RAGHUNANDAN YANDAMURI | Pennsylvania Death Row | First Indian American On Death Row | 2012 Double Murder of Toddler and Grandmother | ALS

Raghunandan Yandamuri. Autographed Letter, Signed. Handwritten, Commercial #10 (4.125 × 9.5 envelope). St Petersburg, FL. Pmk: September 5, 2023. Content unknown. SEALED.

Yandamuri would put the infant in a suitcase where she would suffocate. Yandamuri told police he accidentally dropped the baby, put a handkerchief over her mouth to quiet her and tied a towel around her head. He said he then left the baby – with her dark hair, huge dark eyes and white dress – in a trash-strewn, unused sauna in a basement fitness center and when he returned hours later with milk for her she was unconscious.

Prosecutors said that the man kept the baby in a suitcase in the trunk of his car for days and slashed the elder Venna's throat to the bone.

Raghunandan Yandamuri would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.

Raghunandan Yandamuri, the first Indian American on death row, was not put to death by lethal injection on Feb. 23, his scheduled execution date, as the state of Pennsylvania has a moratorium on the death penalty since 2015.

Pennsylvania District Court Judge Petrese Tucker issued a stay of execution for Yandamuri Jan. 16, based on a request by the killer, who – during court proceedings – told a judge he wanted to die for the crimes he had committed, and asked that the death sentence be imposed upon him. He received two death sentences, which he later appealed but lost last April.

Amy Worden, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, told India-West that another warrant would have to be signed for the execution to proceed. “For now he remains on the capital case unit,” she said.

The Pennsylvania Board of Pardons would have to determine if Yandamuri’s death sentence can be commuted to a life sentence, said Worden.

Sue McNaughton, communications director, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, told PTI in January that the likelihood of Yandamuri being executed is slim. She noted that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has said he would issue a reprieve if a court did not grant the stay.

Pennsylvania has not carried out any executions in the past 20 years. Yandamuri is incarcerated at the Greene State Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

In 2014, Yandamuri was sentenced to die by lethal injection for murdering 10-month-old Saanvi Venna and her 61-year-old grandmother, Satyavathi Venna. A jury deliberated for just three hours before declaring Yandamuri guilty.

After he was arrested in 2012, the killer provided a chilling account of how he entered the Vennas’ apartment while Saanvi’s parents, Venkata and Latha, were at work. He fatally stabbed Satyavathi – who was attempting to protect her granddaughter – before kidnapping the baby, which he hoped to use to obtain $50,000 in ransom from her parents.

Yandamuri and his wife Komali were friends with the Vennas and lived in the same apartment building in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

After kidnapping Saanvi, Yandamuri covered her mouth and stuffed the baby in a suitcase, then left her at a basement gym in the apartment building, where she suffocated to death. During a frantic three-day search by police and the local community, Yandamuri handed out missing baby flyers.

The H-1B tech worker was arrested later that week at a local gambling casino. Earlier India-West stories reported that Yandamuri had accrued $35,000 in gambling debts and had filed for bankruptcy while working in Northern California. His wife Komali was pregnant at the time of the murders. She has returned to India.

• VIDEO: Ransom note leads cops to baby Saanvi's killer in United States | https://youtu.be/fz4ojlE3ZOc

• VIDEO: Death warrant signed for Indian-American | https://youtu.be/ooz28XjfVmE

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