Leroy Dean McGill’s life was marked by instability long before he was sentenced to death.
Born on Feb. 22, 1963, in Richmond, California, McGill was one of five surviving children born to parents whose marriage dissolved while his mother was pregnant with him. His father — an undercover vice cop — had an affair with a woman he had arrested, according to court documents.
After the divorce, his mother packed their belongings into a trailer and moved the family to Phoenix when McGill was 4 months old. By age 8, McGill and some of his siblings were put in foster care as his mother struggled to care for five children.
Much of his childhood was spent moving between homes and institutions, including Buckner’s Boys Ranch in Texas and later Boysville, a strict reform school in San Antonio.
McGill described himself in a 1986 police interview as a “brat” who caused frequent trouble at home and at school. He said he was suspended in seventh grade for fighting and eventually left school after completing the 11th grade at Cortez High School in Phoenix.
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He reported joining the National Guard around 1981, although that was not independently verified.
McGill
He worked a series of short-term jobs through labor services and cable companies and identified as a Baptist. By 1986, he had an infant daughter and told police he hoped to stabilize his life, marry and stay out of trouble. At the same time, his record showed growing legal problems, including multiple misdemeanor offenses in 1985 involving theft, fraud and DUI.
In 1986, he was arrested in connection with two armed robberies in Phoenix. In interviews, he claimed he simulated having a gun and insisted he had no intention of hurting anyone, saying he wanted to “get it all behind me and start over.”
By then, McGill told detectives he had been kicked out of his grandmother’s home and was living out of an abandoned car.
McGill’s time in prison proved to be fruitful as he attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and earned his GED within months after being admitted, according to court documents. He enrolled in courses at Cochise College, earning a 3.02 grade-point average and largely avoiding getting into trouble.
He was paroled in the early 1990s, and by 2002, he and a girlfriend lost their housing and jobs after they fell back into using methamphetamine, documents said. The homeless couple sometimes couch-surfed at a friend’s north Phoenix apartment but were kicked out after another couple who lived nearby — Charles Perez and Nova Banta — accused them of stealing a shotgun.
Seeking vengeance through fire
On July 13, 2002, McGill, who court documents say hadn’t slept for days and appeared to be “very high,” told Perez and Banta they shouldn’t talk about people behind their backs before he threw a cup of gasoline on them along with a lit match, setting them both ablaze, according to court documents.
McGill bragged to witnesses that he mixed the gasoline with chunks of Styrofoam “to create a napalm-like substance that would stick to the victims and increase their suffering,” court filings said.
Perez died from his wounds the next day. Banta survived but had to be put in a medically induced coma as third-degree burns covered 75% of her body. Banta later identified McGill as the person who had set her and Perez on fire.
A jury convicted McGill of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder along with arson and endangerment charges on Oct 27, 2004. On Nov. 10, 2004, the jury sentenced him to death.
The courts denied McGill’s multiple appeals throughout his time in prison, with an appeals attorney arguing that trial counsel had been ineffective at presenting evidence of McGill’s difficult childhood, addiction history and other matters.
McGill denied an interview request from The Arizona Republic this spring, according to an Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry spokesperson.
With his appeals exhausted, McGill was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 10 a.m. May 20 at the Arizona prison complex in Florence.
