A judge in Iowa wasn’t playing around with due justice when he sentenced a white man to life in prison for the brutal murder of a Black man.
44-year-old Michael Williams’ body was found burning in a rural ditch last year, BET reported.
On Monday, Steven Vogel, 32, was sentenced at the Poweshiek County Courthouse by Judge Shawn Showers, who labeled Vogel as a “cold-blooded murderer.”
“You’re a cold-blooded murderer with hate in your heart,” Showers told Vogel. “These sentences are made for people like you who commit these horrific offenses and take others’ lives without any regard for consequences.”
Investigators admitted there wasn’t enough evidence that the killing was racially motivated, but the victim’s family members have called it a “lynching.”
“It’s putting that rope around his neck and holding it for over six minutes, causing his death, is the definition of a hanging. A lynching,” Williams’ aunt, Paula Terrell told IPR. “A white man lynched a Black man over a white woman.”
Vogel was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In November, an all-white jury in Keokuk County unanimously found him guilty of first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse. Vogel’s heinous crime also landed him five years for the mutilation of Williams’ body.
Williams’ family says he was a loving father and grandfather who lived in Iowa to be closer to his children.
According to court testimony from witnesses and a medical examiner, Vogel beat Williams. He then hanged him until he died. He kept Williams’ body in his basement for days and even showed it off to his friends before dumping it in a ditch and setting it on fire.
Vogel’s mother, Julia Cox, and her boyfriend, Roy Lee Garner, have been accused of helping Vogel move the body and burning it. Both were charged with one count each of abuse of a corpse, destruction of evidence, and accessory after the fact.
“You treated Michael Williams like he was not human,” Showers said. “You clubbed him. Strangled him to death. Kept him in your basement like an animal that you would kill. You wrapped up his body, set it on fire. And you dehumanized Michael Williams. And Mr. Williams did not deserve that.”
Williams’s family members were appreciative of the efforts of the judge, jury, witnesses, and prosecution. However, they question Iowa’s hate crimes laws and want to see them reformed.
“You thought you would get away with what you did,” Dante Williams, Michael’s son, told Vogel when family members gave statements. “You thought people didn’t care enough about him to research and find out what really happened. That is not the case. There’s a lot of love behind my father.”
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