A 40-year-old man who confessed to killing a visiting professor from Pittsburgh 12 years after the 1996 death was sentenced Wednesday to a life prison term with the possibility of parole.
Circuit Judge Richard Perkins imposed the mandatory sentence on Jason Lee McCormick for his murder conviction for the strangulation of Robert T. Henderson, 51, a professor from the University of Pittsburgh whose body was found at his Ilikai apartment in July 1996.
"I rape little boys so I must die" was written in ink on Henderson’s buttocks, according to the autopsy report.
The homicide remained unsolved until McCormick confessed to police in 2008.
Both the prosecution and defense said the case would have remained unsolved if McCormick had not confessed.
City Deputy Prosecutor Darrell Wong told Perkins that Henderson’s younger brother, Michael Henderson of Annapolis, Md., wrote that the Department of Linguistics of the University of Pittsburgh renamed a language laboratory the "Robert Henderson Language Media Center" to honor him and his work in developing and managing the facility.
The brother said Edward Anthony, professor emeritus of the linguistics department, described Robert Henderson as a "quiet, friendly man" who was reluctant to talk about his accomplishments in serving his profession of language teaching and learning.
The brother said a life term is the appropriate sentence and the time McCormick remained free before his arrest is the only parole he should ever be granted.
Henderson and McCormick, then 22, were intoxicated at the apartment when the professor asked about sex with young boys and made sexual advances, according to reports by police and mental health evaluations.
Michael Green, McCormick’s lawyer, had sought a conviction on a lesser manslaughter charge that carries a prison term of up to 20 years.
He had argued McCormick suffered from abuse as a child and psychiatric problems and became enraged when Henderson made unwanted homosexual advances.
But Wong had contended that McCormick’s overreaction and intoxication did not reduce the crime to manslaughter.
Perkins found McCormick guilty of second-degree murder in June after a nonjury trial last year.
Green said Wednesday that his client also suffered from alcohol problems.
McCormick confessed because the killing had been "eating away at him" for more than a decade, Green said.
"He just couldn’t live with himself," Green said.
The Hawaii Paroling Authority will later determine how much time McCormick must serve in prison before he is eligible for release on parole.
