Wednesday, Dec. 8, 1999 | 10:46 a.m.
The jury that must decide the fate of convicted thrill killer Tony Amati heard the father of one of three victims reminisce about his lost son and his "life sentence of sorrow."
Bruce Dyer also told the jury Tuesday how his wife died Sept. 22 because she eventually "couldn't deal with it" after working tirelessly for two years to help police track down Keith Dyer's killer.
"She gave all she had to give to make something happen," Bruce Dyer said of his wife, Charlotte.
He told how she would visit her son's grave daily to pray and urge his spirit to "haunt the killers and make them do something stupid."
Charlotte Dyer had pushed the media to get involved after Amati was identified as one of her son's killers, but he fled before he could be arrested. She eventually got the television show "America's Most Wanted" to air a segment about Amati and that prompted a tip that led to his apprehension in Georgia in February 1998.
What the jury didn't hear were the tales of similar grief from the families of the two other murder victims who were gunned down in apparently random acts of violence near UNLV during a four-month period in 1996.
That is because the jury in District Judge Joseph Bonaventure's courtroom last week acquitted Amati of those murder counts due to a lack of evidence.
Despite that, as Amati's penalty hearing opened Tuesday, Deputy District Attorney Michael O'Callaghan was adamant that the convicted killer should be punished with the death penalty.
Although witnesses to the three murders couldn't identify any of the killers, Amati cut himself during Dyer's slaying and left his blood on the sidewalk where the three masked men in black had fled.
The break in the case, however, came several weeks later when undercover Metro Police gang officers bought some guns that had been stolen in a gun store burglary the day before the first murder.
The sale led to a search of Amati's house and the recovery of two dozen weapons.
Ballistics tests showed three of the guns were involved in the murders -- including a laser-sighted 9mm semiautomatic pistol found in Amati's nightstand.
Amati had taken the witness stand at his trial and admitted he was involved in the gun theft and sale and was present when Dyer was killed by a hail of bullets, but he swore he never had a gun and never fired a shot.
The jury didn't buy it.
Amati was to get another chance today to talk to the nine women and three men who will decide if his punishment will be death or life in prison with or without the possibility of parole after 40 years.
The defense was scheduled to begin presenting its case today in hopes of minimizing the 22-year-old defendant's sentence for his role in the murder of the Pizza Hut worker, who was walking a co-worker to her home.
The jury already has heard from prosecution witnesses testifying about how Amati's involvement in gun thefts and burglaries was compounded by extensive drug dealing.
A book on street-level drug dealing was found among Amati's possessions.
As he fled the murder charges, Amati traveled with false identifications that let him escape detection despite contacts with police and even arrests.
A year after the murders, Amati and other men were caught with 43 pounds of marijuana, but he talked his way out of serious charges.
In October 1997 in Barstow, Calif., Amati was stopped with nearly $30,000 in cash in a van while on his way to purchase drugs, court testimony indicated.
Again he escaped without having his true identity discovered.
O'Callaghan told the jury that Amati "has earned his lot and should get his lot and that's the death penalty ... he deserves to die."
Defense attorney David Schieck cautioned the jury that it is never mandatory for a jury to hand down the death penalty.
While two of Amati's associates were arrested with him in the gun sale sting and eventually charged in the three thrill killings, the murder charges didn't stick.
Prosecutors dropped charges against Troy Sampson, 27, and Edward James, 23, because of a lack of evidence, although Amati testified in his own defense that they both were involved in Dyer's killing.
In the first of the three killings, Michael Matta, 27, died in a hail of bullets as he rummaged through a Dumpster near Hacienda Avenue and Maryland Parkway on May 27, 1996.
The second incident was on July 28, 1996, when John Garcia, 48, was shot in the head in his garage near Tropicana Avenue and Maryland Parkway.
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