GUILTY AZ - Bessie Graham, 85, beaten & strangled in her Willcox home, 5 July 1996

http://www.willcoxrangenews.com/articles/2006/06/13/news/news1.txt

While I'm glad this case has been solved and the family has some type of closure, I hate that he is being convicted of only second degree murder! This woman was brutally killed and the sentance will not be long enough to keep him in prison for the rest of his life. IMO he should be kept caged with no possibility of ever walking free again.

snip> Almost 10 years to the day after 85-year-old Bessie Graham was brutally murdered, Alejandro Gutierrez will be sentenced for the crime.

Gutierrez, 48, was charged with first-degree murder in January 2002 after DNA evidence pointed to the Willcox man's involvement in the July 5, 1996 slaying at Graham's home on Arizona Avenue.

Following several years of the appellate process, Gutierrez accepted a plea agreement on May 22 convicting him of second-degree murder in the case. After Gutierrez was charged with first-degree murder, the judge suppressed a portion of testimony by a witness who had been hypnotized in order to help her recollections, said Cochise County Attorney Ed Rheinheimer.

More at link.
Old Broad

From July 2006:

http://www.willcoxrangenews.com/news/article_135d7910-5cad-564b-a298-8d544b6fd12c.html

Ten years after he brutally beat and strangled 85-year-old Bessie Graham in her Willcox home, a man who was eventually linked by DNA evidence to the crime was sentenced Monday to 22 years in prison for second-degree murder...

Graham was found dead in her home by her son on July 5, 1996. An autopsy by the county medical examiner concluded that the 85-lb. woman died the day before of asphyxia due to strangulation and suffocation, and that she had been severely beaten as well. Her eye bones were fractured, her nose was crushed and her jaw was fractured in two places, among other injuries.

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