Man is given life twice for killing grandmother, aunt

By MOLLY MOORHEAD, Times Staff Writer
Published September 21, 2007

Standing beside his attorney Charles Lykes (left), Joshua James Engel, 30, watches as the jury is polled after being found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder.
	[STEPHEN J. CODDINGTON | Times]

NEW PORT RICHEY - Defense attorney Charles Lykes sought to convince jurors that his client was crazy with rage when he stabbed his grandmother and aunt to death in 2004.

Joshua James Engel had no intent to kill - an essential element of first-degree murder, Lykes said. He was in a frenzy.

Then Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis stood up and read the definition of that word, frenzy: "violent agitation."

"That's what murderers are in when they commit murder," Halkitis said in a boisterous closing argument Thursday afternoon.

A jury of 11 women and one man sided with the state, taking about 90 minutes to convict Engel of two counts of first-degree murder.

He was immediately sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.

Over the three-day trial, Halkitis presented a mountain of evidence against Engel, including three tape-recorded conversations in which he admitted to killing his grandmother, Dorothy Thompson, and aunt, Debra Thompson, in April 2004.

Engel said that while visiting a club with his wife, Kelly, who is blind, he popped a Xanax pill and drank beer, then picked up his grandmother at work before heading to the house they all shared on Runnel Drive.

There, an argument sparked over money. There was yelling and struggling. The next morning, sheriff's deputies found Debra Thompson on the floor of the bathroom with a knife in her back. Her mother lay next to her with 23 stab wounds in her neck and torso.

By that time, Engel had fled north with his wife, planning to drop her off with her mother. Authorities caught up to him at a motel off the interstate south of Atlanta.

After his arrest he agreed to talk to detectives, sounding stunned by his own actions. "Oh God, I'm so sorry," he said on the tape. "I can't believe I did that."

But Circuit Judge Thane Covert told Engel as he sentenced him that he saw no remorse or mercy in his actions.

The Thompsons had given Engel and his wife a clean, comfortable home. They cared for him and even cooked for him, the judge said.

"You, in turn, returned this compassion with 27 separate stab wounds," Covert said. "You then left them to die on the floor in the bathroom, their life draining from them."

He concluded: "The sobering fact is that you murdered two helpless women of your own family."

Engel showed little reaction to the verdict and sentence. He glanced at his mother and nodded toward Kelly's family - several of whom testified against him - before he was led out of court.

Then, when it was all done, the two families came together, hugging and crying.

Molly Moorhead can be reached at moorhead@sptimes.com or 352 521-6521.

[Last modified September 20, 2007, 22:16:03]