The Motive: ‘End Everything’
Damian was arrested just hours after he committed his heinous crime.
Aurora Police stopped the1989 grey Buick LeSabre along East Ohio Avenue. Damian pulled over, got out of the car and ran.
He made it 50 feet before the officer ordered him to stop. Damian complied and surrendered.
The officer transported Damian to the police department’s Major Crimes Unit. There, Damian told the officer, “I should have let you guys kill me.”
When I asked Damian why he fatally stabbed his wife and toddler, he replied in short order.
“I wish I could say.”
Then he paused long enough to make me think the line had disconnected.
“I really haven’t,” he started before abandoning the sentence.
“The only thought I’ve really put into why I actually did what I did is along these lines: My thinking is whoever I was that did that, I just knew — or I know — that I had to change everything about that person.”
He said he hated himself back then.
“I hated my life. I hated everything. I felt like there was no way out of anything,” said Damian, who was high on crack cocaine the night he committed the murders. “I really wanted to — truth is — I really wanted to kill myself.”
He added: “I just wanted to end everything.”
So when prosecutors sought the death penalty in 2005, Damian didn’t argue. It was his mother and aunts, he said, who talked him out of it.
He said he still believes he deserves death. But more than that, he said he believes his two surviving children deserve him alive.
“I just owe ’em en explanation and answers to questions I may or may not have,” Damian explained. “It’s the only reason I’m here. It’s the only reason I’m alive.”
About the Author
Andréa Maria Cecil is a career editor and writer whose experience includes six years as Assistant Managing Editor and Head Writer at CrossFit Inc. headquarters. She spent the first 12 years of her professional life as a journalist — starting with The Associated Press in Detroit and Baltimore — before transitioning to content marketing with an emphasis on authentic storytelling. She is the editor of “Speal: A David and Goliath Story” by Chris Spealler that sold 10,000 copies worldwide.
