Condemned Nevada man had criminal record, delusions

Lawrence Colwell Jr., facing execution Friday for the thrill killing of an elderly tourist in Las Vegas, has a troubled history that includes a long criminal record and reports of delusional, anti-social behavior since he was a boy.

Colwell, 35, asked for and received a death sentence for strangling Frank Rosenstock, 76, a New York widower who had retired to the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., area. The March 1994 slaying occurred after Colwell's girlfriend lured Rosenstock to his hotel room, then called Colwell to rob him.

Colwell strangled Rosenstock with a belt, took $91 in cash and Rosenstock's credit cards, but missed $300 the victim had hidden in a sock. After the "trick roll," prosecutors said, Colwell and his girlfriend, Merrilee Paul, returned to their motel "and had sex and breakfast."

Paul later pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

At a recent hearing, Colwell told U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben that he's "99.99 percent" certain he'll do nothing to stop his execution at Nevada State Prison. He said he'd decide by Wednesday - and McKibben told the condemned man that Colwell is the only one who can stop the execution.

Court records in Colwell's case include psychiatrists' conclusions that Colwell, a southwest Oregon high school dropout who took some community college classes, studied Latin and learned enough anatomy to figure out how to kill people, had a "serious delusional disorder" and was "anti-social to the point of being psychopathic."

Authorities said Colwell had been in trouble with the law since he was 12 - for running away from home, starting a fire, animal cruelty, burglary, theft, forgery, stealing a car and other crimes.

At age 18, he was imprisoned for five years after a 1988 conviction for kidnapping an ex-girlfriend who had worked with him at a fast-food joint in Grants Pass, Ore. While in prison, records showed he seduced a female guard and bragged about it.

Colwell had been out on parole for nearly a year when he killed Rosenstock and, according to prosecutors, had been talking about murdering someone since 1988.

A former Oregon cellmate, who Colwell visited after the Las Vegas murder, provided the tip that led authorities to Colwell. Colwell had wound up in a Grants Pass jail for a parole violation after visiting his mother, Ruby Culp, at a trailer park in nearby Myrtle Creek.

The former cellmate also described Colwell as threatening and manipulative, and said Colwell wanted him to join in robbing a military armory so they could steal weapons and form a militia-like criminal gang.

Colwell, who used the alias Charles Durrant, also claimed to be part of a shadowy, white-only group called "Merces Constrada" which he said was Latin for "Mercenary of the Country."

Court records also note letters from Colwell to various public and police agencies asking them to investigate a conspiracy to "get him," and letters to then-President Clinton and Hillary Clinton warning them of dangerous gang activity.

Colwell has told authorities he didn't want to grant any interview requests while he awaits execution.

But he's made it clear at his court hearings that he wants no appeals.

"I can't sit here and say I'm 100 percent for this," Colwell said at a Feb. 25 hearing in Las Vegas, where a judge issued a death warrant. "Like I've told the attorneys all along, I'm about 90-10 and I don't think that will ever change."

"Do I want to die? No, I don't want to die," he said." But is the value of life there for me now? No, it isn't."

Colwell lost two state Supreme Court appeals, including one in 1996 and another in 2002 in which Nevada justices said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against judicial panels in capital cases couldn't be applied retroactively.

At his initial 1995 sentencing hearing, Colwell told the sentencing panel he planned for weeks to kill someone and murdered Rosenstock "for the kicks of it, I guess."

While he said he was sorry for what he did, he added the murder "was like taking a walk in the park, taking a drive down the street."

Colwell's refusal to stop his execution is fine with the victim's son, Terry Rosenstock, 47, who plans to watch Colwell die.

"It's something we have to do," Rosenstock, a Staten Island, N.Y., banking consultant, said in a recent telephone interview. He said he and his sister, Mindy Dinburg, 52, a New Jersey probation officer, plan to witness the execution.

"We're going to this execution and it's going to affect us. Seeing someone perish in front of you is going to affect you," Rosenstock said. "But it's closure. That's the bottom line."

"It's a very difficult time," he said. "You think about this, you don't sleep."

Rosenstock pointed out the execution coincides with the 10-year mark of his father's March 1994 death at the Tropicana hotel-casino in Las Vegas.

"He took the life of a person who was full of life and had many, many reasons to live," Rosenstock said.

"We've thought about this. If he wants the death sentence, maybe he should get what he doesn't want." But there's no guarantee that Colwell would spend the rest of his life on Nevada's death row, Rosenstock said, noting that Colwell was sentenced by a three-judge panel - a practice since declared unconstitutional.

"He would go through a whole new (sentencing) hearing," Rosenstock said. "Your emotions go back and forth. We were subpoenaed at his trial and we would be again. We've been through enough already."

If the execution is held, it would be the first in Nevada since April 2001 when Sebastian Bridges was put to death. Executions are held in the state's old gas chamber, although lethal gas hasn't been used since 1979, when convicted killer Jesse Bishop was executed. Lethal injections were used for the eight executions that followed.

All but one of the condemned inmates, Richard Moran who died in 1996, cleared the way for their executions by voluntarily surrendering their rights to appeal.