GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A troubling story from decades ago resurfaced as President Biden made sweeping pardons and commutations as his time in office ends.
Marvin Gabrion— the man convicted of killing a 19-year-old woman before she could testify in a 1997 rape case against him— will not die by the government's hands.
Authorities described Rachel Timmerman's horrifying last moments in an interview in the early 2000s.
“She was handcuffed. Her eyes, bound, blinded with duct tape. Her mouth, bound muted with duct tape. Wrapped in chains— weighted with concrete blocks, and thrown into Oxford Lake alive,”
The case— held in Federal Court in Grand Rapids because it happened in Manistee National Forest.
“A lot of people in the government worked very hard for us, and we appreciate it,” Rachel's father, Tim Timmerman told reporters in the early 2000s.
Rachel’s 11-month-old daughter— missing since she was killed; never to be found.
“I lost her. And worse yet, I lost my granddaughter,” Rachel's mother had said during the trial in March 2002.
Gabrion insists he didn't kill the child, always claiming he had nothing to do with Rachel's death.
During the lengthy trial, Gabrion became so unhappy with his legal representation he punched his attorney in the face and had to be carried out of court.
The defense claimed Gabrion had a traumatic childhood and brain damage.
The prosecution alleging he was responsible for more than one death.
“The man’s a serial killer. I haven’t heard that word yet. But he’s killed more than one person. I’d consider that a serial killer,”
Rachel's family always wanted Gabrion to face the death penalty.
Tim Timmerman's words still echo now, over 2 decades later.
“I want the man that murdered my daughter to know that he is going to be put to death," he'd said. "Just as Rachel knew on the shores of Oxford Lake that she was going to be put to death.”
Gabrion is one of 37 death row sentences commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Per CNN, the majority of these were for low-profile offenses such as murders tied to drug trafficking, or killing prison guards or other inmates.
There are now only 3 Federal prisoners awaiting execution including Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon Bombing in 2013; Dylann Roof, a white nationalist who killed nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh's Tree Of Life Synagogue in 2018.
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