A Connecticut man convicted of wiping out an entire family has proven that it pays to – at the least – remember the name of your victims at the sentencing – and especially if the victim is, as in this case, an eight-year-old boy.
CTPost.com reports Russell Peeler Jr. demonstrated this notion when he callously referred to the boy he’d ordered killed in 1999 as, “B.J. whatever,” while addressing Superior Court Judge John Kavanewsky, who was charged at that very moment with sentencing him for killing the boyfriend of the eight-year-old’s mother.
"B.J. whatever?" the exasperated judge reportedly replied in reference to eight-year-old Leroy B.J. Brown. "At the time of your passing, I wish that I could order that your remains be buried in the deepest, darkest place under the prison, because that's what you deserve. B.J. whatever? I wish the memory of Russell Peeler Jr. could be forever purged from our consciousness."
Although Peeler had already been sentenced to death for the 1999 killings of Leroy B.J. Brown and his mother, Karen Clarke, Kavanewsky reportedly hit him with an additional 105 years sentence for having also murdered the boyfriend.
The news agency reports Peeler first and unsuccessfully tried to murder Rudolph Snead in September of 1997, while Snead – a former partner in a shared drug operation – was driving on a highway with two children in his vehicle’s backseat, one of whom was his girlfriend, Karen Clarke’s son, Leroy B.J. Brown.
Almost nine months later, Peeler reportedly again tried to kill Snead, this time successfully in a barber shop.
However, little Leroy B.J. Brown soon identified Peeler as the shooter in the first attempt on Snead’s life, picking him out of a police lineup. Peeler was arrested, but – while free on bail – reportedly ordered Clarke and B.J. murdered by a henchman who then fatally shot them both after knocking on their residence door.
"His cold and calculating attitude toward the taking of multiple human lives, his callous disregard for the safety of others, his contempt for the innocence of childhood and his meticulous planning for the execution of enemies as well as innocents compel this court to impose the maximum consecutive sentence," Senior Assistant State's Attorney Joseph Corradino reportedly said.
For his part, Peeler – while being lead from the courtroom after the “B.J. whatever,” remark, reportedly smirked when he was asked by reporters if he regretted what turned out to be a costly miscue.
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