Opinion ID: 6536853
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The facts of Fry's case

Text: {158} On the night of June 8, 2000, Fry bragged to companions that he was wearing an eight-inch bowie knife and intended to stick someone. Fry encountered Betty Lee, a woman in her thirties and a mother of five, by pure chance at a convenience store at approximately 2:00 a.m. on June 9, 2000. Fry and Betty had never met before. {159} Betty was using a pay phone, was emotionally distraught, and stranded. Fry was driving a vehicle and was accompanied by one male companion, Leslie Engh. Fry offered Betty a ride home, and she accepted. {160} Fry drove away from the store with Betty and Engh and turned off the paved roadway and onto a dirt road that led out into the desert. Fry claimed that he needed to urinate and drove a pretty good distance away from the paved road. Betty sensed something was not right, and when Fry stopped the car, exited, and began urinating, she also exited the vehicle and began walking back towards the paved road. Fry reentered his vehicle, drove alongside Betty, and coaxed her back in. {161} After Betty reentered the car, Fry drove some distance further, then stopped, and dragged Betty out of the car by her hair. A struggle ensued and Fry summoned Engh to hold Betty's legs, which Engh did. Fry then attempted to take off Betty's shirt, but she kicked him. Fry drew his bowie knife and slammed it into Betty's chest. The knife traveled two inches into Betty and penetrated her breast bone and heart sac. She fell to the ground and Fry and Engh attempted to pull off her pants. As they did this, Betty yelled at the men why are you doing this to me? She then removed the knife from her chest, threw it into a ravine, broke free, got to her feet, and started running. {162} As she ran, Betty screamed loudly at a high pitch. Her shirt was around her neck and her chest exposed. Fry chased her, caught her, and then the two men succeeded in pulling off her pants. After they disrobed her, Betty once more broke free and again started running. At this point, she was completely naked. {163} Fry instructed Engh to find the knife and Fry obtained a sledgehammer from the car. As Engh searched in bushes with a flashlight for the knife, he saw Fry swinging the sledgehammer in the distance. Betty's screaming came to an end. {164} Fry struck Betty on the head three to five times with the sledgehammer. The wounds the blows inflicted indicated that Betty had been facedown on the ground when she was struck. Her scalp was torn, her skull split, and her brain lacerated. These blows, in conjunction with the stab wound, caused her death. {165} After Fry killed Betty, Fry and Engh dragged her corpse by its wrists to some bushes by a ravine, an area where they believed it would not be discovered. Engh did not want to look at the corpse but did and saw that the face was covered in blood and the hair was in all sorts of different funny directions. They kicked Betty's clothes off towards the edge of the ravine so that they too would not be discovered. {166} Fry and Engh drove away from the scene of the murder, but their car became stuck in a wash. Fry contacted his parents on his cell phone. It was nearly 4:00 a.m. Fry's parents, oblivious to what Fry and Engh had just done, met the men at the paved roadway. {167} Betty's corpse was discovered by a lineman later that morning. When questioned by the police, Fry denied any involvement in the killing. He did not testify at trial. The evidence presented to Fry's jury overwhelmingly demonstrated that Fry had killed Betty. Engh testified as a witness for the State and provided the testimony that serves as  the principal foundation for the narrative produced above. {168} After Fry's jury returned a guilty verdict, several of Betty's siblings and children offered victim impact testimony at the sentencing phase of the proceedings. The general thrust of that testimony was that Betty had been a kind and generous woman, that Betty's family was greatly distressed by the thought of the terror she experienced at the time of her death, and that the family's grieving and loss was profound. The sole aggravating circumstance found by the jury was that Fry perpetrated his murder in the course of a kidnapping. State v. Fry , 2006-NMSC-001 , ¶ 6, 138 N.M. 700 , 126 P.3d 516 . {169} Four witnesses presented mitigating evidence for Fry. Id. ¶ 46. A psychologist stated that it was unlikely Fry would engage in additional violence in prison. A pastor stated his belief that Fry had grown spiritually since being incarcerated. Fry's mother and father indicated a desire to continue knowing their son and spoke of his interests and community involvement. The trial judge informed the jury that, if Fry received a prison sentence for his crimes, he would be imprisoned for a minimum of sixty-seven years.