Death Penalty, Richard Beasley | featured news

A self-styled street preacher was sentenced to death Thursday in the killings of three down-and-out men lured by bogus job offers posted on Craigslist. The jury that convicted Richard Beasley of murder recommended that he face execution. The judge had the option of reducing the sentence to life in prison.

Begging to have jurors spare her son's life, the mother of a triple killer who lured his victims with Craigslist job offers testified Wednesday that he had a troubled childhood and suffered physical and sexual abuse. "I love Richard with all my heart," a teary-eyed Carol Beasley testified during the sentencing phase of the trial of her son, 53-year-old Richard Beasley. He was convicted last week of killing three men and wounding a fourth, all lured with offers of farmhand jobs in southeast Ohio in 2011.