Gary Lee Sampson

Sampson was sentenced to death again on January 9, 2017.

In 2011, Sampson's death sentence was thrown out due to juror misconduct, and he was scheduled for a second sentencing trial on September 16, 2015. He was again sentenced to death on January 9, 2017.

After Sampson was sentenced to death, his lawyer David Ruhnke said he would appeal. As of May 2015 Sampson remains on death row. In 2011, the death penalty decision was vacated by the US district judge after finding that one of the jurors lied during the screening process; a federal appeals court upheld the decision. Therefore, there was to be another sentencing trial.

A sentencing retrial was first scheduled for February 2015, but was postponed to September 16, 2015. Judge Wolf said that one reason for the delay until September was because Sampson had been transferred to United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners to undergo a mental health evaluation which had an effect of "obstructing his lawyers' efforts to meet with him."

During three days in 2001, Sampson killed three strangers: retiree Philip McCloskey in Marshfield, Massachusetts, college student Jonathan Rizzo in Abington, Massachusetts, and Robert Whitney in Meredith, New Hampshire. He also attempted to kill a fourth victim and stranger: William Gregory, in Vermont. Sampson killed McCloskey and Rizzo after they picked him up hitch-hiking, beating them to death. Shortly after that he strangled Whitney. Sampson pleaded guilty to the three killings on September 9, 2003, and was sentenced to death on December 23, 2003, by a federal jury in Massachusetts. He received the death penalty for the two Massachusetts killings, and a life sentence for the New Hampshire case.

As of 2003, Sampson had been married and divorced five times, and is the father of three children. His first marriage was when he was 17 years old. In 1995, after being released from jail on a theft charge, he moved to Tamworth, New Hampshire, where he met Karen Alexander. In June 1997, Sampson and Alexander were married; she was pregnant by Sampson at the time. Shortly after, he moved to South Carolina with a woman he had recently met, and Alexander filed for divorce that same year. Sampson was arrested in May 1998, and met Amanda Newcomb while jailed. When Newcomb's grandfather posted Sampson's bail, Sampson and Newcomb married in October 1998. By the end of November, Sampson had moved to North Carolina, where he had a relationship with Ricky Carter, a transvestite who recalled him as "angry with the world and having an explosive temper." When Carter kicked him out of their apartment, Sampson met and wooed Karen Anderson in April 2001. Sampson attempted to force Anderson to assist him in his robberies; she refused, and Sampson began his bank robbery spree, robbing five banks in three months.

Sampson was charged in a federal court in Boston, found guilty and, on December 23, 2003, sentenced to death. The jury deliberated for ten hours after hearing six weeks of evidence. Sampson had pleaded guilty, so the jury did not need to decide whether he killed McCloskey and Rizzo, but the jury heard the murders described in graphic detail during the sentencing phase of the trial. Prosecutors portrayed Sampson as a ruthless, calculating killer who preyed on good samaritans. Massachusetts does not have the death penalty, after having abolished capital punishment in 1984. The last time the Commonwealth used the penalty was in 1947. It was the first time anyone in Massachusetts has been sentenced to die under the federal death penalty law. Federal law was changed in 1994 to allow the U.S. Department of Justice to seek the death penalty when a murder is committed during a carjacking or kidnapping.

In July 2001 Sampson carjacked and murdered three people: Philip McCloskey (aged 69 of Taunton, Massachusetts), Jonathan Rizzo (aged 19 of Kingston, Massachusetts), and Robert Whitney (aged 58 of Concord, New Hampshire[1]. The murders took place over the course of a week. Sampson told police that, after McCloskey picked him up hitchhiking, he forced him at knifepoint to drive to a secluded area, where he tied him up with his belt and stabbed him 24 times. He also forced Rizzo to a secluded area, tied him to a tree, gagged him, and killed him.

Gary L. Sampson (born September 29, 1959) is an American murderer who killed three people and was sentenced to death by a federal jury in Massachusetts, United States.