BOSTON — The families of two Massachusetts murder victims listened to weeks of gruesome testimony about how a hitchhiker carjacked them, tied them up, stabbed them and slit their throats.
Gary Sampson was sentenced to death for his crimes. But 15 years after the killings, his victims’ families will have to hear the grisly details again as a new jury is asked to decide if Sampson deserves the death penalty.
Sampson’s death sentence was thrown out five years ago, and jury selection for a new sentencing trial is set to begin Wednesday in U.S. District Court. Sampson pleaded guilty to the killings, so the new jury will be asked to decide only whether he should get life in prison or the death penalty.
“It’s difficult to reopen that stuff all over again and have to sit there and listen,” said Michael Rizzo, whose 19-year-old son, Jonathan Rizzo, was killed by Sampson.
Sampson was a 41-year-old drifter and career criminal when he went on a weeklong crime rampage in July 2001. He left North Carolina, where he was a suspect in a string of bank robberies, and returned to Abington, a town about 25 miles south of Boston where he grew up.
His first victim was Philip McCloskey, a 69-year-old retired pipefitter from Taunton who picked Sampson up while he was hitchhiking. Sampson later told police he assured McCloskey he only wanted to steal his car, but then tied him up with a belt and stabbed him 24 times.
Next came Rizzo, a 19-year-old college student who gave Sampson a ride after leaving his summer job at a Plymouth restaurant. Sampson told police he tied Rizzo to a tree, stabbed him repeatedly, put a gag in his mouth and left him to die in the woods behind a restaurant.
Sampson was convicted separately in New Hampshire in the murder days later of Robert “Eli” Whitney, a former Concord city councilor.
Massachusetts abolished the death penalty in 1984, but Sampson was prosecuted under federal law. He was sentenced to death in 2003, but that was overturned in 2011 by a judge who found that one of the jurors had lied repeatedly about her background.
Sampson’s sentencing retrial is expected to last about three months and to include testimony similar to his 2003 trial.