Slain teens will be “haunting you” a family member tells him.
After a jury sentenced Paul Devoe to death, the mother of one of his victims – 17-year-old Danielle Hensley – took the witness stand in a Travis County courtroom and told Devoe it would be nice to know if he cared what she and other victims' family members had to say.
"Do you care?" Christina Gribble asked Devoe. Devoe did not react. It could have been the anti-psychotic medication he is taking. Or perhaps Devoe was revealing himself as the cold, callous killer painted earlier in the day by prosecutors, who say he has shown no remorse during and after a six-person, two-state murderous rampage in 2007.
Gribble told Devoe that her daughter and another of his victims, Danielle's friend Haylie Faulkner, 15, will be visiting him in his cell.
"They'll be haunting you," Gribble said. "I have nightmares every night, and I wake up to a nightmare, and Danielle and Haylie will see that yours are worse.
"You ruined my life, and I don't even know you."
Paul Devoe. Autographed Letter, Signed. Handwritten, Commercial #10 (4.125 × 9.5 envelope). N Houston, TX. Pmk: March 8, 2016. Content unknown. SEALED.
Classification: Spree killer
Characteristics: Fit of rage
Number of victims: 6
Date of murders: August 24/25, 2007
Date of arrest: August 27, 2007
Date of birth: August 31, 1963
Victims profile: Michael Allred, 41 / Paula Griffith, 46; Jay Feltner, 48; Haylie Faulkner, 15, and Danielle Hensley, 17 / Betty Jane Dehart, 81
Method of murder: Shooting
Location: Texas/Pennsylvania, USA
Status: Sentenced to death on October 8, 2009
Earlier, the jury that took just 20 minutes to convict Devoe of capital murder for killing Haylie and Danielle took less than 3½ hours to send him to Texas' death row. He will probably be there for years before being executed. District Judge Brenda Kennedy appointed lawyers to represent him during his appeal, which is automatic.
According to published reports, prosecutors in Franklin County, Pa., where Devoe is accused of killing an 81-year-old woman for her car, said they plan to try Devoe. Sam Oatman, district attorney for Burnet County, said he has not made a decision on whether to take Devoe to trial there, where he is charged with murder in the death of bartender Michael Allred, 41.
In Travis County, the comments by Gribble and other family members capped the four-day punishment phase of Devoe's trial.
When Kennedy adjourned court, the raw emotions of the trial gave way to a calm and quiet exhale by the family and friends of Devoe's victims. They hugged each other, hugged prosecutors and even went to the bench to thank Kennedy and into the jury room to thank jurors.
"It's been a long time coming," said Robert Faulkner, Haylie's grandfather. "Maybe we can start working to put this behind us."
Haylie's father, Larry Faulkner, said: "I do take comfort knowing he's not going where our angel went. He's going to hell."
Devoe, 46, grew up in Long Island, N.Y. His family said that he started drinking heavily when he was in his early teens, dropped out of school in about the ninth grade and was prone to violent outbursts from a young age. He dated and then abused a string of women in Long Island. When he was in his 20s, he fired a shotgun at a crowd of teens drinking beer and wrapped a phone cord around the neck of his mother, who promptly took out a protective order against him, according to testimony.
He was in and out of jail and prison in New York from 1980 to 2002, according to his lawyers. While free during that time, he wooed a string of women and fathered four children. But those relationships would inevitably end with Devoe inflicting abuse on the women in fits of drunken rage, according to some of those women and records introduced during the trial.
He moved to the Texas Hill Country in about 2005 and continued a pattern — meeting women, moving in with them, living off them while drinking heavily and then abusing them when they tried to end it, several of those women testified.
In August 2007, he was living with Sharon Wilson at her house in Llano after another relationship went bad. Wilson agreed to let him stay with her in exchange for Devoe doing some construction work on her house, Wilson testified.
But one day when she found him with a gun — something she prohibited — and then suspected Devoe of stealing from her purse and emptying a gas can she had just filled, Wilson told him to leave, she said.
That request sent Devoe into a rage. He shot a gun at the couch, walls and floor of Wilson's house before jumping in her truck and heading for Marble Falls, where he found an ex, Glenda Purcell, at O'Neill's Sports Tavern on Main Street, according to testimony.
He put the gun to Purcell's head and pulled the trigger but it did not go off, Purcell testified. Moments later, he shot bartender Allred in the back of the bar and fled in the truck, witnesses said.
He drove to the house of another ex who lived in Jonestown – Paula Griffith, 46. There he fatally shot Griffith, her daughter Haylie, Danielle, and Griffith's boyfriend, Jay Feltner, 48, prosecutors said.
In a statement read in court by police, Devoe said he then drove to Long Island, stopping along the way to fatally shoot Betty DeHart in Greencastle, PA.
During closing arguments, defense lawyer Tom Weber said, "He knows he did heinous crimes," but noted that in the approximately 14 years that Devoe has spent behind bars in his life, he has not been disciplined for committing violent acts. A sentence of life in prison would protect society, he said.
Prosecutor Gary Cobb called for justice for Devoe's victims: "If you don't know what to do with somebody who killed six people and behaved how he has throughout his life ... if you don't already know what Paul Devoe knows, which is if you do this, you deserve to be executed, there is no way I can ever convince you."
The jury was convinced, deciding with its verdict that Devoe is a continuing threat to society and that there were no mitigating factors to warrant a sentence of life without parole – the combination needed for a death sentence.
Juror Cynthia Monroe said on her way from the courthouse that she chose death based on "his past behavior and past evidence.
"There was no way he was going to stop."i
VIDEO: Paul Devoe Trial Day One | https://youtu.be/Ne70Th9ljFI
VIDEO: Man Accused in Killing Spree Sentenced to Die | https://youtu.be/TjgKJdFkjeQ
VIDEO: Paul Devoe from death row: I deserve to live | https://youtu.be/5Cmn793SfiI
Archiving
Protocol:
Handled with White Gloves ab initio
Photo Pages/Sheet Protectors: Heavyweight Clear Sheet Protectors, Acid Free & Archival Safe, 8.5 × 11, Top Load
White Backing Board—Acid Free
Shipping/Packaging:
Rigid Mailer 9.5 ×
12.5. White, self seal, stay flat, kraft cardboard, no bend. Each
rigid mailer is made of heavy cardboard, which has strong resistance
to bending and tearing. Thicker that the USPS mailers. Shipping cost
never more than it absolutely has to be to get it from me to you.
i Blanco, J. (2009) Paul Devoe | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers, Murderpedia.org. Available at: https://murderpedia.org/male.D/d/devoe-paul.htm (Accessed: 27 July 2023).