Families of four slain men talk about their loss

Monday, May 2, 2005 | 9:46 a.m.

After sitting through a week of jury selection and four days more to see if the man who killed their sons and brothers would face the death penalty, the families of the young men that Donte Pattison murdered execution style were heard.

Donte Johnson faces the possibility of the death penalty for the 1998 murders of Tracey Gorringe, 20, Peter Talamantez, 17, and Matthew Mowen and Jeffrey Biddle, both 19.

David Mowen said life without his son Matt was similar to the movie Groundhog Day.

"It's the same day over and over again," Mowen said. "It's the same pain, same misery, same anger every single day. It doesn't get better. Some days I just manage it better."

He said his son was "one of those special individuals who for whatever reason had an ability to connect with all different kinds of people; everyone seemed to love him."

Mowen said he either refereed or coached his son in every sport including baseball, football, basketball, wrestling and more, but because of his death he is unable to even pick up a football that sits in the back of his dead son's car.

He said his son had dreams of becoming a doctor. In her brother's memory Jennifer Mowen is studying massage therapy, the area Matt had intended to study.

Mowen said "I miss life" and has for all 2,451 days since his only son's life was taken.

Jennifer Mowen said her brother "would just light up the room" and she misses the "great big bear hugs" her 6-foot-3-inch brother would give her.

She said her brother had such an impact on the people he met in life that his friends still come to the family's home even six and half years after his death.

"It never gets easier, in fact it gets harder," Jennifer Mowen said. "I have to grow up without a brother."

She sad her mother, who battled through cancer, has "a lot of guilt and regret and wishes she could have brought her baby home and protected him."

Marie Biddle said she has been left "very devastated" by the loss of her son and that every morning she "asks God to give me the strength to make it through the day."

She said her son was a "wonderful cartoon artist " and a "good sportsman" who played soccer, football and liked to ski and snowboard.

Ever since Jeffrey was in the ninth grade, she said, he wanted to be a police officer. After moving to Las Vegas in 1997 from Idaho, her son became a security officer in Green Valley.

She said he wanted to join the Air Force and become a fighter pilot, but his dream was to become an FBI agent. Unfortunately "he was just so young and couldn't do those things yet."

"He was always trying to help people," Biddle said. "He cared so much about everything. He wanted to at some point in his life to get married and have a family. Those goals will never be realized."

Sandy Viau, who like Biddle has been sitting in court since jury selection began a week earlier, said she raised Tracey Gorringe and her two other boys all by herself in Idaho.

Viau said although she remarried in 1996 and was just starting to form a relationship with her husbands' children and getting her sons a chance to experience a life with a father, the death of her son has made it "hard for me to enter any kind of bond with anyone."

She said Tracey was a great cook and flirted with the idea of going to culinary school before deciding he wanted to become an electrical engineer.

Viau said Tracey was "angelic," the middle of her three sons, and she misses the way he used to break up the fights between her oldest and youngest sons.

One of her sons, Nick Gorringe, who fainted in court on Wednesday after seeing a photo of his brother lying dead and bound in duct tape, was the fourth roommate in the home where Tracey and the others were murdered.

She said Nick "happened to be out of town when this happened and returned to find his home was a murder scene."

Viau said because of Tracey's death, Nick has "a tough time dealing with life, has a lot of anger and can't focus."

Juanita Aguilar said "everything is pain" since her son Peter Talamantez's life was ended by Johnson.

Even six and a half years after her son was murdered she said she is still "unable to go back to work."

With tears running down her face, Aguilar said she is on "medication for depression and often can't get out of bed or leave my house for two or three weeks because I don't want to see anyone."

"He was very smart and caring," Aguilar said. "He could have done just about anything he wanted to, but at 17 you don't think about what you're going to be; you try and live life and have fun."

Aguilar said her two other sons "carry anger, hostility and a lot of guilt." She said they are both "unstable" and "it's very difficult for them to hear anything about this case."

As Mother's day approaches this Sunday, Aguilar said she would miss Peter even more because he "was the first one (of her sons) to call me on Mother's Day."

District Judge Lee Gates Gates placed a limit of two family member speakers on each of the four victims in the case and has said he would impose a time limit on how long they can talk. The judge made no such restriction on the number of Johnson's family members who spoke during the first phase of the hearing.

Johnson and two other men bound with duct tape the hands and legs of the victims and forced them to lie face down before killing them each with a single gunshot to the back of the head in a house the victims had rented together on Terra Linda Avenue in southeastern Las Vegas.

Johnson previously had been sentenced to death by a three-judge panel. But now his fate is being reconsidered as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said only juries can levy the death penalty in such cases.

In the current proceeding, Gates split the penalty phase, the jurors had to first weigh the "aggravators" in the case against the mitigating evidence presented.

During the first phase of the penalty hearing the jurors were only told the details of Johnson's quadruple homicide and information about Johnson's background growing up in South Central Los Angeles.

The jury determined Johnson is eligible for the death penalty and will soon determine whether to sentence him to death, life in prison without the possibility of parole, life with the possibility of parole or a set term of 40 to 100 years.

The defense is expected to continue its case today.