Saylorsburg woman petitions for execution of man who killed her daughter, grandson

Posted Mar. 28, 2015 at 6:08 PM
Updated at 6:16 AM

Kim Adams of Saylorsburg remembers state police, with guns drawn, surrounding her Swiftwater home, knocking on her bedroom window and waking her from sleep the morning of July 7, 2009.

Adams didn't know why police were there.

Moments later, a detective, whose name Adams doesn't remember, gently told her, "Your daughter's not here." Adams' daughter, Victoria Adams, would have turned 27 on April 1.

Victoria at the time lived with her boyfriend, former Monroe County corrections officer Michael Parrish, now 29, and their 18-month-old son, Sidney, in Effort. Sidney had recently received another child's heart after undergoing two surgeries.

Kim Adams was scared and bewildered at the sight of police at her own home, but the thought of something having happened to Victoria and Sidney was the farthest thing from her mind.

That's why it at first made no sense when the detective said, "Your daughter's not here."

"I told the detective, 'Yeah, I know my daughter's not here, she lives in Effort,'" Adams, now living in Saylorsburg, said Friday.

"She kept telling me, 'No, your daughter's not "here."' And I kept saying, 'Yes, I know, she's in Effort. What part don't you understand?'"

The detective finally explained the meaning of "not here," telling Adams that Parrish had killed Victoria and Sidney with multiple gunshots just hours earlier.

"I just ran away from them," Adams said. "What they were telling me just didn't seem real. I thought maybe it was a bad dream."

Stayed execution

But the nightmare was in fact real and just beginning. The police were at Adams' home because a manhunt for Parrish was on.

Parrish and a friend, Conrad Jankowski, now 28, of Newfoundland, were found and arrested in New Hampshire later that day. Both were returned to the Poconos, where Jankowski later pleaded guilty to helping Parrish flee after the murders and was sentenced to six to 23 months in Monroe County Correctional Facility.

Parrish later pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, but withdrew his guilty pleas and went to trial. He chose not to testify on his own behalf, but his defense counsel said the murders were brought on in the heat of the moment by the stresses of his relationship with his girlfriend, having a son with medical issues, and the suspicion that his girlfriend was cheating on him.

A jury in 2012 convicted Parrish on both counts and sentenced him to death. Parrish's execution initially was scheduled for last Oct. 14, but he won a stay in order to continue with his appeals process.

That stayed execution has denied Adams closure.

"It's like losing Victoria and Sidney all over again," she said. "Every day he continues breathing is another day my daughter and grandson are denied justice."

Adams' closure became even more elusive when Gov. Tom Wolf in February imposed a moratorium on Pennsylvania's death penalty, halting all scheduled executions.

Victims' surveyed

Wolf has convened a special task force to gather input from murder victims' families as part of studying whether this state should discontinue the death penalty. The task force is expected to submit its findings and recommendation in a report by the end of this year.

Surveys in February were mailed out to murder victims' families to be filled out and returned by March 31, said task force member Jennifer Storm with the Office of the Victim Advocate in Harrisburg.

After receiving her survey, Adams started a petition on her Facebook page to oppose Wolf's moratorium and support the death penalty. As of Friday, the petition, which she plans to submit to the task force and Wolf's office at some point, had gained 780 signatures from residents of the Poconos and beyond.

Adams' petition states, "My daughter and grandson were viciously and brutally murdered. Neither of them got a second, third or fourth chance to appeal what they got. They could not use the system. My daughter was a young woman so full of life and my grandson had just had a heart transplant. He was finally able to be a normal and happy little boy."

He's not remorseful

Adams was unable to join other murder victims' families at a Thursday hearing in Harrisburg, where families gave mixed opinions supporting or opposing the death penalty while unanimously agreeing the justice system needs fixing in that regard.

"I understand Michael's execution, if it ever happens, won't bring Victoria and Sidney back," said Adams, who also has sons ages 25 and 14. "But I understand what other victims' families mean when they say it's unfair that they can never see, hear or touch their loved ones again while the people who killed them get to continue drawing breath.

"Whatever remorse Michael claims he feels can never be anything next to the pain I feel and will continue to feel for the rest of my life," she said. "To me, he's not remorseful. And that's why I support the death penalty in his case. I have to keep being the voice for Victoria and Sidney until justice is finally served."

Seeking to overturn the verdict that put him on death row, Parrish was scheduled for a March 31 post-conviction court appearance in his ongoing fight for a new trial, but that appearance may be postponed.

He joins two other Monroe County men on Pennsylvania's death row.

One is Charles Hicks of Tobyhanna, who was convicted of killing a Scranton woman and leaving her body parts in trash bags dumped along interstates 380 and 80. The other is Manuel Sepulveda, who was convicted of fatally shooting two men and beating one of them with an ax in Sepulveda's Kunkletown home.