Bethel, Vt. (AP) -- Two Vermont State police troopers and a retired trooper have been honored in Massachusetts for their work three years ago in catching triple murderer Gary Lee Sampson.
The Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office gave “agent awards” to Lt. Ray Keefe and Sgt. John Helfant of the Bethel barracks, and to retired Detective Sgt. Jeff Cable, at a ceremony last week in the U.S. District Courthouse in Boston.
Keefe accepted the awards at the ceremony.
“It was a great honor,” he said.
Sampson was a drifter from Abingdon, Mass. He was sentenced to death earlier this year after he pleaded guilty to federal carjacking murder charges for killing 19-year-old Jonathan Rizzo and 69-year-old Philip McCloskey in Massachusetts during the same week in July 2001. He also admitted to killing Robert “Eli” Whitney in Meredith, N.H., during the same week and faces separate state charges in New Hampshire for that murder.
In an effort that federal prosecutors said was instrumental in getting the death penalty for Sampson, the three troopers took Sampson into custody in Plymouth at a home he had burglarized. Keefe then taped-recorded long stretches of his interviews with Sampson.
Sampson, 39 at the time, admitted to Keefe that he’d committed the murders over four days in July 2001. Keefe testified at Sampson’s sentencing hearing in Boston in November, and prosecutors played the tapes for a federal jury. At the awards ceremony, Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Gaziano, who prosecuted Sampson, said the killer talked himself into the death penalty on the tapes, Keefe said.