Jurors sentence Haskell to death
Panel takes four hours to decide fate of killer convicted in 2014 massacre of ex-wife’s family
Just moments after receiving a death sentence, Ronald Haskell locked eyes with the lone survivor of his shooting spree.
“I hope that when you die, you will get the punishment you deserve from God,” said Cassidy Stay, who was 15 when her former uncle gunned down her family in July 2014 in their Spring home. “Your game is up.”
Cassidy’s emotional victim impact statement capped almost seven weeks of testimony in the execution-style shooting deaths of her mother, father and four younger siblings — a massacre that prosecutors argued was motivated by revenge against Katie Stay, 34, for helping her sister, Haskell’s ex-wife — escape their abusive marriage.
Cassidy, now 20, was the only person to walk out of the bloodsoaked living room, where the Stay family — Katie, Stephen, 39, Bryan, 13, Emily, 9, and Zachary, 4 — died. Rebecca Stay, 7 succumbed to her injuries after a helicopter flight to the hospital.
In late September, the panel rejected an insanity defense and found Haskell guilty of capital murder. They took four hours to deliberate between life in prison without parole or a death sentence.
“Our community has rendered their verdict about what they think about this defendant, whose name I will not repeat, and what they will do when the ultimate crime is committed,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a news briefing after the trial. “They followed the law, they looked at the evidence and they rendered a just verdict.”
This is the first death penalty sentence sought, and won, by Ogg’s office.
“I feel a lot of relief,” Cassidy Stay said, as she stood beside Ogg and was surrounded by members of her large Mormon family, who wore purple in support of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. “I feel like justice is finally going to be served. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Jurors spent almost an hour after the trial speaking with family
members in the courtroom, hugging and crying.
Unfinished plan
Prosecutors revisited the horrific scene on Friday, drilling home assertions that Haskell was a narcissist aiming to hurt anyone who helped his exwife.
During closing arguments, prosecutor Samantha Knecht placed seven spent shell casings on the jury box, calling out the names of each victim. She then lay 21 unspent casings and assigned a name to each bullet, signifying other family members. Knecht wanted jurors to know that these were the other people Haskell intended to kill, had he not been caught. To her, an unfinished plan was enough for a death sentence.
“If not this, then what?” she asked.
Defense attorneys urged jurors to move past their emotions and focus on the facts. They argued that Haskell’s mental health should be a sufficiently mitigating factor to preclude him from a death sentence.
His attorneys had unsuccessfully argued that hallucinatory voices guided him to kill the Stay family so he could reunite with his ex-wife. They claimed he didn’t know his actions were wrong.
Haskell’s defense argued for life in prison, relying on a forensic psychiatrist who testified he had a “very low” probability of committing any future acts of violence.
“We know from the evidence that he’s not a future danger,” defense attorney Neal Davis III said. “You cannot have vengeance as part of your decision.”
Prosecutor Lauren Bard denied those assertions. She called Haskell a “selfish, narcissist, blame-shifting monster,” and cited his previous statements that signaled no remorse and called the children “collateral damage.”
Haskell was determined to kill Katie Stay, the protective sibling who helped Melannie Lyon flee with her four children after more than a decade of physical and emotional abuse, Bard said.
Jurors became intimately familiar with the Haskells’ marriage. Lyon said she stayed in her marriage so long only because her husband threatened to kill her family if she left.
Lyon placed her head against Cassidy’s as Judge George Powell read the verdict.
Cassidy’s last word
During the trial, prosecutors detailed Haskell’s drive from California to Texas through a series of receipts that showed purchases of ammunition and other materials he eventually used in the murders.
He stalked his former inlaws for days and took note of his wife’s family members’ addresses on a hotel writing pad, according to testimony. On July 9, 2014, he knocked on the front door of the Stays’ home on Leaflet Lane, dressed as a FedEx driver and holding a “package.”
Cassidy Stay — home alone with her four siblings — turned Haskell away, but he returned and slipped inside. He held them at gunpoint until parents Katie and Stephen returned home, Cassidy testified, and made them lie face-down on the floor.
Katie struggled with him briefly before Haskell shot all of the family members in the head, Cassidy said. Her youngest brother, Zachary, was shot in the shoulder first — which wasn’t life-threatening — and ran to his already dead father to seek comfort, prosecutor Kaylynn Williford said. Haskell placed the gun to the boy’s head and shot him, according to his autopsy report.
Cassidy, bleeding from her own gunshot wound, called 911 and warned authorities that her uncle might be heading to harm other family members.
Deputies intercepted Haskell as he arrived at the home of his ex-wife’s parents and chased him to a cul-de-sac several miles away, just in front of Lyon’s brother’s house. He surrendered after an hourslong standoff and has remained in custody since.
On Friday, Cassidy told Haskell she was angered he felt no remorse. She was determined to look him in the eye.
“He finally paid attention to someone, and I hope he listened,” she said.