Victims' families tell of nightmare

When convicted quadruple killer Terrell Cochise Young smiled as the parents of his victims told of the pain they endure daily dealing with their losses, it drew a quick rebuke.

"It's no joke, it's a nightmare," snapped Cindy Mowen, the mother of 19-year-old Matthew Mowen. "You took away a very precious gift of mine. ... You won't ever understand that, Terrell."

"The only reason I smiled was to hide my own pain," responded Young, 20, who was in court Thursday to be formally sentenced for his part in the execution slayings of four young men during a robbery.

Young, like 19-year-old Sikia Smith who was convicted before him, knew part of the sentence was going to include the life prison terms with no possibility of parole that a jury already had handed down. The third defendant, Donte Johnson, 19, is scheduled to stand trial in January.

Young stood in court dejectedly aware that the rest of his life was now out of his control, although the situation could have been different if a district judge had sentenced him to prison 17 months ago as the state Parole and Probation Department had recommended.

It was three weeks before the quadruple murder that Young, then 18, stood before District Judge Joseph Bonaventure for sentencing on his guilty plea to a felony charge of attempted larceny from a person. The charge had been reduced from robbery.

Consistent with Young's history, the November 1997 theft at a discount clothing store involved a violent confrontation with store employees and police.

In recommending prison for Young in July 1998, the state department cited Young's history of juvenile crime involving violence and his failure to cooperate with juvenile authorities when he was on probation in that system.

"Young's history of assaultive behavior constitutes a danger to any innocent person in this community," stated the report to the judge that declared the defendant "an unsuitable candidate for community supervision."

If Bonaventure had followed the recommendation to imprison Young for a year, the teenager would not have been free to participate in the deadly events of Aug. 14, 1998, in a house rented by the victims on Terra Linda Avenue.

But he was, and after his arrest he admitted to police that he was involved in the robbery. But he said he wasn't the triggerman who stood over each duct-taped victim and shot them.

Although the jurors convicted Young, they declined to give him the death penalty that prosecutors had sought.

Deputy District Attorney Gary Guymon urged District Judge Mark Gibbons at Thursday's hearing to run all of Young's sentences consecutively -- or one after the other -- to ensure the killer never has a glimmer of a hope for freedom.

Young agreed.

"It don't make no difference," he told the judge with obvious resignation in his voice.

Gibbons also agreed and handed down 16 life prison terms with no opportunity for parole plus 32 to 144 years. The sentences will all run one after the other.

Four of the life sentences were for each of the murders and four were because a deadly weapon was used. Another four were punishment for Young's conviction on kidnapping charges and the last four were because a weapon was involved in those. The terms of years were for the convictions on counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, burglary and conspiracy.

"The tragedy of this case is unbelievable," said Gibbons, who was not the trial judge but inherited the case when District Judge Joseph Pavlikowski retired.

"It makes no sense to me why people have guns and shoot people for a couple of hundred dollars."

For David Mowen, Matthew's father, the slayings have consumed his life.

"My son wasn't all of my life (before the murders) but now he's all of my life," said the man who has attended nearly every court hearing. "It's on our minds 24 hours a day. We go to bed with it and wake up at night with it."

Sandi Viau, whose 20-year-old son, Tracy Gorringe, also was a victim, lamented that "to think the defendant will have some kind of life is just appalling."

Marie Biddle, the mother of 19-year-old Jeffrey Biddle, noted that the victims go beyond the dead men and their families to include even Young's mother, Willena Warren.

The fourth victim was 17-year-old Peter Talamantez, whose father was present for Thursday's sentencing but didn't speak.

Warren pointed out that Young was not alleged to be the triggerman during the deadly robbery that was supposed to garner about $6,000 and a large quantity of drugs for the bandits. The robbery, however, only brought in about $200, a VCR and a video game system.

But Young was alleged to be the one who held a gun on the victims to prevent their escape while the home was ransacked. He also was alleged to have laughed about the murders with Johnson and advocated killing the victim's two puppies.

Like the victims' families, Warren told the judge "I also had dreams for my son. He aspired to be something better than what transpired with his life. He'll never be a murderer to me."

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