Killer has hope, after 50 years behind bars
Leon Holston was a convicted killer before he turned 15. Reform school didn’t help him. And within two years hewas on death row, blamed for the deaths of three more Pompano Beach children.
Today, more than 50 years later, Holston has a chance at freedom, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling barring mandatory life sentences for killers who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crimes.
Prosecutors, and the families of the boys
stabbed to death by Holston, are hoping to keep him locked up. Defense lawyers say he’s no longer a threat to society, and that he should only be punished for one murder, not four.
In1966, Holston was convicted of murdering an 11-year-old Pompano Beach boy named Julian Foxworth and sentenced to death. He dodged the electric chair when capital punishment was briefly ruled unconstitutional in the 1970s; his sentence was commuted to life in prison.
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory life sentences for juvenile killers were unconstitutional, regardless of how old the cases were, the court gave new hope to Holston, now 66 and nearly blind.
“I will be arguing that he is no longer a threat,” said Holson’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Rachel Newman.
Foxworth, according to records, was not Holston’s only victim. In the same May 1966 attack that claimed Foxworth’s life, Holston was accused of murdering William White, 13. He told investigators that the two boys were killed by an adult named “Johnny Dollar,” who forced him towatch. But investigators determined that the man never existed.
Defense lawyers at the time argued that Holston was insane.
Third victim
There was a third victim. Holston led police to the body of a third boy, Tally McNeil ,13, according to records and news reports. Mc- Neil was also killed in May 1966. His family reported him missing, but police did not find his body until Holston showed them where he buried it.
McNeil’s family members, some remaining in Pompano Beach and others living in Georgia, said they are hopeful that their voices will be heard and that Holston will never go free.
“He didn’t care about killing my brother,” said Geraldine McNeil, 59, who was 7 when Tally McNeil was killed. “Why should we care about him? He left my brother to rot. Let him rot.”
Tally McNeil was last seen alive riding his bicycle in his Pompano Beach neighborhood. Holston had been watching him that afternoon, Geraldine McNeil said.
Days after her brother disappeared, Geraldine McNeil said she saw Holston in her home, with her brother’s corpse. “I thought my brother was asleep,” she recalled.
She said she pretended to be asleep until Holston left.
In the morning, her parents found Tally McNeil’s bed soiled. Geralding McNeil only told her family about what she had seen after Holston was captured and led investigators to her brother’s body.
At least two of Holston’s victims were sexually molested after he killed them, according to records.
Passage of time
Broward prosecutors said they are researching the conviction and the related allegations against Holston, and based on what’s known at this time, they expect to argue for a life sentence. Judges are permitted to sentence juvenile killers to life, but such punishments cannot be mandatory, as they are with adults.
“We’re in the process of gathering records from a case that’s 50 years old,” said Assistant State Attorney Maria Schneider. “Thingswere different back then.”
Foxworth and White were killed on May 3, 1966. By the end of September that same year, Holston was convicted and on his way to death row.
Prosecutors decided at the time to drop the White and McNeil murders. There’s no record of why that decisionwas made.
“Today, when we drop a case, we have to write a memo saying why,” said Schneider. “If there was a memo in this case, we haven’t been able to find it.”
Prosecutors today routinely pursue cases regardless of whether the defendant is already in prison or even on death row in other cases, Schneider said. That way, if one conviction is overturned, the defendant can remain in prison on the other charges.
Newman said she will try to have Broward Circuit Judge Raag Singhal exclude details about the White and McNeil murders from Holston’s future sentencing hearings.
“If he was not convicted of those crimes, our position will be that the court should not consider them,” she said.
Juvenile conviction
Defense lawyers in 1966 argued that McNeil’s insanity stemmed from sexual abuse he suffered when he was 9 years old.
When he was 14, he was convicted of killing Willie Gene Morss, 5, a boy last seen riding on a go-kart with Holston. Morss’ brother, Jasper, still lives in Broward and said he doesn’t know yet what role he will play in the new sentencing hearing.
After Holston was convicted of killing Willie Gene Morss, he was sentenced as a juvenile to rehabilitation at the Florida Training School for boys, a reform school in the Panhandle region. Hewas released in December 1965 after serving 14 months.
“I don’t understand why they let him go,” said Anna Marie White, whose son was killed alongside Foxworth five months after Holston’s release. White said she, like the McNeils, wants Holston to remain in prison. “He’s not too old to still attack young boys,” she said. “I shed too many tears and had too many nightmares to risk another family having to go through what we did.”
Holston’s next court date is scheduled for April. A timetable for sentencing hearings has not been set.