The images keep them awake at night, Randall Pfeil’s family told Judge Christopher Browning Wednesday.
Randall being shot in the face, the bullet instantly paralyzing him. Randall being shot in the back of the head. Randall being dragged and dumped into a pit filled with trash and human waste.
The man who did that to Randall, the family told Browning, needs to be locked up forever.
William Gary Potter, 56, took away a man whose aura filled whatever room he was in with love, light, happiness and friendship, said his sister Kari Frisbie.
Frisbie, her sister, mother, father and stepfather were all in Pima County Superior Court Wednesday for Potter’s sentencing.
Browning sentenced Potter to 19 years in prison.
Pfeil’s family described him as an attentive man who called his grandmother and mother every day, who was good with his hands and who would help anybody in need.
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They described Potter as an “evil monster.”
Last month, Potter pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and two counts of possession of a deadly weapon by a prohibited possessor.
He had been facing between 10 and 37 years in prison.
Pfeil went missing in July 2010 and Pima County sheriff’s deputies found his truck abandoned about two miles from Potter’s home south of Three Points. They discovered his body after learning the last call Pfeil received was from a phone owned by Potter, a former head of the Tucson chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle club.
Assistant Pima County Legal Defender Paul Eckerstrom had asked Browning to impose a 10-year sentence on his client. He said Potter acted in self-defense that day against his friend, a man known for having a temper.
Eckerstrom also said Potter deserved a mitigated sentence because at the time of the crime he was dealing with both schizophrenia and real threats from Hells Angels members who thought he was a police informant.
Deputy Pima County Attorney Casey McGinley asked for a harsher sentence.
The fact Potter needs to be protected from the Hells Angels isn’t a reason to give him less prison time, McGinley said. He was once a proud leader in the organization, he said.
Moreover, Potter has four prior felony convictions and wasn’t allowed to have weapons and yet had seven guns and an explosive device in his possession, McGinley said.
In pronouncing sentence, Browning said the case was not a simple one of black and white and neither man was “exclusively a good person or a bad person.” He also noted, however, that Pfeil wouldn’t have died if Potter hadn’t had the guns.
Browning sentenced Potter to 13 years for the murder. He ran two, six-year prison terms for the weapons charges concurrently to each other, but consecutive to the murder sentence.
Contact reporter Kim Smith at 573-4241 or kimsmith@azstarnet.com
