|
|
|
About MARIAL
Confessed Killer Tells What Led to Guilty Plea By Jessie Seyfer Seti Scanlan said Friday he is ready to die for his sins. The 25-year-old Mountain View man -- who unexpectedly pleaded guilty Thursday to killing a mother of two, shooting a cop in the face and committing a raft of armed robberies -- said it would be an "honor" to be sentenced to death for his crimes. In an interview with the Mercury News at the San Mateo County jail in Redwood City, Scanlan explained that he changed his plea because the guilt over having murdered 31-year-old Alice Martel during a Burlingame bank heist in October was eating him up. "It'll be an honor to receive the death penalty for someone beautiful who left this world, and who is always going to be far more worthy of breathing than I am," Scanlan said. "Mrs. Martel left two sons behind. . . . Because of me there was no trick-or-treating with their mom. No Thanksgiving with Mom. There's no Christmas with Mom. No Easter. That hurts. I have to live with that every day of my life." Scanlan said Martel's shooting was accidental. "I didn't go into the bank that day and say, 'Oh, there's a lady in here that I'm going to go kill,'" he said. ``I did what I had to do to rob the bank. I shot through a door -- a warning shot -- hoping she would come out and say, 'Oh, I'm not going to press no alarms.' By the time I ran up to the door and opened it, she was on the floor." Scanlan said he also feels remorse over shooting Mountain View officer Cary Shueh in the cheek during a Nov. 1 chase. Shueh has since returned to duty. "I apologize sincerely and publicly to everybody I've hurt," he said. Scanlan surrendered to authorities Nov. 7 while on the run in Oregon, after a crime spree that spanned three Bay Area counties. Four of his friends still face charges. Scanlan said he will not testify against them. Dressed in a sleeveless, green heavy-fabric gown designed to keep him from harming himself, Scanlan insisted he didn't plead guilty to avoid the death penalty, but out of religious and Samoan pride. "What I did yesterday I did because I followed my heart," he said. "I'm a soldier of God now. . . . In my culture there's a saying: God first." Bradd Shore, a professor of anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta who has studied Samoa extensively, said Scanlan's plea drew on centuries-old societal norms that require Samoans to take full and public responsibility for their actions. Shore cautioned that cultural explanations for Scanlan's confession merely provide a context in which to place his character and violent history. "He's clearly concerned with respect, but whether he's using it as a move to get sympathy from the jury, I just wouldn't know," Shore said. Over the next several weeks, San Mateo County District Attorney Jim Fox and a small group of prosecutors and Burlingame police officers are expected to investigate Scanlan's background, confer with his lawyers and speak with Alice Martel's husband, David. Then Fox will decide whether to seek the death penalty. Born in San Francisco, Scanlan moved to his family's homeland of Samoa when he was about 7, he said. His mother and his father, a former U.S. Marine, were having money troubles and wanted to give Scanlan and his eight siblings a simpler life, he said. Island life, with its religious structure and open-armed neighborliness, was "paradise," Scanlan said. But Scanlan family discipline was harsh, and his father's alcoholism made it worse, he said. When Scanlan was 9, his father died of a heart attack, sending his mother into an alcoholic depression. Scanlan said at that point he began to commit petty crimes with his friends, and he considered himself an "orphan." When he was 16, the family returned to California, and Scanlan lived in San Francisco's Hunter's Point neighborhood and in East Oakland. He graduated from high school and began committing robberies off and on, whenever legitimate jobs went sour. "When it came to morals, it got to the point that I believed what I was doing was right," Scanlan said. Martel's death pushed him even further from his conscience, he said. Finally, Scanlan said, his morals kicked in and he stopped running. "I brought honor back to my people," he said, adding that coming clean is the least he can do for his family and for the Martels. "She had a life," he said. "She had everything. And here comes this low-life thug, steals a couple thousand dollars. It's just a big mess. Let her soul rest in peace." Mercury News Staff Writers Joshua L. Kwan and Sean Webby contributed
to this report. Contact Jessie Seyfer at jseyfer@mercurynews.com
or (650) 688-7531. < More MARIAL in the News |