SEATTLE -- Admitting that no words can undo his horrific crimes, Joseph McEnroe still felt the need to apologize. Looking wracked with anxiety, McEnroe said he hoped his words might in some way help soothe the ongoing agony felt by those left in the wreckage of what he did.
"I am not trying to absolve nor excuse myself for my failure and my part in your grief," he said. "It is simply part of my debt to you, all of you, and those I've killed."
McEnroe shot six members of his then-girlfriend's family in the head, including two children, on Christmas Eve of 2007. His attorneys maintain McEnroe is mentally ill and was under the control of his girlfriend and her paranoid delusions, believing her family was out to get her. In a letter he read in court on Tuesday, McEnroe apologized directly to family and friends of his victims.
"I'm sorry for the holes I've created in your lives. I'm sorry that Wayne, Judy, Scott, Erica, Nathan and Olivia, all better people than I, are dead by my actions, by my failure."
Outside the courtroom, Pam Mantle, who lost her daughter and two grandchildren to the gruesome violence, flatly rejected the apology that was more than seven years in coming.
"I just don't believe anything he says," said Mantle. "I think he's a liar."
The jury is expected to begin deliberation on Wednesday. They can sentence McEnroe to life in prison or to death row.
Convicted several weeks ago for the killings, McEnroe testified that he wants to live because he hopes to counsel others in prison and salvage some good from his life.
Pam Mantle says she's just spent and doesn't really care anymore whether McEnroe lives or dies.
"I think (death) would be an easy way out for him," she said. "On the other hand, I just don't think I can take another 15 years of appeals and trials and looking at him every day. I'm just pretty done."
Related stories: KING 5 coverage of the Joseph McEnroe murder trial
