Witness describes McKenna’s reign of terror

Bill Gang

Thursday, Sept. 12, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

His voice quivering, one of jailhouse killer Patrick McKenna's former cellmates described him as a "psychotic" who held a makeshift knife to his throat 16 years ago and made him renounce God.

"Were you afraid at that time?" Deputy District Attorney Dan Seaton asked him on the first day of testimony in McKenna's third penalty hearing for a murder behind bars a year before.

"I'm scared right here," 41-year-old Gerald Ludwig told the jury Wednesday in District Judge Myron Leavitt's courtroom.

McKenna, who has been on death row since 1980, was portrayed in court as a rapist, a killer, a brutal prison intimidator and the architect of a series of escapes or deadly escape attempts over the past three decades.

Seaton said during opening arguments that the 50-year-old killer should be returned to death row as the only way to prevent McKenna's reign of terror from continuing.

Explanation of violence

But Deputy State Public Defender Nancy Lemcke told of a different McKenna, the oldest of five boys and the son their father would abuse the worst.

Lemcke told of a man who married young and was devastated by the late-term miscarriage of his child.

"He began a descent into a criminal world most of us can't comprehend," she admitted. But she said the defense team "isn't here to excuse anything, just to explain it. We're going to take you into McKenna's world."

The McKenna she tried to portray was the one pictured in an elementary school graduation photo that she displayed for the jury.

Lemcke chastised Seaton for "trying to paint a picture of him as a monster" who deserved nothing less than death by lethal injection.

"It's not enough (for them) to convict him of several felonies ... and sentence him to prison," she said sarcastically. "It's not enough that McKenna has spent the last 30 years, except for a few months, in prison."

Seaton didn't use those phrases as he addressed the jury to spell out the state's case, although he surely will during closing arguments.

Instead, Seaton used a quote attributed to McKenna just a few months ago when he learned he had won a third penalty hearing and yet another chance for a life prison term rather than a death sentence.

Murderous oath

Seaton said McKenna told a confidant that if he gets a third death sentence, "I'll kill anybody that gets in my way."

The veteran prosecutors indicate it was that kind of attitude which caused McKenna to murder his cellmate, 20-year-old J.J. Nobles, in the Clark County Detention Center in 1979.

McKenna had just been convicted of raping two women in a downtown motel room when he returned to his cell with a chip on his shoulder, got into a dispute with Nobles after a chess game and strangled him to death.

That is the story told by another cellmate, Sebbon Hairs, then 21, whose testimony at McKenna's first trial in 1980 was read to the jury. Hairs currently is serving time in an out-of-state prison and was not available to testify personally.

The jury also listened to court staff read the preliminary hearing testimony of then-prisoner Michael Jones, who had said he watched as McKenna and Nobles argued over a sexual act the victim was supposed to perform.

Jones, who died before the trial, had said that McKenna wrapped his arm around Nobles' neck and choked him "until his knees buckled and he dropped."

That version was somewhat contradicted by Chief Deputy Medical Examiner Dr. Sheldon Green, who testified Wednesday that Nobles was choked to death with a ligature that left a thin mark around his neck.

But Jones' contention that the death resulted from a dispute over a sexual act was supported by Ludwig, who explained that McKenna confessed that to him as he had the illicit knife pressed to his neck.

Bragged of killing

Ludwig, who was in jail before being sent to prison for seven years on a sexual assault conviction, said McKenna bragged of the murder while threatening his life.

He said McKenna told him, "They think (Nobles) was killed over a chess game but he was killed because he wouldn't (perform the sex act.)"

Ludwig said that when McKenna was finished tormenting him in front of several other jail prisoners, he laughed and walked away.

Wednesday was the first time Ludwig ever told his story in court.

He said that when he read in a newspaper of McKenna's new penalty hearing he decided to come forward because "I felt people didn't know who McKenna was."

He said if he had told his story while still a prison inmate, "I'd be dead now."

McKenna first was convicted in 1980 and sentenced to death, but a new trial was ordered by the Nevada Supreme Court. A second trial in 1982 gave the same result.

But a federal appeals court early this year overturned the death sentence because one of the aggravating factors to justify the death penalty -- that the murder was committed by a person with depravity of mind -- was unconstitutional.

If the 10-woman, two-man jury chooses not to give the death penalty, it could sentence McKenna to life in prison with or without the possibility of parole.

McKenna, however, is already serving two life prison terms for the 1978 rapes plus additional time for his escape attempts and other charges. Authorities said that no matter what the jury does, McKenna will never be released, although a life sentence may return him to the general prison population.