On December 29th, 1998 three men; Jamille Armstrong,18, his brother Warren Hardy, 21, and Warren's friend Kevin Pearson,also 21, went out to a friends' house to drink a combination of three fortified wines called, "Gasoline." Its a combination of Thunderbird, Night Train and Cicso. JA had at
least 24 ounces that night.

 

Next the men went out to catch a Metrotrain (without buying a ticket)  only to be told a few stops later that at 11pm the train service would stop.

 

They detrained at Long Beach Blvd and Wardlow Road in Long beach, CA. Their intent was to get a woman and to get some money for more alcohol.

 

Penny Keprta, 43, had just left her parents' home to buy milk and cereal for their boarders' baby.
She had both her own money and the baby's dad's' food stamps with her.

 

On Wardlow Rd, she and they met up under the 710 LB Frwy overpass.  And in this area the crimes occurred. Penny's body was found about two days later by a CalTrans worker tasked with fixing a broken fence. She was naked, and her body showed signs of a beating. The coroner found that she had been beaten with a four-foot long 1"X2" wooden stake.
One hundred and seventeen marks from that stake were
 found on her body. She apparently had also been stomped with boots and other shoes multiple times.

Fourteen bones were broken, some  shattered into
dozens of pieces. It was also discovered that she had been raped  both by the  men and by the wooden stake.

 

 

The charges against JA were:
Robbery
Kidnapping
Kidnapping for the purpose of rape
Rape
Rape in concert
Rape with a foreign object (wooden stake)
Rape w/ a foreign object (wooden stake) in concert
Torture
Murder, 2nd degree
Murder, 1st degree
Murder, 1st degree/with special circumstances

JA was found guilty of:
Robbery
Kidnapping for the purpose of rape
Rape
Rape in concert
Rape with a foreign object (wooden stake)
Rape w/ a foreign object (wooden stake) in concert
Torture
Murder, 1st degree w/special circumstances

 

Here is what was agreed to as the way the evenings activities actually happened:

The three men (measuring 6'; 6' 2"; and 5' 9",
 respectively) saw the woman (5ft.,  2in.) across the street (Wardlow Rd.) and crossed the street to encircle her.

She was struck, then  dragged or chased into a wooded triangle of Eucaliptus trees at LB Blvd. and Wardlow. There they knocked her down and held her while she was searched for money.  She was hit with fists and stomped with boots to her face, head, and neck. She was then dragged behind the closed buildings and her food stamps were torn out of their booklet
which was found there.

 

Next she was picked up, and while one man pulled down a section of a six-foot chain link fence,  the other two men tossed her over it. She landed in a four-foot wide cement drainage ditch headfirst, causing a 2X3 foot blood stain.

Next she was dragged about 160 feet to a leafy area where
she was stripped and raped, and even bitten on her thighs and
 shoulders.  While this was happening a smaller, mesh fence
 was knocked into, breaking off one of the 5 foot long
 wooden stakes holding it up. Still alive, the three men raped her again.  This time with the stake. They described it as churning up  a batch of butter.

 

They began beating her with the stake with the intent to kill. So many blows that the Coroner was not able to  identify which of the many blows was the one that killed her. Then they lit their cigarette lighters and watched her face as bloody bubbles kept coming out of her mouth and nose. When that stopped and her eyes looked different,  they used her clothes as handles to try to move her body to a more hidden place, but the body broke
free and tumbled half-way down the freeway's embankment.

They took her clothes and the stake and left the scene.At a bus stop they threw the clothes in a trash can.At another place they put the stake in a large trash dumpster. To avoid discovery, they disposed of some of the bloodier shoes and clothes, then inexplicably began to tell people about what they'd done!

 

Kevin Pearson told his younger brother, Henry,  that the body
the TV news was talking about was his kill. Then, when the 13 year-old said something about it in front of Jamille Armstrong, Jamille Armstrong asked, "How did he know?" (And under the law that was a form of confession.)

Then Jamille Armsrong told the mother of his baby that he was involved but only in the robbery, not the rape. Then she called him and grilled him and he told her many details of the incident.
He told her that they planned to "Killer Bitch Connect" right from the start...a rap reference to killing and
raping a woman, even yelling it as they crossed the
street to confront Penny.

 

The clothing recovered from three searches yielded a shirt with Jamille Armstrong's semen and Penny's blood, backing up the story that he didn't think he could get sick if he didn't finish inside her body.

Jamille Armstrong's huge gang-style levi overalls had blood all around the knees and below area backing up the testimony
that JA held Penny's arms while he sat around her head and put his legs over her chest, not only pinning her down but also kicking her in the chest and stomach from time to time if she struggled during the rapes. After they leave JA uses some of the cash to buy cigars. The food stamps are traced to a purchase by one of the other of the men and are recovered. The food stamp booklet and the food stamps have the fingerprints of Kevin Person on them.

 

Besides the coroner, a medical examiner, several
detectives and the Cal-trans worker, a couple of friends that
the men talked to also testified. The defendant's
own mother and the mother of his baby also testified
for the DA.

A couple of store clerks testified about the cigar
and the food stamps as well as the Metrolink
train driver who told them they had to get off.

Now this part involves Jamille's version of events.

JA and WH and KP were walking out with Chris who
left them to go home.(i) They tried to catch the Metrolink
but missed it and walked north on LB Blvd till it came by.
They rode it (free) till 11pm when it stopped at Wardlow
station. They headed toward a bus stop to go to L.A.
and see WH's baby's mom who had girls waiting for them.(ii)
But they were also on the lookout for someone who
would buy them some liquor.

Under the overpass they heard a person scream, "I
hope you all die, Niggers!"(iii)
One of them, KP, went and saw it was a woman and the
other two followed.
WH asked her for sex for all three for $50 and she led
them to the leafy area and gave them the finger with
both hands.(iv)
KP hit her then ordered WH and JA to hold her so he
could search for her money.
He couldn't find money but figured it was under her clothes
so he ordered the others to help him strip her.(v)
KP hit her for hiding them from him after he found the
food stamps .(vi)
KP said, "Let's BKC this bitch!" (means bitch killer connect)
KP and WH took her to the chain link fence and JA
pulled it down so they could toss her over it.
JA says he stood off at a distance while Penny was raped
and while she was raped with the stake, only coming
over at the last when he"lit his bic"and watched her breathe
her last breath.(vii)
He admitted helping try to hide her body and clothes as well
as getting rid of the stake.

Problems with Jamille Armstrong's story:

(i) Actually the owner of the home the four men were at
said they wanted to "jump" Chris into their gang that night.
They wanted to use a bedroom to beat this guy up in and their
host said, "No."
So they went to a park across the street, beat Chris, then
returned and phoned "Capone" their gang's leader, and told
him it was done.

(ii)The woman involved, Janaysha Williams, tried to hide rather
than testify so she was in irons.
She admitted there were no women waiting for the men
at her place and she wasn't even expecting them that night.

(iii)Like THAT would happen if a 45-year-old 105 pound
woman saw three big black men on the street in
 the late evening hours!

(iv)Again this flies in the face of ALL logic!

(v)This was not the first person they had robbed, so they
knew from previous robberies that sometimes
money is in socks, bras, etc...also they planned to rape
her.

(vi)In JA's story only KP hits Penny,  yet JA had more than
10 times run up to bicyclists and hit them with a stick
to knock them off their bikes!  One Hispanic woman had
her neck broken this way.  As one of the gang, JA was well
known as having a short fuse, even beating his friends!

(vii)An opthamologist was called about JA's vision problem.
His vision has been blurry since the age of 5 and he never
had glasses until after he was arrested.
His corneas are malformed and his right eye is 20/300
his left eye is 20/290. His description of the details of the
rape and the rape with the stake could not have been seen
through his bad eyes at the distance he said he was away
from the action.
The blood pattern on his clothes show he was there while
she was raped and beaten, holding her arms up over her
head and bashing his boots into her chest.
His semen was found mixed with her blood on his shirt.
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The mitigating and extenuating circumstances:

As jurors we were warned that even if Jamille were found guilty
there might be a line out the door of friends and family who
would plead for his life to be spared.

In actuality only his father came in (in chains.)
Dad didn't want to tell us about what a cad he had been.
But even as a drug pusher and pimp he had never murdered.

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THE VERDICT

Today we found the defendant liable for the death penalty for
his part in the torture, rape, robbery, kinapping and murder of
Penny Keprta.
After the verdict was read we had a chance to spend a little time
with the DA.
We learned that both Warren Hardy and Kevin Pearson had also
gotten the death penalty.

We found out that Monty Gmur (who is Kevin Pearson's next-door neighbor)came to the police after the crime was reported on the news and told detectives that his neighbor and a couple of his friends had talked about a crime just like that only the day before!

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Jury urges death for killer

LONG BEACH A jury Monday recommended the death penalty for a 24-year-old Long Beach man convicted in the rape, torture and murder of a woman whose body was found along the San Diego (405) Freeway in December 1998.

Nearly six years after his arrest, Jamelle Armstrong was tried and convicted before Long Beach Superior Court Judge Tomson Ong and is expected to be formally sentenced June 15.

Armstrong was the third and final defendant to be tried in connection with the beating death of Penny Keprta, a 43-year-old mother who had been walking on Wardlow Road when she was attacked four days after Christmas. The other two men, Warren Hardy and Kevin Pearson, have been sentenced to death.

Prosecutor Corene Locke-Noble, who tried all three cases separately, said the victim had yelled out "Merry Christmas' and "Happy New Year' just before the three men robbed her, took her clothes, dragged her into a ditch and raped her. Then they bit, kicked and beat her until she was dead.

- Wendy Thomas Russell

http://www.presstelegram.com/Stories/0,1413,204~21474~2139859,00.html

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