Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Man, 50, jailed as teen will stay there
Judge cites ‘long, agonizing death’ after store clerk set ablaze in 1984
A month before his 17th birthday, Kevin Nelms joined his older friend for a planned robbery of a West Palm Beach pawnshop. Instead of a gun or a knife, they brought gasoline and a Molotov cocktail.
About 11 a.m. Jan. 4, 1984, the friend, Ontra Jones, dumped a bucket of fuel on Robert Hansen Jr., a parttime employee working out front. Then Nelms tossed a lighted candle stuffed in a beer bottle and set Hansen afire.
Minutes later, police and firefighters responded to the store and Hansen, 59, cried, “Why me? Why me?” and urged them to end his life and his terrible pain. He died 11 hours later in the burn unit of a Miami hospital.
This horror was recalled in a courtroom Thursday as Nelms, now 50, asked for his life-in-prison sentence to be reduced to time already served, or 12,231 days. Circuit
Judge Charles Burton denied Nelms, remarking, “In terms of the victim’s suffering, this is one of the worst cases this court has seen in more than 30 years.”
“It was a particularly heinous and cruel murder,” the judge said, explaining his decision. “The victim suffered a long, painful and agonizing death. Mr. Hansen probably knew he was going to die. And he must have been in such pain and agony in that he begged the first responders to kill him.”
By going forward with a new sentencing request, Nelms had something else to lose: his right to be paroled.
Just before Thursday’s hearing, Burton gave Nelms the opportunity to withdraw his request for a new sentence.
Nelms, however, decided he still wanted a new sentence, effectively giving up his chance of parole. He will be able to have his case reviewed again when he is 75, barring a successful appeal, the judge said.
Nelms and Jones, who was 20 at the time, were convicted of first-degree murder, but their separate juries recommended life in prison rather than the death penalty. Jones, now 54, is still serving his punishment.
But Nelms was entitled to a new sentencing hearing because he was a juvenile at the time of the murder.
It follows a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that mandatory life terms are unconstitutional for juveniles who commit murder. Judges can still impose life terms after holding a new hearing, but life sentences are to be restricted to those few cases where a juvenile’s crime is so heinous and the possibility of rehabilitation is extremely slim.
Assistant State Attorney Terri Skiles argued that Nelms’ case fits that description and should remain in prison for the rest of his life.
After Burton agreed with the prosecutor, Hansen’s granddaughter Sarah Sotelo, expressed relief.
“We’re just elated,” she said in a telephone interview. “We were gearing ourselves up for a loss.”
Sotelo — who was just 3 years old at the time of the killing — joined her mother, Katherine Hansen Kochersperger, and uncle, Robert Hansen III, at an earlier hearing to testify against a reduced sentence. She said it was “cruel” for the family to have to go through another sentencing.
At Nelms’ first sentencing hearing on May 15, 1985, Kochersperger told Circuit Judge Marvin Mounts: “Kevin Nelms deserves to burn in hell, and I feel great satisfaction in the fact that if our criminal justice system doesn’t burn him, then surely God will see to it that he burns for all eternity.”
But Assistant Public Defender Crystal Kim said Nelms today is remorseful and ready to return to society. She argued he has come a long way at the South Bay Correctional Facility, where he participates in a faith and character-based program and teaches younger inmates.
Also, two members of Hansen’s family, a stepdaughter and a stepgranddaughter, supported Nelms’ bid for freedom.
Kim, in a recent court pleading, noted that while Nelms grew up in a violent home where he was neglected and dropped out of high school, he was “not the worst of the worst then, and he is certainly not the worst of the worst now.”
At his trial, defense attorney James Eisenberg argued Nelms had no intention to kill Hansen and was influenced by the older accomplice. Nelms said he was sorry for what happened.
But Burton said Nelms willingly joined in the botched robbery and was not controlled by Jones or faced with peer pressure.
“The defendant was an active, willing and knowing participant,” the judge said. “No murder would have occurred without Nelms throwing the Molotov cocktail and igniting the flames.”
Firefighters arrived less than three minutes later to find Hansen sitting in the doorway, his clothes burned off, his body smoking and the interior of the shop in flames behind him, according to a Sun Sentinel news article published in 1984. The fire on Hansen had apparently extinguished itself.
Hansen, who suffered third-degree burns on more than 90 percent of his body, had recently retired as a longtime West Palm Beach city building inspector before taking a job at the 505 Pawn & Swap Shop on 15th Street.