A Florida man pleaded guilty to murders from 1989 and 1995, The Miami Herald reported.
Thomas Pennington, 38, will serve 20 years in prison for the 1989 murder of Marisa Maugeri, a case that went unsolved for 16 years and was featured on “Unsolved Mysteries” and “America’s Most Wanted,” the newspaper reported.
“In many ways, he not only ended Marisa’s life, he ended my mother’s, my sister’s and mine as well,” Maugeri’s sister, Mercedes Estevez, told Miami-Dade Circuit Court in tears Monday.
Marisa Maugeri was killed on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 1989, the day before Thanksgiving, in a botched robbery outside a North Miami Publix, the Herald reported.
She and Estevez went to buy food for a large family dinner and the supermarket’s parking lot was full, so Maugeri parked her Mercedes-Benz across the street. When she went to get her car to bring to the front of the supermarket for the groceries, Pennington, then just 15, tried to rob her. Maugeri locked herself in the Mercedes and Pennington shot her once in her left eye, killing her, according to the Herald.
Pennington was serving a 15-year sentence for another case when he was arrested for Maugeri’s murder in 2006, and a prison inmate’s testimony was key to the case, the Herald said. As part of the plea deal, his original charge of first-degree murder was reduced to second-degree murder with a deadly weapon, the Herald said, and he will serve the 20 years as he serves time for the 1995 murder of a drug dealer.
