Inmate Guts/Dismembers Cellmate..Hangs Up Intestines...Gory Video Shown At Trial

[bloodrayne]

Attorneys: Man Who Gutted Cellmate Had Mental Problems

Colorado - The man accused of killing his prison cellmate, then gutting him and hanging his intestines from a clothesline in his cell, has a history of brain injuries and untreated mental problems that would have made it difficult for him to think clearly, plot a murder or "resist impulses," defense attorneys said today.

William Sablan, a native of the island of Saipan, is accused along with his cousin of killing cellmate Joey Estrella at the federal prison in Florence in October 1999. If convicted, he would be the first person in Colorado to face possible execution since Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombings in 1997.

In opening statements this morning, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brenda Taylor said the evidence is clear -- and captured on a gruesome videotape -- that William Sablan and his cousin Rudy Sablan killed Estrella. On the video, which guards began recording after they discovered Estrella dead in the cell, the Sablans are seen holding up Estrella's organs, Taylor said.

William Sablan also is heard confessing to the crime, saying "’I did it. No big deal, I did it,’" Taylor said.

The 18 jurors, made up of 12 women and four men, are expected to see that video this afternoon.

Defense attorney Patrick Burke argued it was Rudy Sablan who strangled Estrella, and that William Sablan is heard on the videotape telling his cousin in their native language that he will take the blame for the killing. Burke also said William Sablan was defending himself, and that other inmates saw the two men fighting prior to the killing.

Several physicians also will testify that Sablan suffers from psychosis, which has caused him to hear voices, and post-traumatic stress disorder, Burke said. He told jurors during his opening statement that William Sablan suffered severe head injuries caused by two falls from more than 20 feet during the 1990s, including a head-first fall from a 20-foot rooftop, and was attacked by a man with a machete who partially scalped him.

William Sablan sat silently at the defense table Monday. Sablan's hair was cut extremely short and several long scars were visible on his head.

Sablan was moved to the Federal Correctional Institution in Florence a few days before the killing. He was supposed to receive treatment for his mental problems upon arrival at the prison, but did not, Burke said.

The trial before U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel could take up to four months.


Gory Video Shown At Trial

Jurors at a federal murder trial watched a gruesome video Monday of a prisoner dismembering the corpse of a fellow inmate who had been strangled in their cell.

The footage, shot by jailers at the penitentiary in Florence, shows a prisoner eviscerating the corpse of a fellow inmate.

Federal prosecutors opened their case against William Sablan, 32, in the 1999 murder of inmate Joey Estrella at the high-security U.S. Penitentiary in Florence, showing jurors a video shot by jailers through a cell-door window.

Defense attorneys plan to present evidence in the four-month trial that Sablan was brain-damaged at the time and that Estrella was killed by another man in the cell, Sablan's cousin Rudy Sablan.

The stomach-turning video showed Estrella's lifeless body on the cell floor, blood flowing under the cell door out into the corridor, as William Sablan shouted obscenities and crowed about killing Estrella.

"Look what I did! He thinks he can kill me! Ha!" an agitated Sablan screamed on the video.

Jailers shot the video while waiting for a special team before entering the cell.

At different points in the footage - the scene in the cell lasts about 20 minutes - William Sablan slapped the corpse in the face, sat on the chest of Estrella, and stuck a lit cigarette in the dead man's mouth.

He also grabbed Estrella's arm, lifting it and manipulating a finger to flash an obscene hand gesture at the camera.

William Sablan, dressed in white boxer shorts and a white blood-stained T-shirt in the video, held a mouthwash bottle toward the camera and screamed that it had Estrella's blood in it. He then chugged from the bottle, gagged and belched before letting go with a chilling scream.

Rudy Sablan, 47, and Estrella, 33, had been cellmates in Florence for about four months, witness John Oliver, an administrator with the federal Bureau of Prisons, told the court. Oliver was a lieutenant in Florence when the murder took place and was in charge of the Special Housing Unit, which housed the men.

William Sablan joined the cellmates just three days before Estrella's death.

Prosecutors told jurors a prison-issued razor was used to slit Estrella's throat and to cut his stomach open.

A razor was visible on the cell floor next to Estrella's leg during early segments of the video shown to jurors. Later in the video, no razor was visible, and none was later found in the cell.

The cousins are being tried separately, both on first-degree murder charges. Rudy Sablan's trial is yet to come.

[Gus]

i wonder when it's gonna leak onto the net.