John Moses Ragin Sentenced to LWOP in 2011 VA Slayings of His Wife and 3 Stepchildren
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John Ragin
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Sgt Crystal Delaine Ragin
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Crystal Ragin, left, stands with her children Rasheed and
Sierra, back from left, and Lakwan, front left, and her
and Ragin's 5-year-old son.
Death penalty on table in quadruple slaying
Commonwealth's Attorney Howard Gwynn said he's considering charging capital murder in case
By Peter Dujardin
NEWPORT NEWS — Newport News' top prosecutor said Tuesday that capital murder charges — which could lead to a death sentence — are being considered for the man accused of killing his wife and three stepchildren last week.
Commonwealth's Attorney Howard Gwynn said the prosecution against John Moses Ragin, 35, of Newport News, "qualifies as a capital case."
So far, Ragin has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder, punishable by up to life in prison. Gwynn said he's still considering whether to pursue it as a capital case, which is punishable by the death penalty.
"That's a decision that has to be made once all the evidence is in," Gwynn said.
He said family members of the victims of the case, including Crystal Ragin's mother and the three slain children's biological father, would be fully involved in any such decision.
"I will talk with them to see how they feel about it," Gwynn said. "We have to go through the process."
There are 15 kinds of cases that could qualify for the death penalty under Virginia law. Those include "the willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing of more than one person as a part of the same act or transaction," and "the willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing of a person under the age of 14 by a person age 21 or older."
After 2 p.m. Friday, Crystal Ragin and her three children — 15-year-old Sierra, 10-year-old Lakwa and 6-year-old Rasheed — were found dead in an apartment on Old Courthouse Way. All four were stabbed and had burn wounds. Sierra was burned beyond recognition, police said.
John Ragin, 36, was arrested Saturday after calling police at 2:30 a.m. Saturday to tell them he was in South Carolina. He is fighting extradition to Newport News, where he faces four first-degree murder charges.
If Gwynn decides to prosecute the case as a death case, would be the first death penalty prosecution in a Newport News case since the federal trial against David Runyon in 2009 in the murder-for-hire slaying of Navy officer Cory Alan Voss.
Gwynn said he's working through the governor's office to have John Ragin extradited back to Virginia.
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Attorney general recommends that Haley send man arrested in SC to VA to face murder charges
South Carolina's attorney general recommends that Gov. Nikki Haley extradite a 36-year-old man arrested in Clarendon County to Virginia to face four murder charges.
A spokesman for Attorney General Alan Wilson says his office recommended Monday that John Moses Ragin be returned to Virginia. Ragin is accused of stabbing to death his wife and her three children, ages 6, 10 and 15. Their bodies were found in their burned Newport News, Va., apartment Aug. 19.
Ragin fought his extradition. He says he is innocent and should be freed.
He was repeatedly reminded at Friday's hearing that it had nothing to do with his guilt or innocence.
Ragin was arrested early Aug. 20 after calling detectives to say he was in Manning. Their 5-year-old son was left at a relative's house.
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Newport News death penalty trial moves forward with jury selection
More than a dozen people were struck Wednesday from a death penalty jury pool putting attorneys one step closer to getting the 16 jurors needed to hear the case.
The potential jurors are being selected for the capital murder trial of John Moses Ragin. Ragin, 38, of Newport News, is charged in the stabbing deaths of his wife, Crystal Ragin, a 32-year-old Army sergeant at Fort Eustis, and her three children Sierra, 15; La'Kwan, 10; and Rasheed, 6.
Jury selection is expected to last through Friday, with the goal of having 12 jurors and 4 alternates seated by next week when opening statements are expected. The potential jurors are only identified by their numbers in an attempt by the court to protect their anonymity.
About 120 witnesses have been subpoenaed to testify in the case, which could last as long as five weeks.
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Ragin was dressed in a blue button-up shirt, tie and black slacks. He stood to face the jury pool as his attorneys introduced him at the beginning of the selection process. He smiled gently, his hands folded in front of him.
Before attorneys began asking the pool questions, Newport News Circuit Judge Timothy S. Fisher read Ragin's charges and the names of the four victims each charge pertained to. As he read, someone in the jury pool whispered, "Jesus."
Ragin is charged with three counts of capital murder, one count of first-degree murder, four counts of unlawful stabbing in the commission of a felony and arson. The capital murder charges each punishable by execution pertain to the deaths of the children.
Police say they were killed overnight between Aug. 18 and 19, 2011, before their apartment on Old Courthouse Way was set on fire. Their bodies were found Aug. 19, all with multiple stab wounds. Sierra was set on fire her body was burned beyond recognition.
There are 125 people in the total jury pool, but they are being summoned to court in smaller groups. Forty appeared in court Wednesday. One by one attorneys questioned them about their views on capital punishment and their backgrounds.
One of the potential jurors had witnessed a friend killed 40 years ago during an armed robbery.
Defense attorney Robert Morecock asked her if she would be able to handle hearing the details of the "brutal" killings. She said yes.
"If I let that incident control me, someone got away with taking two lives," she told him.
Fisher initially was going to keep her in the pool, but excluded her because she later said she had been treated by a doctor because she was suffering from "survivor's guilt" two years ago.
After the woman was questioned, Ragin began weeping silently. He grabbed a tissue to wipe his eyes. One of his attorneys said quietly, "I understand," and gave him another tissue. A few minutes later he asked him if he was OK.
Ragin nodded his head.
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Newport News death penalty trial: Maintenance man testifies he noticed first body
One early August afternoon in 2011, a couple living at a Denbigh apartment complex noticed that their neighbors' windows were blackened with soot, and notified staff at the complex.
Johnny Kennedy, the maintenance supervisor at Forrest Pines Apartments & Town Homes, went to the unit with a property manager to check it out. When they saw the remnants of the fire, Kennedy said, he went around the back to turn off the townhouse's circuit breakers.
"That's when I saw that the patio door was black and kind of open," Kennedy testified on Thursday. He pushed the door open a few more inches, enough to stick his head in.
"And I peeked in and that's when I saw the little boy on the floor," he said.
He immediately called 911.
That little boy, 6-year-old Rasheed Ragin who was dead on the living room floor, covered by a blanket was one of four people found dead in the home that day. Prosecutors assert that John Moses Ragin, 38, killed his wife, Crystal Ragin, an Army sergeant at Fort Eustis, and all three of his stepchildren, then set the townhouse ablaze.
In the first death penalty prosecution in Newport News Circuit Court in 11 years, Ragin faces one count of first-degree murder, three counts of capital murder, arson to an occupied building, and stabbing charges. Thursday was the second day of testimony and evidence.
In the previous weeks, Kennedy testified, he had been to the townhouse twice to fix the air conditioning unit, and had met one of the occupants, John Moses Ragin. On one of those visits, Kennedy said, he saw a young boy and a teenage girl.
Rasheed, who weighed 42 pounds, had been stabbed 27 times, many to the neck, head and torso. Because there were so many wounds on such a small body, some of Rasheed's wounds "were intersecting in the middle of his body," a state medical examiner testified Thursday.
The only child in the home who wasn't killed, according to police, was a 5-year-old boy who was Crystal and John's only biological son together. That boy was with Ragin in South Carolina when he was arrested days later.
After Kennedy's 911 call, police officers and firefighters quickly began arriving at Forrest Pines, a quiet housing complex off of Warwick Boulevard north of Denbigh Boulevard.
Newport News Police Officers J.H. Dunn and Dwight Ruhlen were among the first inside.
The walls were partially covered in soot, Ruhlen testified, and there was an acrid odor. The TV was knocked over in the living room. There was a sofa that was burned down to the wire frame, he said.
"It was clear that something was dramatically wrong," Ruhlen said.
After they saw the boy's body on the living room floor, he said, they saw a girl's charred body in the fetal position against a corner wall in the dining room. That turned out to be Sierra Ragin, 15, who had been stabbed 16 times, then set on fire.
Later, Virginia Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Elizabeth Kinnison said the fatal wounds were to the head and torso. Because soot wasn't found inside her respiratory system, Kinnison said, it appeared the fire began after death.
As the group walked up the stairs, Dunn testified, someone said, "Here's another one." At the top of the stairs, surrounded by lots of blood, was another boy, older than the first.
That turned out to be La'Kwan Ragin, 11. He was stabbed 13 times, with fatal wounds to the neck and back.
The group headed down the hallway, not knowing what to expect, and turned into the master bedroom. Crystal Ragin, 32, an Iraq war veteran, was dead on the bed, stabbed 18 times in the head and torso.
The water was running in the bathroom off the master bedroom, Ruhlen said. The officers then noticed what Ruhlen described as a "full-size" knife sheath on the floor outside that bathroom. The other two bedrooms, one with a children's bunk bed, were also cleared.
Kinnison testified that the wounds on all four victims were extensive, but that they could have lived at least for some time before death.
"None of them had wounds that were necessarily immediately fatal," Kinnison said. "They died quickly, but not necessarily immediately."
On cross examination from Robert Morecock, one of Ragin's lawyers, Kinnison acknowledged that she had no evidence that John Ragin committed the crime.
"I do not know who caused these wounds," Kinnison said, agreeing with Morecock that she didn't know the race, age, height, weight or sex of the assailant or assailants. "I don't know that John Ragin inflicted these wounds."
In response to a follow-up from Newport News Commonwealth's Attorney Howard Gwynn, however, she also said she didn't know that Ragin didn't commit the crime, either.
Investigators believe the killings occurred overnight between Aug. 18 and Aug. 19, 2011.
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Fire marshal testifies in quadruple murder case
A Newport News fire marshal testified Tuesday in the capital murder case against John Ragin.
A representative of the Newport News fire marshal's office described how three of the four bodies were found inside the apartment where Crystal Ragin, a 32-year-old Army sergeant at Fort Eustis, and her three children Sierra, 15; La'Kwan, 11; and Rasheed, 6 were killed in August 2011. Photos of their bodies were shown to the jury.
Testimony also disclosed there were three points of origin for the fire that was set intentionally in the apartment. An accelerant was poured around and on Sierra's body, near the front door of the apartment, and from Sierra's body to a couch.
The fire was described as a smoldering blaze.
A state medical examiner previously testified that the fire was set after Crystal Ragin and three of her children were stabbed to death.
With the trial in its second week, John Ragin is charged with three counts of capital murder and one count of first-degree murder.
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