The trio found a .32 caliber Derringer, which Keene used to shoot and kill Wilkerson by discharging the gun at his chest, with blankets covering the body to muffle the noise.
[6][8] Taylor, Keene and Smith, who were all armed with guns, went walking together and they chanced upon Gullette, who was calling someone on a pay phone.
[6][8] At the time of her death, Gullette was a high school senior and part-time fast food restaurant employee who had a two-year-old daughter.
[6][9] On the early morning of December 26, 1992, a day after Maddox's murder, the gang went to rob a grocery store and shot three people, which resulted in the death of 38-year-old Sarah Abraham and the wounding of one man.
[6][8] On that day itself, after the gang robbed a woman named Kathie Henderson and stole her car, they went to a grocery store with intent to commit armed robbery.
After Abraham complied and gave Keene US$40, Keene shot Abraham on the head and simultaneously, Smith also shot at Thompson and another man named Jones Pettus, who was a customer of the store; Pettus sustained a gunshot wound to his abdomen but Thompson was not hurt due to the bullet missed him.
[6][8] After picking up Washington and Cottrill, the gang drove to a gravel pit in Dayton and forced the pair out of the car.
[10] On December 26, 1992, the same date when the murders of Sarah Abraham, Wendy Cottrill and Marvin Washington happened, the police arrested the gang some 72 hours after the first killing of Joseph Wilkerson.
[6][9] After their arrests, the two adult offenders, Heather Matthews and Marvallous Keene, were both arraigned in the Dayton Municipal Court to face charges of aggravated murder and robbery, and they were each ordered to be held on a cash bond of $5 million.
Heck sought the approval to try both Smith and Taylor as adults, which may carry at least a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
[9] On October 28, 1993, the three judges opted to impose the death penalty for each count of murder but adjourned the sentencing to a later date.
Keene also submitted that the surviving witness Kathie Henderson's pre-trial identification of him as the shooter was unduly suggestive and it violated his due process rights.
It was noted that Matthews faced only two counts of murder and while she was involved, the evidence did not affirmatively suggest that she intended to cause the death of these two victims, and Keene himself personally murdered at least four of the victims, and hence the decision to seek the death penalty solely against Keene was not proven to be racially motivated.
In fact, the Ohio Supreme Court had rejected similar arguments of racial bias and unfair trial practices from Keene back in 1998.
[36] On the other hand, both DeMarcus Smith and Heather Matthews did not appeal with respect to their cases, and remained in prison serving their life sentences.
[6] More than 16 years after the murders, on April 9, 2009, state prosecutors filed applications to the Ohio Supreme Court to schedule the execution date of Marvallous Keene, who had exhausted all his avenues of appeal at this point in time.
The hearing convened before a seven-member panel of the Ohio Parole Board, who heard the case to decide whether to recommend clemency.
During the hearing, Keene directed his lawyers Kelly Schneider and Rachel Troutman to not submit any evidence in mitigation, so as to not prolong the pain of his victim's surviving kin.
[41] As part of the opposition to clemency, both Carley Ingram, the appellate division chief for the Montgomery County prosecutor's office, and Assistant Attorney General Thomas Madden urged the board to consider the gravity of the crimes, for which Keene's guilt was not put in question and affirmed by the courts.
The Ohio governor Ted Strickland similarly concurred with the board's findings and declined to grant clemency to Keene a week before he was to be executed.
[42] After the loss of his clemency plea, during his final days on death row, Keene did not file any last-minute appeals to stave off his execution.
[46] On July 21, 2009, 36-year-old Marvallous Keene was put to death via lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.
Keene was also the 1,171st death row convict to be put to death since the 1976 resumption of capital punishment in the U.S.[47][48] Prior to his execution, Keene ordered a final meal of one Porterhouse steak with A-1 sauce, one pound of jumbo fried shrimp with cocktail sauce, French fries and onion rings, a tube of Pillsbury dinner rolls and butter, two plums, a mango, one pound of seedless white grapes, German chocolate cake, two bottles of Pepsi and two bottles of A&W Cream Soda.
[52] In the aftermath of Marvallous Keene's execution, his three surviving accomplices – Heather Matthews, Laura Taylor and DeMarcus Smith – remains in prison serving their sentences.
Both Taylor and Matthews are detained at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville as of 2021, while Smith was serving his life sentence at the Mansfield Correctional Institute as of 2021.
Matthews told The Columbus Dispatch that while she acknowledged the impact of her crimes and was resigned to the fact that she would continue to be locked away for life, she did not want her imprisonment to define who she is presently and that was of importance to her personally.
[54][55] Close to 32 years after the killings, Smith, who was also a minor when the murders happened, was similarly set to be assessed for parole eligibility on January 1, 2025.
[58] In 2018, a book covering the real-life details of the 1992 Dayton Christmas murders, titled The Christmas Killings: 40 Hours to Justice: Black and White, was published by the Dayton Police History Foundation and co-authored by Stephen C. Grismer, Judith M. Monseur and Dennis A.