I GUTTED MY SISTER LIKE A FISH...

MONSTERS OF DEATH ROW

WHEN Edward Wycoff stood trial for his devastating crimes in 2009, he didn’t attempt to deny what he’d done.

Instead, this 6ft 5in brute opted to defend himself – and even tried to argue that he had every right to slaughter his own sister and her deeply spiritual husband.

Wycoff even had the gall to cross-examine the Rogers’ grieving children as they were forced to take the stand to describe the awful events that unfolded that night in January 2006 at their home in El Cerrito, California.

Unhinged Wycoff moaned he’d been disappointed when the Rogers hadn’t invited him to family get-togethers around Christmas and Thanksgiving.

He moaned: “I still hate them a little. When someone does that, they hate you. They’re out to destroy you.

“They owed me a life. This has ruined my life – and Julie and Paul owe me for that.’

In a poem, he wrote of Julie: “My sister, I gutted her like a fish.” Wycoff was proud of that fact. Oddly, he also tried to reason with a jury by telling them that the Rogers, who loved the environment, were too “liberal” and “easy” with their children Eric, then 17, Alexander, 15, and Laurel, 12.

After killing Paul, 48, and Julie, 47 – both successful lawyers and university lecturers – Wycoff genuinely believed he’d be able to adopt their kids as his own and give them a better life.

Instead, he made the three siblings orphans.

Details of their father’s demise made a courtroom weep.

MENTAL: Wycoff conducting his own defence at his murder trial

Eric discovered his father lying face down with a knife in his back.

As he held him, his dying father managed to say the words, “I love you, no matter what.”

Through his tears, Eric replied, “I love you too, Papa.”

Then Paul died in his son’s arms.

When Wycoff was eventually sentenced to death in 2009, there was to be no dignified acceptance of his fate.

Insead, he shouted, “Heeeeere’s Edward!” – aping Jack Nicholson in horror film The Shining – before stabbing a bowl in front of him with a pen while laughing.

Judge John Kennedy told him: “I have no doubt that Paul and Julie Rogers weren’t perfect people, because none of us are.

“But you had absolutely no right to end their lives and take them away from their children.

“Your reasons for the murders are a series of petty slights, perceived transgressions and imagined insults.

“You pose a severe danger to society and have shown you are capable of justifying in your own mind the murder of anyone, from family members to strangers.”

As they grew up in Sacramento, Edward and Julie Wycoff could not have been more different.

While Julie excelled at school, Edward suffered with attention deficit disorder. He didn’t appear to develop at an emotional or mental level beyond the age of nine.

Julie graduated from college and went to the University of California, where she met Paul. The couple married in 1979.

Wycoff, meanwhile, stayed at home with his mother and father and got a job as a trucker. Edward – known to friends and family as Ted – was also a compulsive bed-wetter until the age of 24.

The Rogers became upstanding pillars of the community, devoting time to charity and the local community.

They were enthusiastic environmentalists who loved to take their children backpacking in the countryside.

And, despite Wycoff’s claims, the Rogers had embraced him as a family member – even though their friends found him “irritating”.

One, Cara Bowman, said: “Ted managed to kill the two people who loved and cared for him most in the world.”

Wycoff’s mother passed away, followed by his and Julie’s father in 2005. Wycoff continued living at the Citrus Heights family home.

For some reason he became convinced that Julie and Paul were tring to sell the property from underneath him.

This, combined with the party snubs, was enough to send him over the edge.

A plan formed in his mind to simply murder his sister and her husband and end the perceived humiliation.

The operation was planned with military precision.Wycoff had laser eye surgery to better see his prey and bought night vision goggles so he could pull off a pitch-black ambush.

Wearing dark clothes and a motorcycle helmet, he smashed a window on the Rogers’ property and crept in while they slept.

On the night of the murders, Paul had gone into his daughter’s bedroom and kissed her on the cheek while she was talking on the phone.

After she went to bed, her father knocked on her bedroom door and told her goodnight. She smiled and pretended to be asleep.

Mum Julie had been on the sofa, reading and drinking tea. She tucked her daughter into bed and kissed her goodnight.

Their tranquility was shattered in the most heinous way imaginable.

It was young Eric who heard the sound of breaking glass, ushering his sister into his bedroom to hide while he dialled 911. Thankfully, their