Crazed Yale student kills girlfriend with blow to head in 1977, gets off easy
BY Mara Bovsun
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, February 20, 2016, 9:32 PM
You could say that Richard Herrin, 23, was crazy for love.
So crazy, in fact, that it drove him to murder the woman he adored.
Bonnie Garland, 20, died in her bed at around 2 a.m. on July 7, 1977, her skull split open by a claw hammer wielded by Herrin.
There was no doubt that Herrin had done it. A few hours after the murder, he appeared, covered in blood, at St. Mary’s Church in Coxsackie, N.Y., a little more than 100 miles north of the victim’s Scarsdale home.
“I just killed my girlfriend,” Herrin told the priest.
Herrin gave her address and phone number to the clergyman, who called police. They went to the Garland home, where the girl’s mother, father, two younger brothers and a sister were still asleep, unaware of the horror in the eldest child’s bedroom.
At around 8 a.m., police knocked on the Garland’s door and told Bonnie’s mother to check on her.
Bonnie was lying on her back, a bloody mess, her eyes fixed. Her head was caved in, but she was still breathing.
Bonnie Garland, 20, died in her bed at around 2 a.m. on July 7, 1977, her skull split open by a claw hammer wielded by her boyfriend. Richard Herrin was found not guilty of murder and was convicted of manslaughter.
When Herrin heard that Bonnie was still clinging to life, he could not believe it. “Her head split open like a watermelon,” he said. “The hammer stuck in and I had to pull it out.”
Bonnie was rushed to a hospital but died that night, not long after Herrin gave his confession to the police.
Bonnie’s murder was the horrible outcome of a Romeo and Juliet romance gone sour. They had been a couple since 1974, when Bonnie was a freshman and Herrin a junior at Yale University. She was the daughter of a successful attorney. He had grown up in the Los Angeles barrio, a poor Chicano whose father was a drunk who never married his mother.
But the boy had a good brain ― an IQ of 130 ― and earned straight-As. He was his high school’s valedictorian and a community hero.
Scholarship offers poured in from top universities all across the country. Herrin chose Yale, which offered him full tuition and expenses, arriving there in 1971.
At Yale, he was the ultimate outsider, a poor fit among the scions of old money and power. Most of his grades were barely passing, but he managed to hold on long enough to graduate.
He had little social life, just a few girlfriends, before he met Bonnie, a bright redhead known for her lovely soprano singing voice. She was a soloist with the Yale
They were together almost all the time until August 1975, when Herrin had to leave for graduate studies in geology at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Before his departure, he and Bonnie talked of marriage but made no firm plans. Marathon phone conversations kept them in touch, as did letters, including one in which he simply repeated “I love you” 125 times.
Still, as long-distance relationships are known to do, their romance cooled, and she started seeing other men. She spoke of breaking off with Herrin. He became obsessed.
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In July 1977, he made himself an unwelcome guest in her family’s Scarsdale home, where he hoped to win her back. Herrin could not stand the idea of a life without her or of her marrying someone else.
During the night, instead of staying in the guest room the family had set up for him, he slipped into her room after she went to sleep. He was paging through a “Sports Illustrated” when he hatched his plan.
“Sometime while I was flipping pages and looking at Bonnie, it came to me that I had to kill her and then kill myself.”
The murder was the first in which both killer and victim were Yale students, wrote Peter Meyer in his 1982 book, “The Yale Murder.” It was also a first for the Garlands’ hometown of Scarsdale, an upper-crust community where a crime of this nature was a rarity. There would not be another murder in Scarsdale for nearly four decades.
If the crime itself was stunning, the aftermath left many in disbelief. A nun, Sister Ramona Pena, took pity on Herrin and organized his friends from Yale, the Christian Brothers in Albany, and the Catholic community to rally around him. A Yale pediatrician put her house up as collateral to get him out on bail.
図＝The killing was the subject of a 1982 book.
Sympathy was turning from the girl who had been brutally murdered to the murderer. The victim’s outraged father wrote, “Yale people, past and present, have rushed to the aid and support of the killer, in an organized and systematic manner.”
Herrin’s supporters retained a top New York defense attorney, Jack Litman, who had never lost a homicide case. He agreed to defend Herrin for a very low fee because it was “an obvious human tragedy.”
Herrin’s early hardships, Litman argued, left him with a fear of abandonment that sparked insanity, and that the act was the result of extreme emotional disturbance. Psychiatrists’ testimony backed Litman up.
On June 18, 1978, the jury found him not guilty of murder. He was convicted of a lesser charge ― manslaughter ― which carried a sentence of up to 25 years.
Garland’s parents were outraged. “Richard Herrin successfully got away with murder,” her father said.
Herrin was paroled in 1995, and moved to Socorro, N.M., where he got a job with a local mental health foundation as coordinator for the town’s Safe Community Project.
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Member of University of Tokyo sexual assault gang stands trial
By Roland Shichijo on September 7, 2016
Defendant says that he 'enjoys molesting women with a disheveled look'
TOKYO (TR) – The Tokyo District Court held the first hearing on Monday for case involving a University of Tokyo student who formed a group with his friends and allegedly forced a college girl to strip naked before sexually abusing her, including prodding her anus with chopsticks.
Kensuke Matsumi, 22, who was indicted along with two other University of Tokyo students, said during questioning that he “enjoys molesting women with a disheveled look at drinking parties and forcing them to strip,” Sports Hochi reports (September 5).
Wearing a white shirt with black pants, Matsumi remained stone-faced as he answered questions about the sexual abuse the woman was subjected to.
“I was naive to think I would be forgiven for the atmosphere of the place,” Matsumi told the court.
Prosecutors are seeking a two-year jail term for Matsumi, while the defense is pushing for a ruling with probation because the “crime started because of his seniors’ evil antics.”
Prosecutors argued that the “humiliation and fear that was forced on the woman, who couldn’t escape, will have a long impact. The defendant bears heavy criminal responsibility.”
Gang to assault drunk women
Matsumi and his five-member gang formed a “University of Tokyo birthday research group” in April this year with the goal of sexually assaulting women after getting them drunk, according to prosecutors, who said Matsumi was responsible for organizing the group.
On May 11 sometime past midnight, Matsumi, Yasutomo Komoto, 22, Koki Matsumoto, 23, and two other students forced a female university student to strip before straddling her, forcibly kissing her and dropping hot noodles on her chest. The incident took place at a residence of one of the group members after a night of drinking at an izakaya restaurant.
Matsumoto was charged with assault for slapping the victim’s back with his palms, hard enough to leave a red mark on her back. He reportedly told the group that the woman “has a seriously large rack so it’s OK to touch them.”
The gang also kicked her, blew hot air from a dryer at her genitals while she was crouched down, and prodded her anus with disposable chopsticks, according to the woman’s statements in court.
Matsumi wrote a letter of apology to the woman three times before his indictment and three times afterward, and also tried to offer a settlement through lawyers, but the woman did not respond, the defense said.
“Not a strong drinker”
Matsumi’s mother, who appeared as a witness in court, claimed her son was not a strong drinker and was the type to have two cups of shochu, a distilled spirit, in the evening at home.
But cross-examination revealed that the suspect consumed alcohol and sexually abused the woman.
“I think I had about one sho (1.8 liters) of shochu,” Matsumi told the court. “I think it was an especially big amount.”
When asked if he drank because he was trying to get the woman to drink, Matsumi said he “might’ve felt that way. I did want to liven things up.”
The woman was forced to play a drinking game at the izakaya where she had to drink shochu straight if she lost, or strip, the defense said.
The University of Tokyo has yet to decide on punishment for Matsumi and his gang.
Matsumi has been confined to his home since early June when he was released on bail, and has not attended university.
assault, indecent assault, Japan, molestation, sexual assault, Todai, Tokyo, University of Tokyo, 強制わいせつ, 東京大学
