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Thread: George Guo Sentenced to Life in Prison in 1988 TX Rape and Murder of Dr. Katherine Bascone

  1. #1
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    George Guo Sentenced to Life in Prison in 1988 TX Rape and Murder of Dr. Katherine Bascone



    Dr. Katherine Bascone





    Texas Man Arrested In Capital Murder Case 30 Years After Attack


    By CBS News

    DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, working with the Highland Park Department of Public Safety, arrested George Guo, 56, for the attack of Dr. Katherine Bascone in June 1988, which is now a capital murder case.

    The DA’s office said Guo sexually assaulted and strangled Dr. Bascone on June 19, 1988 in Highland Park.

    Dr. Bascone was 28 years old when she was attacked.

    Due to her strangulation, Dr. Bascone suffered an anoxic brain injury which left her blind, unable to control her extremities, confined to bed, in need of rehabilitation and needing lifetime assistive/nursing care.

    On February 22, 2018, while in hospice care, Dr. Bascone died of her injuries.

    Guo, a graduate of UT Southwestern Medical School and a former medical doctor, had relocated to the Houston area. The Highland Park Department of Public Safety in conjunction with the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, the Harris District Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Violent Offender Task Force, the Houston Police Department SWAT team, and the Harris County Sheriff’s Department arrested Guo on Wednesday without incident in Houston.

    Guo will be brought back to Dallas County, where he will be booked on a single charge of capital murder.

    Guo, a registered sex offender, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole and is eligible for the death penalty.

    He was convicted in 1991 for a home burglary in Highland Park where he broke into apartment of a 19-year-old SMU student and began to sexually assault her when the police were able to break down the door of the apartment and catch Guo in the act. A licensed medical doctor at the time, police found Guo is possession of a ski mask, military tear gas (mace), screwdrivers, a glass cutter, condoms, and multiple syringes filled with hospital grade sedatives.

    In 1999, in Meadows Place, Texas, a suburb of Houston, Guo was caught breaking into the home where a juvenile female lived with the intent to commit sexual assault. He was convicted of burglary with intent to commit sexual assault and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He was released from prison in 2013.

    http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/06/13/t...l-murder-case/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Wow, this is the first time I've ever seen this demographic and professional mix implicated in this kind of murder.

  3. #3
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Past crimes could come back to haunt murder suspect in Highland Park cold-case rape

    By LaVendrick Smith
    Dallas News

    A Houston man is set to stand trial in September for the death of a woman he's accused of raping decades ago in Highland Park, and prosecutors want to ensure a series of similar crimes are used against him as evidence.

    George Guo faces a capital murder charge in the death of 58-year-old Katherine Bascone, whose death in 2018 resulted from injuries she suffered when she was raped and strangled in her apartment in 1988.

    Guo, 58, is being held in the Dallas County Jail on $7.5 million bail.

    Prosecutors say Guo broke into Bascone's apartment on June 19, 1988, strangled her with the cord from her hairdryer and sexually assaulted her when she lost consciousness. Bascone, a doctor, was 28 at the time.

    The assault happened on Guo's 27th birthday, according to court records. He was also a doctor.

    Bascone suffered a permanent brain injury from the attack, and was left blind and mostly bedridden for the rest of her life.

    She died in Oklahoma in 2018. Highland Park police reopened her case after a medical examiner ruled her death a homicide because of the assault.

    Police arrested Guo in Houston in 2018 after DNA linked him to the 1988 sexual assault. He was suspected in the attack because of his connection to similar assaults.

    On Friday, Guo sat slumped in a chair in a Dallas County courtroom, as prosecutors argued those assaults should be admitted as evidence for his murder trial.

    In one case, Guo was arrested after he attempted to rape a 19-year-old Southern Methodist University student in her apartment in 1990, two years after Bascone's attack. Guo broke into the student’s Highland Park apartment over Thanksgiving weekend, but tried to flee the apartment when police arrived and thwarted the assault.

    Guo pleaded guilty to burglary of a habitation a year later. He served just three months in jail and was released on 10 years' probation soon after, court records show.

    In 1998, he broke into a University of Houston student's home in Fort Bend County and sexually assaulted her. That victim told a judge Friday that, like with Bascone, Guo strangled her with a hairdryer cord during the attack.

    Guo was charged with the 1998 attack a year later after the victim identified him in a photo lineup following another arrest in which he was found lurking near a teen's home in Houston. A photo of that girl was found in his possession when he was arrested, an officer testified Friday.

    In 2002, he pleaded guilty to burglary of a habitation with intent to commit sexual assault for the 1998 attack, according to a motion filed by prosecutors. He served 14 years in prison.

    Prosecutors contend that each of those assaults should be admitted as evidence during Guo's capital murder trial, in addition to a third Highland Park assault that took place in 1986.

    Lead prosecutor Leighton D'Antoni suggested Friday that, in addition to DNA linking Guo to Bascone's assault, there are several similarities between the 1988 crime and the other cases linked to him.

    D'Antoni tried to show that the victims suffered similar injuries, Guo wore similar clothing and gloves in each case, and that he stalked each victim beforehand in every instance.

    In a motion to include the offenses, D'Antoni noted that it's unlikely that three different women would have "the same story of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault, comprised of the same circumstances, and with (Guo) positively identified in all three cases either by DNA evidence" or with Guo later admitting guilt in two cases.

    Brad Lollar, Guo's defense attorney, argued that at least one of the state's witnesses had changed her story over time. He said he wasn't presented with the particular offenses the state wanted admitted as evidence in a timely fashion.

    Judge Ernest White will continue to hear the state's argument for admitting the evidence at another hearing later in August.

    Guo's capital murder trial is scheduled for Sept. 16, court records show.

    https://www.dallasnews.com/news/cour...cold-case-rape
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  4. #4
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
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    Is Creuzot going all the way on this one?
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

  5. #5
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    I don't know I haven't seen that they are seeking the DP.
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #6
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    I should hope they will. Imagine that, being both a doctor and a convicted serial rapist.
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

  7. #7
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    What makes a murderer? Prosecutors argue rape caused injuries that led to victim's death 30 years later

    George Guo, 58, faces a charge of capital murder in the death of 58-year-old Katherine Bascone

    By Sarah Sarder
    Dallas Morning News

    On Monday, a Dallas County jury convened to hear the details of a sexual assault that took place more than 30 years ago. Their task: To decide whether the fatal injuries caused by that attack amount to murder.

    George Guo, 58, faces a charge of capital murder in the death of 58-year-old Katherine Bascone. Bascone died in early 2018, but her death stemmed from injuries sustained decades earlier.

    Bascone was attacked and raped in her Highland Park apartment on June 19, 1988, when she was 28. Her sister found her there, bloodied and bruised, with her head wedged between the mattress and a nightstand.

    The family later learned Bascone had been choked with the cord from a hair dryer, depriving her of oxygen long enough to cause severe brain damage.

    The aspiring doctor, who was about to begin a residency at Tulane University, became blind after the attack. She lost motor functions and was unable to speak, stand or hold up her head.

    Before she died, Bascone developed an infection from sores resulting from her lack of movement and nerve damage that stopped her from moving her arms, her sister said. A medical examiner ruled her death a homicide due to the assault.

    "Her eyes were dilated, her face was battered," Bascone's sister Amy Autrey testified Monday. Autrey was emotional as she read from notes she'd written after finding her sister: "She kept mumbling 'hurt' and my name. She mumbled 'help.'"

    Autrey called her mother and police, moving her sister's head and rubbing her arms. Emergency responders arrived minutes later and an ambulance rushed Bascone to Parkland Memorial Hospital.

    "She was a 'load-and-go,'" one police officer and paramedic who transported her that day said Monday in court. "She was a critical patient who needed intervention, there was nothing on the ambulance that could help her."

    The medic documented her injuries, running out of space on the official report to note all the bruising, scrapes and cuts. On a section with check boxes listing parts of the body that might be injured, the medic ticked "just about everything" on the list, he said.

    Most noticeably, he said, Bascone had prominent ligature marks on her neck indicating she might have been choked. The marks, coupled with her appearance and clothing when they found her, led medics to believe she might have been sexually assaulted.

    They recommended to Parkland staff that Bascone go through a sexual assault examination, which can document evidence of the crime. Years later, DNA evidence from that exam linked Guo to the assault.

    Guo has served jail time for multiple crimes similar to the one involving Bascone.

    In 1990, he was arrested after he attempted to rape a 19-year-old Southern Methodist University student in her apartment. In 1998, he sexually assaulted a University of Houston student in her home and choked her with a hair dryer cord during the attack.

    Guo served three months in jail in the 1990 case, for which he pleaded guilty to burglary of a habitation. The latter case got him 14 years in prison.

    https://www.dallasnews.com/news/cour...0-years-later/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    'It only got worse': Family, caregivers say rape left Highland Park woman in severe pain for decades until death

    Prosecutors argued George Guo murdered Katherine Bascone due to the brain damage his alleged assault caused her

    By Sarah Sarder
    Dallas Morning News

    Near the end of her life, Katherine Bascone's body simply "stopped," one of her caretakers said Tuesday in court.

    "She stopped metabolizing her [feeding] formula," said Michelle Lee, the former nurse manager of an Oklahoma nursing home. "It only got worse."

    During the second day of testimony in a capital murder trial in Dallas County, relatives and medical professionals spoke about Bascone's condition in the days, weeks and years after a brutal 1988 sexual assault in Highland Park.

    A medical examiner ruled her death 30 years after the attack a homicide due to the injuries she had sustained, and prosecutors say that it's enough to secure a murder conviction for 58-year-old George Guo, who has served time for similar cases.

    Bascone suffered severe brain damage after she was raped June 19, 1988, leaving her almost completely immobile. She lost her vision and ability to speak, as well the ability to stand or hold up her head.

    Bascone's father, Anthony Bascone, began to suspect the severity of the damage when he saw his daughter at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Bascone's parents had arrived at her apartment as the 28-year-old was loaded into the ambulance and had no idea how bad her injuries were.

    "What I saw was not very encouraging to me," said Anthony Bascone, who is a radiologist. "She kept mumbling, 'I can't see.'"

    In the days that followed, Katherine Bascone appeared to repeatedly fight something off. One neurologist who treated Bascone said she had hallucinations, believed there was slime on her body and felt like her hands were on fire. Another said she was confused and often combative in the weeks after the attack.

    "We thought it may have been what her last recollection was before she went unconscious," Dr. Kathy A. Toler testified. "She was agitated, she didn't know what happened to her, so she was fighting."

    At first, Bascone seemed sensitive to light and was able to walk with assistance, Toler said. But her condition steadily deteriorated.

    Lee, a former nurse manager at the Maplewood Care Center in Tulsa, laid out in harrowing detail Bascone's last few years at the center, where she died in February 2018.

    Though she couldn't speak, Bascone became agitated when people touched her, Lee said. It took multiple nurse assistants to bathe her, but daily care for her was impossible at times.

    One of her doctors explained Tuesday how spinal cord or brain damage can result in contractions that freeze muscles. Investigators said Bascone's attacker used a hair dryer cord to choke her until she lost consciousness, depriving her brain of oxygen for so long that she lost much of her brain function.

    While at Maplewood, Bascone's arms and legs were stiff and, in some places, frozen in place in contact with each other, Lee said.

    Lee explained the issue in layman's terms for the jurors, comparing it to the pink or red pressure spot that appears when people cross their legs. When people uncross their legs, that spot fades away, she said. But for someone who can't uncross her limbs, the constant pressure leads to the tissue weakening, then dying, then rotting away.

    Lee confirmed for a prosecutor that you could see down to the bone in places.

    "As soon as you walked into the room, she cried," Lee said, breaking down in tears. "You didn't even have to go to her, because she hurt constantly."

    Guo's defense did not have any questions for the day's witnesses.

    https://www.dallasnews.com/news/cour...s-until-death/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  9. #9
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Previous victim testifies against man accused of brutal 1988 Highland Park attack

    By Natalie Solis
    Fox 4 News

    DALLAS - Testimony continued Wednesday in the capital murder trial of a former doctor accused of being a serial rapist and killer.

    George Guo was already a registered sex offender from a 1998 Houston rape.

    Now he’s on trial for the 1988 rape and murder of Katherine Bascone, who lived in Highland Park at the time.

    Prosecutors say she died from her injuries last year, after spending three decades with a severe brain injury.

    Guo spent Wednesday expressionless, with his hands folded, listening to the testimony.

    A woman, who Guo attacked in 1990, recounted how he broke into her off campus apartment when she was a student at SMU.

    “He didn’t belong there,” she said.

    [ATTORNEY: “You had never seen him before?”] “I had never seen him before,” she replied

    The victim recalled arriving back at her University Park apartment on Thanksgiving Day 1990, and seeing an unfamiliar man running down her stairs.

    She said, hours later - after she’d gone to bed - her dog alerted her to an intruder.

    “It was a man and he had a mask on, and he came at me very fast,” she said.

    She managed to call 911, before the man ripped the phone from the wall, sprayed her with tear gas, tied her hands behind her back, and started groping her under her nightgown.

    She testified that he said he wanted money, but after she offered him items of value, and despite seeing police lights outside, he stayed and continued to touch her.

    “He was going to rape me,” she said.

    [ATTORNEY: “Is there any doubt in your mind?”] “There was no doubt in my mind. I was terrified. Absolutely terrified,” she said.

    Responding officers caught him jumping from the balcony, and then searched him.

    “I found a small canister of paralyzer, what’s called a military tear gas,” one officer testified.

    Also found on him, were screwdrivers, a syringe, two needles, and medical grade sedatives.

    Guo served three months of probation for burglary of a habitation.

    Prosecutors are attempting to show jurors Guo’s alleged violent and deviant nature.

    They say that two years before that attack, he beat then 28-year-old Katherine Bascone and strangled her with a cord, depriving her brain of oxygen until she sustained severe brain injuries that left her experiencing hallucinations and seizures, and left her unable to walk and talk for the next 30 years.

    When she died last year at a Tulsa, Oklahoma medical facility, the Tulsa Medical Examiner determined the cause of death was homicide. The district attorney’s office resubmitted DNA evidence, which linked the crime to Guo, who’d already served 14 years for attacking a University of Houston student.

    The medical examiner testified Wednesday that Bascone, without a doubt, died from her injuries in the attack.

    [ATTORNEY: “Is there any evidence, any other concurrent causes that are not linked to her hypoxic brain injuries?] “I could not find another cause,” Tulsa Medical Examiner Dr. Jeremy Shelton said.

    The state is expected to rest its case on Thursday.

    https://www.fox4news.com/news/previo...nd-park-attack
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  10. #10
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Former doctor gets life sentence for brutal 1988 Highland Park attack

    By Fox 4 News

    A former doctor will spend life in prison after he was found guilty of capital murder of a woman in Highland Park in 1988.

    Prosecutors say George Guo left Katherine Bascone permanently disabled after he assaulted her.

    Police said a man entered Bascone’s apartment on and raped her and choked her. The case went cold for 30 years.

    When Bacsone passed away in 2018 from her injuries from the assault, the Dallas County District Attorney's cold case team resubmitted DNA from the crime and got a match for Guo, who was a registered sex offender from a previous conviction.

    In 1988, Guo would have been 27 at the time of the crime and also a doctor.

    https://www.fox4news.com/news/former...nd-park-attack
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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