why he did it and how he should be sentenced.
Motive was argued two ways at the second trial. Prosecutors said Sampson was angered when the FBI did not take his offer to surrender seriously. The defense said a lifetime of head injuries and mental illness explained his behavior. The 2003 jury rejected the mental-illness mitigating factors, and the second jury's findings on mitigation were not reported in detail.
Accounts differ on some dates and details. Whitney's age is given as 58 in the Justice Department release and the 2003 filing and as 59 in one 2022 report. His role at the Meredith house is given as caretaker in court papers and as a friend of the owner by his son. The New Hampshire plea is dated 2003 in one Concord Monitor report and June 2004 by the Associated Press and the Justice Department. Several reports state the first death sentence as 2003, which is the year of the jury's recommendation; the sentence itself was imposed on January 29, 2004. The spelling Phillip appears in the First Circuit opinion, and Philip in the Justice Department and press reports.
No court or press report attributes any killing other than these three to him.
May to July 2001: bank robberies in North Carolina, later admitted.
July 23, 2001: Sampson calls the FBI's Boston office and offers to surrender; the call is cut off.
July 24, 2001: Philip McCloskey, 69, is killed in Marshfield, Massachusetts.
A few days later: Jonathan Rizzo, 19, is killed in Abington, Massachusetts; Sampson takes his car and drives to New Hampshire.
July 29, 2001: Sampson breaks into a house in Meredith, New Hampshire.
July 30, 2001: Robert Whitney, 58, is killed there.
July 31, 2001: an attempted carjacking in Vermont fails; Sampson calls 911 from a house near Killington and is arrested.
October 24, 2001: federal indictment on two counts of carjacking resulting in death.
September 2003: guilty pleas to both federal counts.
December 23, 2003: jury recommends death on both counts.
January 29, 2004: Judge Wolf sentences Sampson to death.
June 2004: guilty plea to first-degree murder in New Hampshire; life without parole.
May 7, 2007: First Circuit affirms the death sentence.
October 20, 2011: Judge Wolf vacates the death sentence because a juror lied.
2013: First Circuit affirms the vacating of the sentence.
December 2013: prosecutors announce they will seek death again.
August 4, 2016: First Circuit rejects the double jeopardy challenge to the new hearing.
November 2, 2016: second penalty trial opens.
January 9, 2017: jury returns death for the Rizzo killing; deadlocks on McCloskey, so life.
February 3, 2017: Judge Sorokin formally imposes the sentence.
December 21, 2021: Sampson dies at a federal medical center in Springfield, Missouri.
February 22, 2022: First Circuit dismisses the appeal as moot and declines to vacate the death sentence.