WARREN Murderer gets two life terms in prison

The defendant and one victim were clients of a vocational rehabilitation program for which the other victim worked.
WARREN -- A Youngstown man has been sentenced to life in prison for the February murders of two people.
John Staples, 24, of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court. Judge John M. Stuard sentenced him to two life terms and a mandatory three years because a gun was used.
Capital murder
Staples was charged with two counts of capital murder. Had he been convicted in a trial he could have faced the death penalty. The death penalty specification was dropped in exchange for his guilty pleas.
Staples previously pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, but that was withdrawn and the guilty plea entered Tuesday.
Atty. Anthony Consoldane, who represents Staples, said Staples will be eligible for parole in 43 years.
Earlier this month, Staples was found competent to stand trial.
Staples, who was a client of the Burdman Group of Youngstown, was convicted of the shooting deaths of Hope E. Houser, 34, of Campbell, and Wynn Bogan, 23, of Lowellville.
Court documents in the case quote Staples as telling his mother he "just snapped."
Houser was a vocational rehabilitation worker at Burdman, and Bogan also was a client. Both were shot in the back of the head as they sat in the front seat of a Burdman van at Gypsy Lane and Belmont Avenue on the Youngstown-Liberty Township line.
Houser was pronounced dead at the scene, and Bogan died later in a Youngstown hospital.
The Mahoning County Violent Crimes Task Force arrested Staples that morning at his home. They found two guns.
Stopped to get gas
Houser, who was driving, had stopped to get gas on their way to clean a roadside rest stop on state Route 11, south of Canfield. She had picked up both men at the agency's administration building about two miles from where the shootings occurred.
The vocational rehabilitation program for which Houser worked trains disabled people to achieve employment. The agency has a contract through the Mahoning County Mental Health Board.
Staples had been working in the program for about three weeks.
Bogan was a Burdman client for about four years, and Houser had worked for the agency since June 1999.