Convict Confesses to Slayings

DENVER (AP) â€” A man already serving a life sentence confessed in open court to killing 23 people and said he would kill his own lawyers unless they are removed from his case. <br><br>``The first chance

Friday, December 22nd 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

DENVER (AP) â€” A man already serving a life sentence confessed in open court to killing 23 people and said he would kill his own lawyers unless they are removed from his case.

``The first chance I get, I'm going to do something real bad to one of them,'' Marvin Gray, 46, told Judge Robert Patterson on Thursday. ``I've killed 23 people, and I'd like to make that 24 and 25.''

But Patterson refused to replace public defenders Michael Linge and John Ventura or let Gray represent himself in the trial stemming from the slaying of Joseph Didier, 26, during a robbery in 1975.

Gray was given a life sentence in 1993 for repeat offenses, including stabbing a woman to death in 1982 and wounding the police chief of South San Francisco, Calif., in 1975.

In recent interviews with police, Gray confessed to 15 killings, including Didier's. Those confessions have already led to two new murder charges against him, the one involving Didier and a second one involving the 1992 killing of Joseph Soliz, 51, who died when two men burst into his house and opened fire.

Detective David Neil said he had no reason to doubt the confessions. He is notifying other agencies in and out of Colorado about Gray's claims.

Neil said he thinks Gray is confessing because he wants to be executed. The district attorney's office has not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty against Gray in either of the two new cases.

``He has no control over his destiny. His life, as he sees it right now, is that concrete cell,'' Neil said.

Gray told the judge Thursday that having a lawyer was a waste of money because he didn't care if he was found guilty.

``I'll get on the stand and say, ``I did it, I did it, I did it.' I'm not trying to get out of something,'' Gray said. ``My life is an existence, not a life. For the last eight years I've been sitting in a concrete cell. It is not even an existence.''

Gray also said Linge and Ventura upset him during a jailhouse visit when they stepped into a hallway and laughed about his case with another lawyer.

Gray, whose heavily tattooed arms are so muscular he has to wear modified leg irons around his wrists instead of handcuffs, said he would kill the lawyers by wrapping the chains that secure his hands around their necks.

Gray was ordered to sit in the jury box by himself, watched by seven sheriff's deputies.