Who are the Bucks County convicted killers on death row in Pennsylvania
Five people are currently awaiting execution on death penalty sentences connected to murders in Bucks County.
Which death row inmates are connected to Bucks County cases?
Richard Laird, of Bristol Township was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1987 slaying of artist Anthony Milano. Laird and accomplice Frank Chester were first convicted and sentenced in 1989 for abducting the 26-year-old Milano, forcing him into a wooded area near Venice Ashby and then hacking out his throat with a box cutter. The case was the first time in U.S. history that a killer had been sentenced to death for an anti-gay murder. A federal appeals court overturned the convictions and sentences and granted the men retrials citing errors in the first trial. A second Bucks County jury convicted Laird and handed down the death sentence. Chester cut a deal to plead guilty to murder in exchange for a life sentence.
Robert Flor, of Falls, was convicted in 2006 for fatally shooting Newtown Borough Officer Brian Gregg on Sept. 29, 2005 and sentenced to death. Flor had been arrested for a suspected DUI and was taken to St. Mary Medical Center for a blood alcohol test when he took an officer's weapon and started firing, killing Gregg, and wounding another officer and a hospital employee. In 2010 Flor filed a petition to overturn the death sentence, claiming he was intellectually disabled and not eligible for the death penalty; a Bucks County judge rejected the petition, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision in 2021.
Alfonso Sanchez, of Warminster was sentenced to death in 2008 for the 2007 double murder of Lisa Marie Diaz, 27, and Mendez Thomas Jr., 22, at the Bucks Landing apartments on Street Road. Police say Sanchez shot the victims in the head at close range during a dispute over a crack cocaine debt. A third woman was shot but survived. Police said that Sanchez and his accomplices were looking for Thomas because he allegedly owed them money, and were waiting at the apartment when Thomas showed up. Sanchez was retried in 2023 and found guilty again and re-sentenced to death.
Robert Diamond, of Bristol, was convicted in 2009 after pleading guilty to killing two people at the Simon and Schuster warehouse in Bristol on Aug. 1, 2008. Diamond had worked as a forklift driver at Simon and Schuster. He shot Angel Guadalupe, 46, of Falls, and Reginald Woodson, 52, of Willingboro, N.J., during a midday rampage at the warehouse. The state supreme court upheld his death sentence in December 2013 Diamond is the only person sentenced to death by a Bucks County judge acting independently of a jury.
Marcel Johnson, of Bristol Township, was convicted and sentenced to death in the murders of Ebony Talley, 22, who was 5-months pregnant, and her 4-year-old daughter R’Mani Rankins. They were murdered in the Avalon Court Apartments in Bristol Township on Nov. 25, 2013.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Who are Bucks County murderers with death sentences in Pennsylvania
