YORK, PA. Vatican official urges mercy for condemned multiple killer

The death row inmate killed four people.
YORK, Pa. (AP) -- The Vatican's ambassador to the United States has asked Gov. Ed Rendell to commute the death sentence of condemned multiple murderer Mark Spotz.
Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, the apostolic nuncio to the United States, said Spotz has earned bachelor's and master's degrees in Christian counseling during his eight years in prison. Spotz also has helped his spiritual adviser develop programs to help young people avoid lives of violent crime.
Rendell's spokeswoman, Kate Philips, said the governor had received the letter and does not plan to commute Spotz's sentence.
The Jan. 24 letter and a separate letter from the Vatican turning down a request from Spotz's adviser for a personal audience with Pope John Paul II were filed in York County Common Pleas Court as part of one of Spotz's appeals. The attorney general's office objected and asked that the letters be stricken.
In an order issued Tuesday, Senior Judge Joseph E. Erb said he would allow the letters to remain in the court record, pending a decision on their admissibility.
Spotz, 32, who is on death row at Graterford prison in Montgomery County, faces separate death sentences for three of four slayings that he committed during a four-day crime spree in early 1995.
Spotz fatally shot his brother at their Clearfield County home on Jan. 31, 1995, and then fled, killing three women in Schuylkill, York and Cumberland counties on successive days before surrendering to police in a Carlisle motel room on Feb. 4, 1995. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in his brother's slaying and sentenced to death for murdering the three women.