Man Kills 3, Eats 1

[bloodrayne]

Man Gets Life In Prison For Killing 3, Eating 1

KANSAS CITY, Kansas -- A man convicted of killing three people and eating the flesh of his youngest victim, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison.

Marc V. Sappington, 25, will not be eligible for parole for 75 years. Judge J. Dexter Burdette also sentenced Sappington to 6½ years for kidnapping and 2.5 years for aggravated burglary stemming from a carjacking. The sentences are to run consecutively.

"You are the closest thing to a homicide time-bomb there is," Burdette said.

Sappington, who was convicted in July, told Burdette the killings were motivated by a "will to live."

At trial, jurors watched a taped confession in which Sappington said voices he heard while high on the hallucinogenic drug PCP told him he had to eat flesh and blood or he would die. His victims were killed over a four-day span in April 2001.

Police said Sappington cut up the body of his youngest victim, Alton "Fred" Brown Jr., 16, then cooked and ate a small amount of his flesh. Sappington had planned to freeze the rest of the body and eat it later. Brown's body was the only one cannibalized.

"He didn't have any mercy, and I ask you not to show any mercy on him," Brown's mom, Tammy Saunders, urged the judge.

Sappington's attorney, Patricia Aylward Kalb, said her client was mentally ill when he killed but is now taking medication. Prosecutors said it was Sappington's PCP use that caused him to hear voices.

The case was among the first subject to requirements in a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year on when a state can forcibly medicate a defendant. The court ruled a state can't medicate an inmate solely to make that person competent to stand trial. One of the approved conditions for involuntarily medicating an inmate is when the person is considered dangerous.