NEWAYGO COUNTY, Mich. – President Joe Biden has commuted the death penalty sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row, including a Michigan man who was convicted of murdering a 19-year-old woman in 1997.
This converts the punishments to life sentences, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Now, just three men face the death penalty. This includes:
- Dylann Roof, who committed the racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015
- Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber
- Robert Bowers, who shot and killed 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018
Among those whose lives were spared is Marvin Charles Gabrion, who killed a 19-year-old who had accused him of rape.
On March 5, 2002, he was convicted of murdering Rachel Timmerman on federal property.
Timmerman was last seen at her parents' house in Cedar Springs on June 3, 1997.
She had told her father she was going on a date with a man, who had asked her to bring her 11-month-old daughter Shannon with her. While they had planned to be out for a few hours, neither returned home.
Timmerman was found dead on July 5, 1997, in Manistee National Forest in Newaygo County.
Gabrion bound and gagged Timmerman, before weighing her down with concrete blocks and throwing her into a shallow lake, drowning her.
READ MORE: Michigan girl still missing 25 years after mother murdered, found dead in lake; Killer on death row
The body of Timmerman’s 11-month-old has never been found.
Before her death, Timmerman had reported to the Newaygo County Sheriff’s Office that Gabrion had raped her.
She told her mother that she had been scared to report it because Gabrion threatened to kill her and her baby if she did.
He was charged with rape two months later but wasn’t found and arrested until Jan. 20, 1997. Gabrion was jailed until a friend posted bond for him on Feb. 3, 1997.
Timmerman had reported twice to authorities in May 1997 that she had encountered Gabrion and thought he might kill her.
Gabrion is suspected of killing three other people, and according to court documents while he was awaiting trial he gave another prisoner a map of Oxford Lake, on which he had written, “body of 3, 1 found.” Gabrion also told two inmates that he “killed the baby because there was nowhere else to put it,” according to court documents.
The murder was a federal offense because it happened in a national forest.
For more information about the death sentences that were commuted for 37 federal inmates, visit here.
