On this day, Sept. 28, in 2000, Gallaudet University student Joseph Mesa Jr. strangled 19-year-old Eric Plunkett in a freshman dorm at the liberal arts college for the hearing impaired in Washington. Four months later Mesa fatally stabbed Benjamin Varner, 19, in the same dormitory. The killings shocked the close-knit community of 2,000 students at Gallaudet, which was established by Congress in 1864.
At his trial, Mesa testified that “black hands” told him in American Sign Language to kill.
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Mesa, a 20-year-old freshman from Guam, said he had a devil on his shoulder telling him to do bad things. “Need money, need money,” he said the devil told him.
Mesa was sentenced to life without parole and is housed at the Atwater prison in California.
— Scott McCabe
