On this Date ... Murder at Gally

It was on this day in 2001 (Feb 1), Joseph Mesa, Jr. murdered Benjamin Varner in his Gallaudet dorm room.

Mesa stabbed his classmate more than a dozen times. This wasn't Mesa's first fatal attack. A few months earlier, Mesa beat Eric Plunkett to death in his dorm room as well, leaving the school's campus shaken. Mesa turned himself in to the police ten days after the Varner killing. In July of 2002, a DC judge gave Mesa six life terms without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors called him a serial killer in the making. The 22-year-old from Guam pleaded not guilty because of insanity, telling jurors he saw hands wearing black gloves that told him in sign language to kill the 19-year-olds who considered him their friend. Mesa's defense attorney suggested that the attack on Plunkett was prompted by rage over an unwanted homosexual advance. The jury convicted him on all 15 counts. Mesa began serving time at The United States Penitentiary in Atwater, California, near San Francisco, a high-security facility.