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Five murders, five life terms

Without explanation for killing his grandmother and four others, a man pleads guilty.

By COLLEEN JENKINS
Published October 12, 2006

TAMPA - For 14 months, Dexter Levingston didn't speak.

Not about the five bloody bodies found Oct. 20, 2000, inside his Seffner home or the gun he bought from a pawn shop just before the deaths.

Even when words finally came, explanations didn't.

But Wednesday, after six years of psychological exams, medications and expert opinions on his sanity, Levingston said the one word authorities and the victims' family wanted to hear.

"Guilty."

A few minutes later, a judge sentenced the 31-year-old to five consecutive life prison sentences. Levingston, who can speak despite being almost completely deaf from spinal meningitis during infancy, showed no reaction as he read his fate on an interpreter's computer screen.

His guilty plea brought a quiet, even anticlimatic, ending to one of the worst multiple murders in Hillsborough County history.

Forensic evidence convinced investigators that Levingston, then 25, killed his grandmother, a young girl in her care and three other housemates using a machete, scissors, a screwdriver, a knife and two guns.

Why he did it, if anyone knows, has not been revealed.

Levingston had a small-time criminal record in October 2000, small enough that he was eligible to buy a gun from a Brandon pawn shop after a three-day waiting period.

He picked up the gun Oct. 19, prosecutor Jay Pruner said. That was the last day anyone saw his victims alive.

Inside his grandmother's tidy blue-and-white home on Lakewood Drive, Levingston waited for the victims to return home from school or work. First came his grandmother, 57-year-old Nancy Marlins, a school bus aide for disabled children who had opened her home to family members in need.

Levingston had lived with her on and off since age 15. Investigators found her shot and hacked in the neck with a machete.

Then came 12-year-old Michele Murtha, a mentally disabled girl in Marlins' care. Her neck was slashed with a knife that deputies located in the kitchen sink.

The last three victims - Barry and Lillie Cacciamani and Lillie's 40-year-old daughter, Connie Carter - were piled atop one another in the garage.

Lillie Cacciamani, Marlins' 56-year-old sister, was stabbed in the neck and face with a screwdriver and scissors. Barry Cacciamani, 47, with whom Levingston was said to have had an increasingly tense relationship, was shot, as was Carter. Blood spatter suggested a struggle.

Levingston was crouched in the garage with a gun in his hand when deputies arrived. They drove him out of the home with tear gas.

Investigators found a half-eaten plate of chicken on the kitchen countertop, with a manual on how to fire a semiautomatic handgun propped against it.

"He stayed in the house with those five bodies and cooked dinner for himself," Pruner said.

Signs that he might be deeply troubled quickly appeared. He stayed silent during six hours of questioning. He seemed strangely disoriented during jail visits with his family.

In March 2001, experts found Levingston mentally unfit to stand trial. Off he went to the state mental hospital, where he was prescribed a mix of antipsychotic drugs. He didn't speak until December 2001.

Some of the victims' family members felt he was faking his mental problems. But after three years of close observation, doctors decided his illness was real. They diagnosed him with an autoimmune disease that can trigger neurological problems and schizoaffective disorder, a mixture of a mood disorder and schizophrenia.

By fall 2004, mental health experts decided that Levingston was competent to go to trial. A year later, his defense team indicated to the state that it would try to convince jurors that Levingston was insane during the killings.

Four experts evaluated Levingston and agreed that he was mentally ill at the time of the killings. But they were evenly split on whether he was legally insane; the defense experts said he was, the state's experts said he wasn't.

John Skye, Levingston's attorney, said those odds weren't good enough. The state wanted the death penalty, and Levingston didn't want to gamble with his life.

"There was a substantial dispute as to whether that rose to the level of insanity," Skye said. "This path" - the plea agreement - "was the one that Mr. Levingston wanted to take."

William Dennis, Levingston's stepfather, was the only family member who attended Wednesday's hearing. He said his stepson looked better than he had in a long time, though the stepfather still did not feel right about the plea.

"He loved his grandmother," Dennis Levingston said. "I don't see a motive. I don't see why Dexter would have done this."

Tom and Patricia Murtha, Michele's parents, were out of the country Wednesday and could not be reached. They had placed their daughter in Marlins' care, expecting her stay to be supervised by the state until a spot opened for her in a group home.

The Charlotte County couple settled their lawsuit last year against the Department of Children and Families. They claimed the agency jeopardized their daughter's safety by failing to adequately monitor the home.

Their attorney, Richard Hirsch, said the confidential settlement included a "six-figure recovery." The delay in resolving both the civil and criminal cases had long frustrated the grieving parents, he said.

"This was a brutal, horrible crime," he said. "Their view is that he was nothing short of an animal."

Colleen Jenkins can be reached at 813 226-3337 or cjenkins@sptimes.com.

[Last modified October 12, 2006, 00:57:46]