http://rutlandherald.com/article/20140410/NEWS02/704109884
Photo by Eric Francis Dakota Gardner Published April 10, 2014 in the Rutland Herald Man denies trying to kill fellow inmate By ERIC FRANCIS CORRESPONDENT WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A Springfield man accused of trying to strangle a teenage sex offender at the Springfield jail last year was returned to Vermont from a federal prison this week to face a charge of attempted first-degree murder. Dakota Gardner, 23, who is serving a four-year federal sentence in Pennsylvania for making threats against President Barack Obama, was returned under guard during a 12-hour drive Tuesday and brought into White River Junction criminal court Wednesday afternoon. Public defender Dan Stevens entered an innocent plea to the attempted murder charge as Gardner smiled and looked around the courtroom. A conviction could bring a sentence of 35 years to life. Guards at the Springfield prison became suspicious April 23, 2013, when two adjoining cells had signs up on their windows indicating the inmates were using their toilets and wanted privacy. It was an outdoor recreation period and the guards expected the cell block to be empty, so they knocked on Gardner’s cell door, said the report by Detective Sgt. John Hagen of the Vermont State Police. Gardner told the guards he was using the toilet and when they asked if anyone was in his cell with him, he replied, “Nobody,” Hagen wrote. A guard opened the food chute on the cell door and saw Gardner sitting on the toilet and another “pair of feet on the cell floor,” the report said. The officers opened the door and found inmate Ryan John, 19, face down on the floor with a pullover shirt and a blanket wrapped around his neck, Hagen wrote. After handcuffing Gardner to a bed, the guards turned their attention to John, who had no pulse and whose face “was purplish and blue in color,” the report said. The guards were able to remove the blanket, but the shirt was tied so tightly around his neck that they had to use a “cut-down tool” provided for suicide incidents to get it off, Gardner wrote. Guards performed CPR on John and after about two minutes they began to see a faint response, Corrections Officer Michael Arace wrote in his report. Arace said when Gardner was asked what had happened, he replied, “I killed that (expletive) snapper” — using prison slang for a sex offender. Gardner allegedly added that he done the world “a favor.” Gardner also said, “I lured him to my cell” for sex, the report said. Arace said Gardner told him he’d been “planning this for some time.” Gardner said he’d convinced John he was interested in sex, and he was planning to choke him during sex and “we were going to have some real fun,” Arace said. “When I knew he was dead, I strangled him some more,” Gardner allegedly said. “I did not feel a pulse and knew he was dead but kept strangling him to make sure. Then I took a break. I was just getting ready to roll him over and stomp his Adam’s apple and crush his throat so I knew he was (expletive) dead when the (guards) came up.” Arace said Gardner was upset that John was being rushed to Springfield Hospital and allegedly said that if John survived, he would try to kill him again. Gardner’s criminal history dates to 2009 when, as a teenager himself, he was convicted of felony aggravated assault in Brattleboro. He then became the subject of state and federal investigations for mailing threats to Obama and Gov. Peter Shumlin. Some of Gardner’s communications contained threats to bomb a federal building in Rutland, records show. Last year, a federal magistrate sealed the contents of the letters Gardner sent to the governor, after prosecutors suggested the “horrific things” that Gardner threatened to do to Shumlin’s family could have jeopardized Gardner’s right to a fair trial. Gardner was sentenced last year to serve four years in a federal prison for the threats.
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