Wednesday, November 29, 2006
WARREN — Jermaine McKinney is a “classic cold-blooded killer” who committed brutality “beyond belief” and deserved the death penalty. He didn’t get that, but “he will die in prison,” Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said Wednesday after the Youngstown man was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison without parole eligibility.
Common Pleas Court Judge W. Wyatt McKay followed the recommendation of a jury that said Nov. 20 that McKinney, 26, should spend the rest of his life in prison for killing Rebecca Cliburn, 45, and her mother, Wanda Rollyson, 70, in Rollyson’s Newton Township home Dec. 21, 2005.
Before receiving the sentence, McKinney spoke to members of the victims’ families, saying he wanted them to know that: “Nothing [Cliburn] did led to what happened. She didn’t point out your grandmother’s house. She wasn’t going to steal money from your grandmother. None of that happened.”
Accomplice Keyatta Riley Hines testified during the trial that Cliburn rode in a car with her and McKinney to Rollyson’s house two days before the murders and went there willingly with McKinney the day of her death. Riley Hines said she and McKinney schemed Dec. 19 and 21 to get money from Rollyson. McKinney later told Riley Hines that he killed Cliburn because she wouldn’t give him money, Riley Hines testified.
Melissa Barry of Cortland, Cliburn’s daughter and Rollyson’s granddaughter, gave a victim statement Wednesday, saying the loss of her mother and grandmother really hit home last week during Thanksgiving.
As Barry’s son ran up to one of his grandmothers and gave her a hug, she realized that neither she nor any of Rollyson’s or Cliburn’s other grandchildren will ever be able to do that again.
Thanksgiving was also hard because it reminded everyone that the previous Thanksgiving was the last time the family would ever be together.
A month later, when the family should have been celebrating Christmas, Barry said she was instead looking at photos of jewelry to help police identify the burned bodies found in the basement of Rollyson’s house.
“My mom did have problems. She did have drug charges and was facing jail time,” Barry said. “She was planning to go to jail and afterward be a family again,” she said.
“She wanted so much to get better and be a better mom to us, and now we’ll never know, and we will always wonder what things could have been like,” she said.
She concluded with some words from a poem her mother wrote to her children just before her murder: “I hope my kids know they are loved. Forgive me for the years I was not there to dry your tears. Forgive me everyone, I pray. Dear God show me the way.”
Juror Marjorie Heintz of Brookfield who attended the hearing with another juror, said deliberations dragged on a long time in both the guilt/innocence and mitigation/penalty phases because of one or two jurors who disagreed with the majority.