NH man convicted of murder for killing landlord to steal truck, trade for motorcycle

NH man convicted of killing landlord for truck

BRENTWOOD, N.H. — A jury convicted a New Hampshire man Thursday of beating his landlord to death with a hammer to steal his new pickup truck, and rejected the defendant’s claims he acted in self-defense when the landlord tried to rape him.

The Rockingham County Superior Court jury found Paul McDonald guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Richard Wilcox, 54.

McDonald, 50, was immediately sentenced to an automatic life term in prison, as required under state law. He’s been jailed without bail since his arrest in June 2008. Some of Wilcox’s relatives applauded at sentencing.

“Making others his victims is his chosen, distinctive way of living,” Wilcox’s sister, Elaine Wilcox-Tremblay, said in a statement read in court before sentencing. “He is totally corrupt. All that he has stolen and destroyed can never be replaced.”

McDonald admitted that he killed Wilcox at his landlord’s Danville home, and that he planned to steal the truck, but said he never intended the killing. Defense attorneys said McDonald and Wilcox had shared some beers, and McDonald awoke to find Wilcox raping him. They said he reacted with emotional rage and shock.

Prosecutors called McDonald an opportunist who didn’t count on Wilcox resisting, and said he was obsessed with stealing Wilcox’s truck so he could trade it for a motorcycle. The victim died with 19 hammer wounds to his head. Senior Assistant Attorney General Will Delker said the jury paid close attention to the facts, and that the outcome “represents justice in light of the brutality of the attack and senseless nature of Richard’s death.”

In closing arguments, Delker said Wilcox “had a will to live and wouldn’t give up, and the defendant needed to finish what he had started.”

Delker said there were no beer cans and no signs of a struggle in the living room. He said McDonald’s story about being asleep in the chair while Wilcox unbuttoned and pulled down McDonald’s pants was “totally ludicrous.”

Weeks before Wilcox died, prosecutors said, McDonald was scouting out an old Shovelhead Harley-Davidson motorcycle at an auto dealership. McDonald had introduced himself as Wilcox and said he wanted to trade in a new pickup truck for the bike. He made subsequent visits, eventually showing the dealer the title to Wilcox’s truck. But when asked to produce the truck, McDonald stalled, prosecutors said.

After the slaying, McDonald left the house in Wilcox’s truck and went to the auto dealer to trade it in for the bike. He signed the paperwork as Richard Wilcox.

Police said they found evidence implicating McDonald at the killing scene, including bloody footprints and a hammer that had Wilcox’s DNA on it. McDonald was tracked through cell phone records and was arrested in Vermont a week after the slaying.

Wilcox’s 90-year-old mother, Rosamond Wilcox, said in a statement read in court that the past couple of years had been “a gray, hopeless time.”

“I can’t conceive how a human being can kill another, especially after befriending one,” she said. “This person has removed any peace or pleasure I may have had.”