Sporting a style fashioned from the movie “No Country For Old Men’s” savage killer, James Mammone III has been found guilty of three murders and several other charges. Not just any run of the mill murder of a stranger for money, not a murder for sex, and not a murder of passion, but a cold blooded, calculated and premeditated act of a killing machine carrying out a spree of violence against his own children and family.
In June of 2008 Marcia Eakin (Mammone) filed for an order of protection and James was arrested on a charge of domestic violence, and according to the court records he made threats to kill her. This order was still in force on June 8, 2009 when James Mammone decided it was time to carry out his murder plan that had been in the works for a year. His motive was to "inflict emotional pain" upon his ex-wife, and how better to do that than to kill the very beings that were her life, her children, her mother, the man she was dating, and ultimately Marcia herself.
Question for the judges and attorneys who may be reading this: "Should a person who is under an order of protection, has made threats to kill, and has been arrested for violence, be granted unsupervised visitations with their children? How did someone convicted of domestic violence have access to weapons?"
The marriage between James and his wife, Marcia, was over. Marcia had to file for divorce in secret, keeping all knowledge and documentation away from James and their home. James discovered her plans and, according to her trial testimony, he said to the children, "It was time for mommy to go to her grave" as well as telling Marcia "If you leave me, I will kill you and the children." Marcia was granted the divorce and moved to a location that was undisclosed to James for her safety per the divorce agreement. The visitation exchanges of the children, 3 and 5, were ordered to be made at the home of Margaret Eakin, Marcia's mother.
The day of June 8, Marcia and James met at her mother's, exchanged the children and she played tennis with her friend, Harold Benjamin Carter. She started receiving text messages from James in rapid succession, asking her to meet him and the children for ice cream, then escalating to a level that seriously concerned Marcia and her friend. Marcia called 911 when he told her he "was ready to die for my love tonight." The final text message from James read, "Last chance."
While Marcia and her friend, along with police and other personal friends were scouring the area searching for his car, James Mammone, according to his plan, took his two children, strapped in their car seats, to the parking lot of the Westminster Community Church and brutally stabbed each one of them in their necks. But he was not finished with this night of terror.
He then drove to the home of his children's grandmother, found her in a bedroom and shot her, then beat her with a metal lamp. Her husband, Marcia's father, escaped being killed by minutes, according to Mammone himself.
As all of this horror is playing out, Marcia had no idea what was transpiring. She and her friend return to her home. At around 5:30 am, James Mammone is found pouring gasoline all over the truck belonging to Harold Benjamin Carter and trying to set it on fire. Marcia once again alerts 911, saying that he also was trying to get into the house. You can hear the call HERE. Mammone fails at setting the truck on fire, and leaves the area with his two dead children still strapped in their car seats.
Police finally caught up with James Mammone entering his own driveway. He was cooperative at the time of his arrest and confessed to the killings because he wanted to "inflict deep emotional pain upon his ex-wife." James Mammone lost his power and control over his wife and children, but in the final, desperate act of exerting his "manhood" he willfully became a killing machine, the "Mammone Monster," in the same way Matthew Schneider did when he murdered his ex-wife, Brandy Schneider in the same Stark County, Ohio area just weeks ago. Brandy also lost her life to a system which doesn't take "protection" seriously and allows women and children to die needlessly at the hands of a proven abuser.
There are many steps along the process of escaping a violent relationship that victims should be given clear and concise instruction on how to keep themselves and their children safe. It should be the standard when anyone has applied for an order of protection, has been hospitalized for injuries inflicted, or even when police are called to a home. Women (men) and children do not need to die at the hands of a manipulative, controlling abuser.
