Justice reform is needed.
Via Tampa Bay Times:
Warren Birkbeck went to prison in 2000 for slashing his estranged wife’s throat in a New Hampshire condo. Decades earlier, authorities say, he was convicted of manslaughter in Massachusetts.
Now, two years after his release from prison, the 71-year-old man is accused of killing a third person, this time in Pasco County.
Birkbeck was booked on a charge of premeditated murder Wednesday after telling deputies that he stabbed a female roommate three to four times in the chest. He explained that he was in love with the victim, 42-year-old Denise Cook, but that she didn’t feel the same way.
“I just have a hard time being rejected,” he said, according to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.
The attack happened just after 3 a.m. Wednesday in a home on Trask Drive in Holiday that was shared by three unrelated adults.
Cook died at the scene. Birkbeck was held without bail at the Pasco County Jail. He was still on probation from the New Hampshire killing, which, after a plea agreement, produced his second manslaughter conviction.
“There’s no other way to say this: He’s a killer,” Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said at a news conference, where he listed Birkbeck’s past convictions. “He has a history of killing people.”
An Associated Press report from 2000 details the New Hampshire stabbing. The circumstances of the Massachusetts conviction were not immediately available.
Birkbeck moved to Florida two years ago after his release from prison to live with his sister, also on Trask Drive.
After his sister died, neighbor Lillian Meyer, 85, took him in, the sheriff said. The church organist, known for her willingness to help others, also took in Cook. A friend said the two women attended church together.
Birkbeck has been under the supervision of the Florida Department of Corrections since Oct. 14, 2015, state records show. He has checked into his local probation office monthly since then, according to agency press secretary Ashley Cook, who called the event “tragic.”
She said he last met with a DOC officer on July 12, and that an officer had previously visited the residence unannounced.
Holiday neighbor April Sullivan, 42, said this is the first she’s learning about Birkbeck’s past.
“I’ve never seen a parole officer pull up in front of that house,” she said. “Who’s watching him?”
The neighbor said she felt uncomfortable around Birkbeck. Something felt off the few times he would stop to chat or try to give her bags of old clothes.
Now she wants to know why others who knew Birkbeck’s past didn’t seem more concerned.
“This is a system failure issue,” she said.