12-06-2013, 12:11 PM
(12-06-2013, 11:34 AM)Duchess Wrote: I say that without knowing anything at all about this case other than they murdered their Mom & Dad.
The only two people who really know more than that are Jeffrey Dingham and Robert Dingham. It's just one's word over the other.
Hard to believe that a 14-year-old could be the mastermind behind a plot to murder his parents. Still tough, but a little easier to believe that a 17-year-old could be behind it. So, give the 14-year-old a very sweet deal to help ensure the older teen goes away and never gets out.
Of course, seventeen years later, we're painfully aware through exposure to other cases that 12, 13, 14, 15...year old kids plot and sometimes succeed in murdering family members, without being manipulated by older minds to do so.
I don't know what really happened in that house, but it's uncontested that Jeffrey Dingham was first to shoot his parents. Whether he was the sole shooter depends on whether you believe Jeffrey or Robert.
Here's a little more about the crime and the case; from the NY Times just after the verdicts:
Snip:
The parents' bodies were found wrapped in plastic garbage bags in their home three days after they were killed. Both had been shot several times. (Prosecutors claimed that the boys shot them because they wanted more money from their parents and opposed the rules of the home.)
State prosecutors told the jury that Robert Dingman had persuaded his younger brother to help him steal their father's .22-caliber pistol from a cabinet that was usually locked, so that they could shoot their parents.
Jeffrey was the prosecution's principal witness. He testified that he and his brother both shot each parent, but that the crime was Robert's idea.
Robert's defense lawyers argued that Jeffrey planned the murders because he was doing poorly in school and was afraid of being disciplined. The lawyers said Robert's ''only crime'' was helping clean up after the killings and failing to notify the police.
The Dingman murders provoked comparison in the local press to the 1989 murders by Erik and Lyle Menendez of their wealthy parents in Beverly Hills, Calif. In that case, prosecutors said the brothers killed their parents to inherit the family fortune. The Menendez brothers were sentenced to life in prison.
The Dingman parents left an estate valued at less than $200,000.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/29/us/you...rents.html