A man who confessed to killing a visiting university professor 17 years ago was found guilty of murder Wednesday.
Jason Lee McCormick confessed in 2008 to the July 1996 strangulation of Robert T. Henderson, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. McCormick, 40, faces a mandatory life prison term with the possibility for parole at sentencing in September.
Circuit Judge Richard Perkins handed down the guilty verdict Wednesday. He heard closing arguments in September in the nonjury trial in which the two sides presented no testimony. They instead asked Perkins to render his verdict based on submitted police and medical reports.
Defense lawyer Michael Green said McCormick never disputed that he killed Henderson.
"He’s been trying to basically confess to this crime for years," Green said.
He said McCormick has been suicidal.
Green said McCormick was hoping that Perkins would find him guilty of manslaughter instead of murder because he claims he committed the slaying in a rage after Henderson talked about having sex with young boys, then made sexual advances toward him. He said McCormick had been molested when he was young.
When police found Henderson’s decomposing body in his rented Waikiki apartment, written on the buttocks in ink was, "I rape little boys so I must die." Police also found a pen stabbed into the back of Henderson’s left leg.
Green said McCormick’s postmortem inscription likely doomed a manslaughter verdict.
But Deputy Prosecutor Darrell Wong said it was not the writing but what McCormick told police detectives.
"He had talked about, ‘Maybe I should beat him up first. Maybe I should put him in a particular sleeper hold,’" said Wong. "And he’s talking about, ‘Well, that’s not painful enough. I need to do more.’"
Those recollections showed he killed with intent and is therefore guilty of murder, said Wong.
McCormick also told police he thought about throwing Henderson off the Waikiki apartment’s 14th-floor lanai but rejected the idea because he knew that would immediately attract police attention to him.
According to the autopsy, Henderson was strangled but also suffered broken bones and cartilage in his neck and a broken vertebra.
McCormick, who has training in jujitsu, told police he snapped Henderson’s neck after choking him into unconsciousness.
Henderson was on Oahu to attend summer seminars at the University of Hawaii.
McCormick first confessed to police to killing Henderson when he was in the Queen’s Medical Center’s Kekela Ward for psychiatric patients. He confessed again three months later, following his discharge from the hospital, because he didn’t think police believed him the first time.
