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Lesley Lee GOSCH
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Extortion
attempt
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder:
September 18,
1985
Date of arrest: 7 days after
Date of birth: July
8,
1955
Victim profile: Rebecca Jo Patton
(female, 42)
Method of murder:
Shooting
(.22-caliber pistol)
Location: Bexar County, Texas, USA
Status: Executed
by lethal injection in Texas on April 24,
1998
Lesley Lee Gosch, a former Eagle Scout, was convicted
of killing the wife of a San Antonio bank president in a botched
extortion attempt. He shot Rebecca Jo Patton in the head 6 times with a
handgun.
The key evidence against Gosch came from his partner in crime,
John Lawrence Rogers, who testified against him in exchange for a
lighter sentence. Gosch's attorney later told the press that Rogers's
testimony was given in retaliation for a statement Gosch made against
Rogers in an earlier trial.
Coke-bottle-thick lenses in prison-issue frames drew
attention to his eyes, giving him a gnomish appearance. He had lost one
eye & the tips of his fingers in an accident, when a chemical used
to make blasting caps exploded.
"My vision is so bad that my right eye is...I
lost it in 1977 & my left one, they've taken the lens out. That's
why I wear these cataract glasses. I take my glasses off & I'm
legally blind."
We joked about the lighter side of prison life. Gosch
told a story about a practical joke that he played on one of the guards.
"We had a new officer working the wing & ...I
was feeling particularly frustrated that day, so I took my eye out &
put it in the carrots on my food tray & called him back over &
said, "Look, I want another tray. I don't know where the rest of
him is, but I ain't eating this part of it." I've had a lot of fun
with my prosthesis."
Despite this sense of humor, Lesley is a loner. On
death row, activity is a matter of choice. Some have a social life;
others seek invisibility.
Gosch has become something of an artist, teaching
himself an intricate pointillist technique using pen & ink. Because
of his failing eyesight, he works with his nose only an inch or two from
the canvas.
"I started drawing when I was in county jail....They
gave us a few pencils & pens & tablets....The walls in my cell
were made out of steel with enamel paint. You could draw on them with
your pencils. So, I started drawing on the wall & went from there.
And after I got down here, I got to where I could get a few art books
& they allowed a whole-lot-greater variety of materials."
Trained as an electrical engineer at Texas A&M
& the University of Texas at San Antonio, Gosch is a bright, well-educated
man, with well-reasoned opinions on crime & punishment. Most
interesting to me, though, were his ideas about art.
"Art, for me, is a form of communication with a
high path applied to it. Everybody communicates but the craftsmanship's
in the communications-everybody can speak, but not everybody can speak
in pictures...in some form of high craft. It's been said, over the years,
that art is to the highest craftsman. And it's true."
It must be difficult to come to art while in prison,
to develop an aesthetic under such adverse conditions. Did Gosch take up
the challenge or was it just a way of passing the time? Either way it
must be an obsession, a kind of mental gymnastics that has the effect of
keeping his mind off his surroundings & his ultimate fate.
"I guess it's just the pressure of not knowing.
The fear it generates. You don't know what the outcome is going to be
& you're just in constant limbo."
I don't know if the real man was hidden behind his
large glasses, or if his aversion to the constant limbo of death row
made him look harmeless. In his manner & his way of speaking I
sensed only his confusion & despair.
I have no doubt that the United States will untimately
reject the death penalty, that future generations will look back &
wonder, "Who were those executioners? How could our ancestors have
tolerated such irrational behavior?" The change will not come
easily; the issue is extraordinarily complex. Democracy is hard.
FotoJones.com
Gosch, 42, was pronounced dead at 6:38 pm, 11 minutes
after the lethal dose began.
He had no final statement, and made no eye contact
with any of the witnesses, including Amy Grammer, daughter of the woman
he was convicted of killing.
Gosch gasped slightly once and took a couple of deep
breaths, but made no further sound.
Gosch, a former Eagle Scout, was awaiting sentencing
for manufacturing illegal gun silencers when testimony showed he killed
Rebecca Jo Patton at her suburban San Antonio home.
Prosecutors said he was the mastermind of the Sept.
15, 1985 extortion scheme that resulted in Mrs. Patton, 42, being shot 6
imes in the head with a .22-caliber pistol.
Testimony at his trial showed he planned to abduct the
mother of 2 for ransom so he could get money to pay for a flight to
Belize to avoid a prison sentence for a federal firearms conviction.
Gosch had pleaded guilty a month earlier to charges of
manufacturing and selling gun silences. He had been scheduled for
sentencing earlier in September 1985 but failed to appear. He also had
previous convictions in 1972 for a pair of pharmacy robberies in San
Antonio.
Mrs. Patton invited Gosch into her home after he
showed up impersonating a flower delivery man. He ordered her to call
her husband, Frank, president of the Castle Hill National Bank, and
demanded the banker fill a briefcase with $50 and $100 bills. Frank
Patton called police.
The extortionist had instructed Patton to take the
cash to a San Antonio shopping mall and await instructions, but a
promised telephone call there never came. Instead, Mrs. Patton was found
dead at her home.
Gosch and another man, John Rogers, were arrested a
week later for the slaying after an informant turned over to police the
murder weapon and other items. Rogers testified against Gosch and
received a 45-year prison term while Gosch received the death penalty.
Leslie Gosch
Prosecutors said
Leslie Gosch was the mastermind of the Sept. 15, 1985 extortion
scheme that resulted in Rebecca Jo Patton, 42, being shot 6
times in the head with a .22-caliber pistol.
Testimony at Gosch's
trial showed he planned to abduct the mother of two for ransom so he
could get money to pay for a flight to Belize to avoid a prison sentence
for a federal firearms conviction. Gosch had pleaded guilty a month
earlier to charges of manufacturing and selling gun silencers. He had
been scheduled for sentencing earlier in September 1985 but failed to
appear. He also had previous convictions in 1972 for a pair of pharmacy
robberies in San Antonio.
Mrs. Patton invited
Gosch into her home after he showed up impersonating a flower delivery
man. He ordered the woman to call her husband, Frank, president of the
Castle Hills National Bank, and demanded the banker fill a briefcase
with $50 and $100 bills. Frank Patton called police.
The extortionist had
instructed Patton to take the cash to a San Antonio shopping mall and
await instructions, but a promised telephone call there never came.
Instead, Mrs. Patton was found dead at her home.
Gosch and another man,
John Rogers, were arrested a week later for the slaying after an
informant turned over to police the murder weapon and other items.
Rogers testified against Gosch and received a 45-year prison term while
Gosch received the death penalty.
Gosch gets late stay after
arguments rejected
By Michael Graczyk - Associated Press Writer
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A condemned Texas inmate awaiting
execution for a botched extortion attempt received an 11th-hour reprieve
Thursday night as he was awaiting transfer to the Texas death chamber,
his attorney said.
The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution of Lesley
Lee Gosch, 42, after lower federal courts had rejected arguments that
the execution, the first of the year for Texas, should be stopped.
"I've never had anything remotely as good as this
happen in seven years of doing capital cases," Raoul Schoenemann,
Gosch's attorney, said.
It was the second last-minute stay of execution for
Gosch, a former Eagle Scout who was awaiting sentencing for
manufacturing illegal gun silencers when he killed Rebecca Jo Patton at
her suburban San Antonio home.
In 1993, Gosch came within 20 minutes of lethal
injection before winning a court reprieve. This time the reprieve came
about 6:45 p.m. CST, or about 45 minutes after the lethal injection
could have started.
Prison officials routinely refrain from beginning the
execution process until all legal attempts have been resolved.
Schonemann said the high court agreed with his
argument that it should review the way the state sets execution dates.
"He is being removed from a holding cell adjacent to
execution chamber and is being taken back to his cell on death row,"
Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Larry Fitzgerald said.
There was no immediate word on Gosch's reaction to
the reprieve.
Gosch's attorneys had raised claimed earlier Thursday
regarding three constitutional issues, including that his trial attorney
was ineffective, that a key witness was not truthful and that the
state's practice of repeatedly setting execution dates to accelerate
death penalty appeals constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Schonemann said he had not seen the high court's
ruling but understood the date setting issue was the one the court
wanted to look at.
"It's pretty unusual," the lawyer said.
Last year, the state put to death a record 37
convicted killers and Gosch was among at least 15 inmates with execution
dates set so far for 1998. Among them is Karla Faye Tucker, whose Feb. 3
execution would be the first for a woman in Texas since the Civil War
and only the second in the nation since the Supreme Court allowed
capital punishment to resume in 1976.
Prosecutors said Gosch was the mastermind of the
Sept. 15, 1985 extortion scheme that left Mrs. Patton, 42, dead. She was
shot six times in the head with a .22-caliber pistol.
"This will be my only chance to look that man in the
eyes," Amy Grammer, who was 15 when her mother was killed and who
planned to attend the execution, told the San Antonio Express-News. "I
want to see how a person could do something like that."
"I graduated from high school and college without my
mom," Mrs. Grammer, who lives in Lawrence, Kan., said. "I had to have my
wedding without my mom. I never got to know my mom as a person. I missed
all that and I am still missing stuff."
Mrs. Grammer was awaiting her trip to the death
chamber in a holding room across the street from the prison when word
came about the reprieve. She declined to comment.
Testimony at Gosch's trial, moved from San Antonio to
Victoria on a change of venue, showed he planned to abduct Mrs. Patton
for ransom so he could get money to pay for a flight to Belize to avoid
a prison sentence for a federal firearms conviction.
Gosch had pleaded guilty a month earlier to charges
of manufacturing and selling gun silencers. He had been scheduled for
sentencing earlier in September 1985 but failed to appear. He also had
previous convictions in 1972 for a pair of pharmacy robberies in San
Antonio.
Mrs. Patton invited Gosch into her home after he
showed up impersonating a flower delivery man. He ordered the woman to
call her husband of 17 years, Frank, president of the Castle Hills
National Bank, and demanded the banker fill a briefcase with $50 and
$100 bills. Frank Patton called police.
The extortionist had instructed Patton to take the
cash to a San Antonio shopping mall and await instructions, but a
promised telephone call there never came. Instead, Mrs. Patton was found
dead at her home.
Gosch and another man, John Rogers, were arrested a
week later for the slaying after an informant turned over to police the
murder weapon and other items.
Rogers testified against Gosch and received a 45-year
prison term while Gosch received the death penalty.
Gosch's adoptive father testified his son had been
active in school activities, was an Eagle Scout and adept in science and
gunsmithing. The man also testified Gosch would experiment with
explosives until an experiment with nitroglycerin went awry and left his
son blind in one eye and with a disfigured hand.
