THE INCINERATOR
SERIAL killer Anthony Kirkland burned the corpses of those he slaughtered in a bid to ‘purify’ his soul. But it will take more than flames to erase the memories of the callous rapes and murders of the five innocent women he torched...
IF
you’re one of the many people who believe the length of a prison sentence should never be reduced no matter how much ‘good behaviour’ an inmate shows, then you might want to look away now.
In 1987, industrial worker Anthony Kirkland killed his girlfriend Leola Douglas, 27.
He raped and strangled her before setting her body on fire.
It was a crime that shook Hamilton County, Ohio.
When Kirkland pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Just 16 years later, however, Kirkland was a free man.
As of September 2003, he was given a second chance, an opportunity to start making amends for his crimes.
Spree
So how did Kirkland repay the trust of those who deemed it appropriate to free him from incarceration?
He went on a rape and murder spree that claimed another four victims – two of whom were teenagers.
Each one was raped and then engulfed in flames. As he himself told cops: “I can’t control me. Fire purifies. I can’t keep happiness.”
Even after confessing to his crimes, it still proved hard for justice to come his way.
He was first handed a death sentence in 2010, only for that to be overturned.
It took until August last year for him to be placed back on Death Row when Judge Patrick Dinkelacker told him: “If we as people, as believers of law and justice, are going to have the death penalty imposed on the worst of the worst, then if not you, Anthony Kirkland, who?”
Did Kirkland offer an apology? Not at all.
He simply moaned about how little money he had available to him in prison.
Judge Dinkelacker snapped: “It makes me sick to my stomach to have you stand here and talk about your money in prison when we’re talking about 13 and 15-year-old kids that you killed.”
Upon his sentencing, Tanika Crawford – the mother of 15-year-old victim Casonya Crawford – broke down and wept.
She said: “He took a lot of light from us. Casonya was a joy. She honestly was.
“I was thinking on the way here about those chubby cheeks and them big ol’ bright eyes. It’s just hard.”
Kirkland, now 49, is due to be put to death in March next year.
Prosecuting lawyer Joe Deters said: “I’ve now tried four serial killers in my life and, for me, Anthony Kirkland cannot be killed by the state of Ohio soon enough.”
As is the case with many serial killers, Kirkland had suffered a horrific childhood.
His lawyer, Tim Cutcher, told jurors how Kirkland had been physically abused by an alcoholic father for eight years from the age of six, suffering ‘head injuries in repeated beatings’.
Cutcher said: “As the oldest of four children, Kirkland bore the brunt of his temperamental outbursts.”
Cracked
To make matters worse, Kirkland had also suffered several accidents which caused further head injuries, exacerbating his mental trauma.
Aged 17 and working at an industrial container recycling firm, he’d fallen and cracked his skull, resulting in severe memory loss.
In 2004, shortly after he’d left prison, he crashed a motorbike and broke several bones in his face.
A girlfriend at the time described how Kirkland began to suffer horrific headaches and ‘became a completely different person’.
He lost his job, was told to stop going to church and ended up homeless, living in a van.
Kirkland’s first killing was brutal.
And according to Leonard Douglas – Leola Douglas’s twin brother – it was a murder that Kirkland simply went on to ‘re-enact’ four more times.
Speaking recently, Leonard said: “It never should have happened that.
“After what he did to my sister, I feel like he should never have got out of jail.
“He just got a slap on the wrist, then he turned around and did the same thing to four other girls.
“I know how hard it is on the other families – they’ve still got fresh wounds.
“My wounds are old, but they still hurt just as bad.”
Between 2006 and 2009, Kirkland went on to slay Casonya Crawford, 15, Mary Jo Newton, 45, Kimya Rolison, 25, and Esme Kenney, 13.
Esme, the final victim, was raped and murdered while on a short half-mile run around a reservoir close to her home.
Gorgeous
Her mother, Lisa Kenney, recalled how she went searching for her missing daughter that fateful afternoon in March 2009.
She told jurors: “Esme was the baby of the family. She would still come and sleep in my bed every morning.
“She’d been excited. She wanted to go running because the weather was gorgeous.
“She was trying to get me to go around the
reservoir with her. She was like, ‘ Let’s go for a run!’
“I didn’t know how much time passed, but I suddenly sat up and thought, ‘ Oh my God, Esme isn’t back’. I just knew something was wrong.
“I ran across the street barefoot. There was a tree and I saw a big pair of jeans underneath.
“I immediately thought she’d been abducted.”
Police were alerted. A short while later, Kirkland was found nonchalantly sitting under a nearby tree, cradling Esme’s iPad and watch.
The next morning, Esme’s body was found.
When Kirkland was arrested and charged with murder, he soon began to blurt out details of his other atrocities.
Casonya’s gran had called police when the teen didn’t return home from her friend’s house one night in May 2006.
Her body was found in a wooded area, burned beyond all recognition.
Her front teeth had been knocked out.
A month later, police had another body – that of Mary Jo Newton.
She had been set ablaze from the waist down, so detectives did not know whether she had been sexually abused.
In December 2006, Kimya Rolison vanished from home.
Her body wasn’t found until two years later.
Threatened
Again it was badly burned and pathologists also revealed she’d been stabbed through the neck.
Police actually had Kirkland in custody in May 2007 – five months after Kimya’s death – but for completely unrelated reasons.
He spent 115 days in jail after he threatened to kill his 18-month-old son and held a ‘sharp grilling fork’ to his neck, court documents state.
After his release, he was soon arrested once more – this time for offering to pay his friend’s young daughter for sex.
He was hit with a public indecency charge and spent the next 12 months in jail.
The mayhem only continued when he was released.
On March 1, 2009, he broke into a man’s home and repeatedly stabbed him with scissors, according to police documents.
Kirkland wasn’t found until a week later – by which time he’d already murdered Esme.
After many hours of coaxing, Kirkland finally admitted everything.
Speaking about Esme, he said: “Things kinda got out of hand.
“It was an accident – my temper was to blame.”
Even after Kirkland had viciously assaulted her, Esme had tried to barter for her life.
Kirkland added: “She offered me her watch. She was apologetic.
“I know I kicked her and punched her in the stomach.
“I stomped her. I punched her a couple of times.
“Can I take you to where she is?”
Kirkland was handed life sentences for the murders of Kimya and Mary Jo, and given death sentences for the killings of Esme and Casonya.
That’s in spite of his defence lawyer, Rich Wendel, pleading in court: “Judge, you heard testimony that his brain structures were actually different.
“He has evolved differently. His brain became, for a lack of a better term, just not normal any more.”
In the end, it was Hamilton Common Pleas Judge Charles Kubicki who summed up the case best.
Reality
“That was a very, very difficult trial because it was so horrific,” he concluded.
“It’s a case I won’t forget.
“A lot of times you think your imagination is worse than reality – but in this particular case, the reality was way worse than anything your imagination could come up with.”