THE CRAIG PRICE STORY-- NOTORIOUS YOUNG BLACK

The Craig Price story-- notorious young black serial killer

The Craig Price story-- notorious young black serial killer

Serial killers succeed through a veil of normalcy, experts say they are invisible monsters. Seemingly harmless, they blend into their social milieu with cellophane transparency. They melt into the uneventful rituals of work, family and play, while their dark secrets lay hidden beneath a neighborly, unthreatening veneer. www.uberarticles.com accessed Sept 2009)

Commonly known as a demon, Price maintains that “the demon thing” also has an element of racism; that mostly white Rhode Island more readily imagines devil horns on black skin. Radio callers openly rooted for his assassination when he came up for parole in 2002. It is commonly believed that the legal system twisted itself to find ways to keep Craig Price locked up -- but that in this one special case, that's OK. Price complains the state has plotted to keep him caged, and he's right. He wouldn't let the state psychiatrists into his head;

It may seem like they have friends, but the only people who really know them are dead. Craig Price was a brawny teenage football player with a baby face and winsome smile, who lived with his parents in a small ranch house in the Buttonwoods section of town. One summer night in 1987, he crept across his neighbor's yard, broke into a little brown house and stabbed Rebecca Spencer 58 times. She was a 27-year-old mother of two. He was 13. Two years passed before Price struck again. Joan Heaton, 39, was butchered with the kitchen knives she had bought earlier that day. The bodies of her daughters, Jennifer 10, and Melissa 8, were found in pools of blood, pieces of knives broken off in their bones; Jennifer had been stabbed 62 times. Thanks to Price, the law was changed allowing minors to be charged and sentenced as adults in Superior Court. Price bragged that he would "make history" when he was released. The case led to changes in state law to allow juveniles to be tried as adults for serious crimes, but these could not be applied retroactively to Price.

Due to the brutality of his crimes and the opinion of state psychologists that he was a poor candidate for rehabilitation, a group called Citizens Opposed to the Release of Craig Price formed to lobby for his continued imprisonment. Price was charged with a variety of crimes, including criminal contempt for refusing a psychological evaluation, extortion for threatening a corrections officer, and assault and violation of probation for fights while in prison. He was sentenced to an additional 10-25 years, depending on his cooperation with treatment. Price has written many letters over the years, to judges and prison officials and the media, complaining about his incarceration. Long ago, he says, he paid his debt for his juvenile crimes.

Even today, Price's taped confession sounds chillingly surreal. In a nonchalant, matter-of-fact drawl he describes the night of terror in the Heaton ...