ANCHORAGE (AP) — An Alaska man was sentenced Tuesday to four consecutive life terms in the 2012 shooting deaths of two co-workers at a Coast Guard communications station that mystified an island community for nearly a year before an arrest was made.
Prosecutors had contended that James Wells resented the growing influence of the two victims at the rigger shop where he was a nationally recognized antenna expert. They said Wells meticulously planned an alibi, sneaked onto the station and gunned the men down.
A federal jury found the 63-year-old Wells guilty in April after a 19-day trial. On Tuesday, he maintained that he had nothing to do with the shootings on Alaska’s Kodiak Island.
Wells, sporting a long white beard and thinning gray hair, made his comments after the widows of the victims spoke. Both women said Wells had destroyed their lives and the lives of their families.
In the circumstantial case, it took a jury only one day to find him guilty of two counts each of first-degree murder, murder of an officer or employee of the United States, and possession of a firearm in a crime of violence.
Two of the consecutive life sentences imposed by U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline on Tuesday were for each man’s murder and the other two were for the firearm violence. The judge also imposed life sentences for the officer murder charges, to run concurrently with the murder sentences.
Federal prosecutors earlier said they would not seek the death penalty if Wells was convicted.
“Hopefully the families can go forward having received justice today,” U.S. Attorney for Alaska Karen Loeffler said at a news conference after the sentencing.
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