ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 30, 1996 TAG: 9612020052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WALPOLE, MASS.
SOURCE: Associated Press
John C. Salvi III told the world he wanted to be executed for shooting two abortion clinic workers to death. But Massachusetts has no death penalty, so he was sentenced to prison for life.
Early Friday, Salvi carried out his own death sentence.
Guards found Salvi, 24, under his bed at the state's maximum-security prison with a plastic trash bag from a wastebasket tied around his head. He was alone in his cell and left no note.
In a preliminary report, the state medical examiner said the death was a suicide apparently caused by asphyxiation.
Salvi's death was the final chapter of the violent story that began Dec. 30, 1994, when he walked into two abortion clinics in the Boston area and began shooting with a rifle, killing two receptionists and wounding five others. It was the worst anti-abortion violence in U.S. history.
``He was a bad boy who grew up to be a bad man. God have mercy on his soul,'' said Ruth Nichols. Her daughter, Lee Ann Nichols, was shot 10 times as she begged Salvi for mercy.
``I've always wondered what my daughter's last thoughts were when he killed her. And I wonder what John Salvi's last thoughts were after bringing so much grief, pain and sorrow to so many people,'' Nichols said from her home in North Olmsted, Ohio.
Salvi was sentenced to two consecutive life terms March 18 after jurors rejected claims that he was insane and convicted him of killing Nichols and Shannon Lowney. The daytime shootings happened about 15 minutes apart at clinics on the same street in suburban Brookline.
Salvi was last seen alive during a routine cell check about 5 a.m., said Ronald Duval, superintendent of the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction in Walpole. Prison personnel could not revive him, and he was pronounced dead at 6:55 a.m.
Salvi's mother, Ann Marie Salvi, said her son suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and belonged in a psychiatric hospital, not a prison.
``My young John is gone, but there are others who will suffer in prison instead of a mental hospital where they belong,'' she said from her Naples, Fla., home.
Duval acknowledged that Salvi's mother had expressed concern within the past two weeks about her son's behavior. But Salvi was not under a suicide watch, nor was he receiving mental health treatment.
``There was no indication that Mr. Salvi was mentally ill or in need of intervention,'' said Anthony Carnevale, a Department of Correction spokesman.
Salvi was the sixth state inmate to die at his own hands since July 1995. His lawyers said he twice had tried to commit suicide in jail; authorities have denied it.
During a competency hearing in May 1995, Salvi distributed a rambling statement in which he said he wanted the death penalty if convicted. Previously, he had said he would become a priest if acquitted.
Salvi began his shooting spree at the Planned Parenthood clinic, pulling out a .22-caliber rifle and opening fire. Lowney, 25, was killed and three other people in the waiting room were wounded.
Salvi then drove his pickup truck about two miles to the Preterm Health Services clinic and opened fire again, killing Nichols, 38, and injuring two others.
``This is what you get! You should pray the rosary,'' he screamed as he pumped bullets into Nichols, witnesses testified.
Salvi was arrested the day after the killings after he fired at least 23 shots at the windows and doors of a Norfolk, Va., abortion clinic.
During his trial, Salvi's lawyers acknowledged he had committed the crimes, but said he was driven by insane urges and imaginary voices. They said Salvi, an aspiring hairdresser, was a paranoid schizophrenic who envisioned himself a warrior fighting an anti-Roman-Catholic conspiracy led by the Mafia, Freemasons and the Ku Klux Klan.
Prosecutors argued that Salvi was in control of his senses and deliberately planned his crime. They noted he practiced at a firing range the day before the killings, stocked up on 1,000 deadly hollow-point bullets and cut his hair after the attack to disguise his appearance.
``He was a sad case,'' juror Albert Frey said Friday. ``I don't think the jurors had any feelings for John Salvi. You do feel sorry for his parents.''
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Salvi. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB