36-year-old Joe Sauceda Gallegos sentenced to two life terms in prison for beating 10-year-old Edwin Pellecier & Jesse Ramirez, 7,to death with a baseball bat.

updated 12/26/2008 4:45:35 PM ET

PHOENIX — The second of two boys who were severely beaten during an attack at a park three days ago has died, police said Friday.
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Phoenix police Sgt. Tommy Thompson said 10-year-old Edwin Pellecier died Friday afternoon. His 7-year-old cousin, 7 year old Jesse Ramirez, died of his injuries early Friday.
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Police arrested 36-year-old Joe Sauceda Gallegos within hours of the attack. Gallegos made an initial court appearance Wednesday on two counts of child abuse and dangerous crimes against children.
Thompson said he will now face two first-degree murder charges as well.

Doctors told police they believe the boys were bludgeoned repeatedly with a baseball bat or similar object. Police say they found a bat in Gallegos' home along with clothing that appeared to be bloodstained.

'Brutal, vicious attack'
"It was just a brutal, vicious attack that didn't need to happen," Thompson said.

Thompson said Gallegos, who lived nearby, followed the two boys to the small neighborhood park and attacked them, then walked back to his home. Police don't know a motive.

Police said video from a surveillance camera mounted on a house near the park showed the boys walking toward the park, followed a minute later by a man carrying an object that looked like a bat. The occupant of the house said the man looked like his neighbor, Gallegos.

An uncle of Gallegos, Joe Sauceda, told police that he believed Gallegos had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic. The uncle also said Gallegos had told authorities about six months ago that he killed his sons in his attic, but police never found any such victims at the house. Gallegos' sons live with their mother in Colorado and are the same ages as the boys who were attacked.

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2 life terms for Phoenix man who fatally beat kids

By AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press – 4 days ago

PHOENIX (AP) — A Phoenix man was sentenced to two terms of life in prison Wednesday for brutally beating two boys to death with a baseball bat in a random attack in 2008 two days before Christmas — a crime that shook their neighborhood and the entire Phoenix area.

Joe Sauceda Gallegos, 39, was sentenced in Maricopa County Superior Court in downtown Phoenix after agreeing to plead guilty to two counts of first-degree murder to avoid getting the death penalty.

Maricopa County Bill Montgomery told The Associated Press that prosecutors were willing to give up seeking Gallegos' execution because of his mental-health issues, which would have further delayed the case and could have made him exempt from the death penalty anyway.
He said prosecutors discussed the plea agreement with the boys' family members at length, and they agreed that life in prison would be a just resolution given the circumstances.

"True justice would be bringing those boys back, and that's just not going to happen," Montgomery said.

Cousins Jesse Ramirez, 7, and Edwin Pellecier, 10, were playing at a west Phoenix park on Dec. 23, 2008, when Gallegos attacked them at random with a baseball bat and repeatedly bludgeoned them.

A neighbor found the boys with massive head injuries soon after, and Gallegos was arrested within hours of the attack. Police said his shoes and clothes were bloodied and he smelled of chlorine.

The boys died within hours of each other at the same Phoenix hospital three days after the attack.

"It was absolutely horrific," Montgomery said. "These were two little boys who went out to play and had their lives taken from them for absolutely no justification whatsoever in one of the most brutal and violent ways imaginable. They had their entire lives ahead of them."
At the time, Gallegos' uncle told police that he believed Gallegos had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic.

Records show a petition for a court-ordered mental evaluation was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court in July 2008. Subsequent case entries indicate Gallegos was released from an inpatient-treatment facility the following month.

In 2010, a judge determined Gallegos was mentally unfit to stand trial and couldn't assist in his own defense.

He was sent to the Arizona State Hospital and was immediately rearrested and recharged with murder after he was cleared for release last month.

Gallegos' attorney, Tim Agan, said Gallegos agreed to sign the plea agreement because "he feels really badly about what he did and is taking responsibility for it."
"Obviously he's very sad about having been involved in this and taking these kids' lives," Agan said. "I think this is a fair and just result given the circumstances, and hopefully maybe the finality of the whole thing being over will help people heal and move on. But I don't know if that's even possible in this circumstance."

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DP !!!