Man on ‘mission of evil’ found guilty of killing 3
WEST PALM BEACH —The Palm Beach County jury who found a 26-year-old man guilty of a triple murder on Super Bowl Sunday in 2017 will return to court next week to decide whether the killer they convicted should go to Death Row or spend the rest of his life in prison.
Christopher Vasata, of Jupiter, waited about two hours Thursday while jurors deliberated and concluded that he was one of two masked gunmen who barged into a Jupiter backyard party “with guns blazing” on Feb. 5, 2017 and killed three young adults.
Kelli Doherty, 20, of Tequesta, Brandi El-Salhy, 24, of Gainesville, and Sean Henry, 26, of Jupiter, were gathered around a fire pit when they were slaughtered in a barrage of gunfire.
Henry was shot 17 times, ElSalhy had five gunshot wounds, and Doherty four, according to an associate from the county medical examiner’s office.
They had been invited to the 1105 Mohawk Street home of Charles Vorpagel, not to watch the Super Bowl — there was no cable TV at the rental house — but to party on cocaine, marijuana, Ecstasy and beer, Vorpagel told jurors. The 29-year-old also testified that his only job was selling guns and drugs.
Vasata and an accomplice, who prosecutors say was Marcus Steward, 26, embarked on a “mission of evil” underscored by drug sales, weapons dealings and murder plots when they set out to kill. Steward also has been charged and will be tried later. He faces the death penalty too.
The women were unintended victims who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, prosecutors told jurors.
The intended targets were Henry and Vorpagel, she said, and the motive was a feud with rival drug dealers and a debt.
Star witness Vorpagel is serving eight years in federal prison for the weapons and drugs cops found in his Mohawk Street home after the killings.
Vorpagel said Vasata, whom he had known for about six years, had been at his house the night before the slayings to shop for assault rifles but left empty-handed.
Vasata was not an invited guest on the night of the shootings, Vorpagel testified.
Vasata’s defense lawyer argued that her client was actually a peacemaker who had set out that night to defuse a violent feud Vorpagel and Henry were having with an unidentified drug dealer, who she also claimed was a third gunman. Prosecutors did not say there was a third gunman.
“Mr. Vasata did not go to that residence with the intent of committing any violent act at all,” said Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Ramsey.
Detectives found the murder weapons, a rifle and a Glock pistol, at the crime scene and in an Interstate 95 culvert. They matched the bullets that fatally wounded the victims and a magazine clip that Vasata had in his pocket when police caught up with him, prosecutors said.
DNA from the weapons, the getaway car and other crimescene evidence further helped prosecutors cinch the conviction. Vasata was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder with a firearm, one count of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm, felon in possession of a firearm, and grand theft auto.
The panel of 12 jurors is scheduled to return to court next Wednesday and Thursday to consider the death penalty. That requires a unanimous vote.