John Thanos was the first and one of only five persons executed by Maryland in the modern era. A career criminal who'd spent most of his life behind bars, he was convicted of murdering three teenagers in Baltimore in a late summer 1990 killing spree and executed in 1994. He was born in Dundalk on March 28, 1949. John's father John Thanos Sr. was a Greek-American truck driver with severe PTSD from World War II service and his mother Patty was a "hillbilly" from the mountains of western Virginia. John was known as "Freddie" in his childhood and there are differing accounts of his upbringing. During his trial, the prosecution claimed he had an average childhood and that his crimes happened in spite of rather than because of his upbringing. However, other accounts by social workers who interviewed family members put the blame square on John Sr.
The elder Thanos had been treated for mental illness at a hospital and was an out-and-out sadist who brutalized his son from an early age, once punching him in the scrotum. While Patty was working, John Sr. would turn off the power and whisper through the heating ducts that he was the Devil and he was coming for Freddie. He would put sleeping pills in his wife's coffee to knock her out while he had incestuous sex with the couple's eldest daughter, often in Freddie's bedroom, sometimes in his bed. As Freddie got older, John would increasingly try to remove him from the house so he could have sex with his sister undisturbed, even locking him outside. If Patty knew about this at all, she was doubtlessly helpless to do anything about it.John passed away in 1982. Freddie denied any of his father's behavior and admired him. As he entered adolescence, he was a troublemaker. He was expelled from school for exploding a homemade bomb on school property and was referred to as "ungovernable." Freddie was sent to Boys Village, a home for troubled youth, but he kept running away and ended up in the far tougher Maryland Training School for Boys in Cub Hill. He escaped again when he was 15, stole a car, and wrecked it. Juvenile officials decided they were done with him. Freddie received his first jail sentence in May 1964 when he got two years in adult prison for theft. A psychiatrist called him "a highly disturbed youth full of anger and hostility." He recommended putting him in Patuxent Institution for Treatment, although he believed Thanos was beyond all known forms of therapy.
Yet Thanos was still a boy not physically or mentally ready to handle adult prison, and he was an easy target. His prison records state that shortly after he entered Maryland Institution for Men in Hagerstown, he was put in solitary confinement after submitting to sodomy from two other inmates. Thanos was in trouble numerous times for starting fires, breaking his cell window, and instigating fights. His attorneys said he wanted to deliberately go to solitary confinement to be safe from the adult inmates. They also argued that he should have never been put in an adult prison at 15 and it undoubtedly made him worse. Doctors administered him with sedatives to calm his nerves. Thanos served 22 months and was released in March 1966. For the next 3-1/2 years he had numerous brushes with the law for car thefts and assaulting a police officer but only served brief jail sentences. He finally got serious jail time when he attacked and raped a Baltimore woman in October 1969, twenty-one years in prison after he pled innocent to all charges and threatened the jury that found him guilty. During his time in prison, he sent a photo of himself to the rape victim with a boast that he would be back. Two years into his sentence, Thanos attempted escape when he hid in a laundry bin and was driven off in a laundry truck, but he was quickly apprehended.
Due to his continuing bad behavior, Thanos ended up serving until April 1986, when he had completed the mandatory minimum 75% of his sentence. Within a month of his release, he robbed a Harford County convenience store and was returned to prison for another eight years. He would not have tasted freedom again until 1994 but for a horrendous bureaucratic mistake. He was paroled in April 1990, after just four years, when a prison official (later fired) accidentally calculated good time credits from the rape conviction to the robbery sentence.Thanos's prison record showed that he used any drugs he could get ahold of and often made pruno (homemade alcohol). He stabbed an inmate in the leg and beat another with a table leg, getting 10 months in solitary confinement. He made repeated suicide attempts which his attorneys said proved his mental incapacity, although prison officials claimed he was just faking it to get taken to a hospital where he had a better chance at escape. After his final arrest in 1990, he tried hanging himself in jail with his own long hair.In any case, Thanos was feared by other inmates, who considered him "crazy" and "sick." He was known in prison as "The Hound" and liked to claim he was the Devil. Thanos had earned his high school diploma and took college courses. He fell in love with a female correctional officer named Roslyn Lofton and wrote her obscene letters and love poetry. She attempted to sue him for harrassment and his release was delayed until the paperwork was filed. Thanos was arrested as soon as he walked out of the prison on April 17, 1990 as the C/Os laughed at him. The harrassment suit was ultimately binned and he walked free. He found work as a bricklayer and at the Perdue chicken processing plant in Salisbury. Thanos continued stalking Ms. Lofton and believed she loved him, although she denied this.
In August, Thanos thumbed a ride with a woman on the Eastern Shore and exposed himself to her. She reported him to police and he became concerned that he'd be sent back to prison. Did that trigger his penultimate crime spree? Thanos later claimed in court that he suffered from head injuries, but he told police after his arrest that he did it because he didn't want to go back to prison. Whatever was the reason, he quit his job at the Perdue plant on August 29, cashed his last paycheck, and purchased a .22 semiautomatic rifle from a gun shop in Salisbury. He sawed down the barrel so it could fit in a black doctor's bag.That night, Thanos robbed a Salisbury cab driver named Milton Marsey, 21. He ordered Marsey into the trunk of the taxicab and when he protested, Thanos threatened to shoot him. And he did.Two days later, Thanos was hitchhiking along Route 50 when 18 year old Greg Taylor offered him a ride on his way home from his job as a welder. He pulled out the gun and ordered Taylor to turn around and drive to a wooded area where he was going to tie him to a tree. Taylor kept protesting and pleading with Thanos to let him go. The latter finally tired of this, fired three shots into his head, and left. Thanos drove off in Taylor's '87 Festiva and purchased some hair dye to darken his hair and look more like the victim. On September 1, driving through Middle River, Thanos stopped at a gas station along Pulaski Highway where 16 year old Billy Winebrenner was working as a cashier; his father Marty was the manager. Since he had no money to pay for gas, he offered to hock his late father's gold watch for $20 and a partial fill-up; Thanos could get the watch back at a later date for $60.
On September 3, Labor Day, Billy was working the gas station with his 14 year old girlfriend Melody Pistorio. His father was not present that day. Thanos strolled inside and announced that he wanted his watch back. Unfortunately, Billy didn't have it on hand; it was at Melody's house in her jewelry box. The watch had the elder Thanos's name inscribed on it and was a retirement present his employer gave him. Thanos pulled the gun and ordered Billy to hand over the contents of the cash register. The two teens obeyed, after which he shot them twice in the head.The next day, Thanos was spotted by Salisbury police heading north; he matched the description of a man wanted for a recent armed robbery. They flagged him down and he pulled over the stolen Festiva. As officers approached, he opened fire. They shot back; nobody was hurt, and Thanos floored it. He later abandoned his car in some woods and fled on foot. He flagged down a passing motorist and forced his way into his car at gunpoint. The motorist obeyed his commands and they drove across the state line into Delaware where they were spotted by a Smyrna patrol officer.The officer tailed them into a parking lot and police surrounded the car. The motorist took off and ran for it as Thanos began a shootout with police. He finally ran out of ammo and gave himself up. Several parked vehicles were hit with bullets, although no injuries resulted. He was promptly turned over to Maryland authorities. When asked what Billy Winebrenner and Melody Pistorio had done to provoke him, he said "Nothing, really. Actually they treated me rather well."
At his trial, Thanos displayed no remorse and said he wanted to dig up the victims and defile their corpses. "Their cries bring laughter from the darkest caverns of my soul. I don't believe I could satisfy my thirst yet in this matter unless I was to be able to dig these brats' bones up out of their graves right now and beat them into powder and urinate on them and then stir it into a murky yellowish elixir and serve it up to their loved ones," he declared.Thanos was sentenced to death. He refused to appeal his conviction, but did argue that Maryland's gas chamber was cruel and unusual punishment and insisted on having his execution videotaped and his EEG data recorded as proof. The state legislature agreed to replace the gas chamber with lethal injection and that was the method used when he was executed May 17, 1994, the first person put to death by the Old Line State in 33 years.
>>18387852>>18387856le heckin based wholesome 1950s family, just like my based Pepsi ads right?
>>18387859>putting a 10th grader in an adult prisonMarylanders need to be medically studied.
>>18387876He was already doomed given his upbringing. The prison time was just the icing on the cake.
>>18387876That and the tard who miscalculated his release date.
>>18387859that suit and derby hat are weird, they look so out of place for 1967. you'd nearly think this was 1947.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/118099498/john-steve-thanosHe does not have a findagrave page, although his father does. His sisters were named Connie and Diane according to the obituary and his mother is not mentioned (divorced I assume). It seems both got married and had normal lives despite stuff that happened.
>>18387852wonder why the prosecution would deny his obviously completely fucked upbringing? it would make little sense for his crimes to happen unless there was some root cause for them.
>>18387914>wonder why the prosecution would deny his obviously completely fucked upbringing? it would make little sense for his crimes to happen unless there was some root cause for them.They wanted to deny the defense using that as mitigating circumstances. It's a retarded strategy though.
Maryland doesn't have so many serial killers compared to the big states like Texas but the ones that are are pretty fucked up.>this guy>Joe Metheny>that black guy who wasted an old white lady in the 50s>Arthur Goode
>>18387863wait a second. how did a guy with his criminal history just walk into a store and buy a gun? did they even do any background checks in Maryland?
>>18387863>Two days later, Thanos was hitchhiking along Route 50 when 18 year old Greg Taylor offered him a ride on his way home from his job as a welder.imagine that boomers and Gen X could just walk into a good job like that after high school. just imagine.
>>18387921I was wondering that as well.
>>18387876I've heard of that happening in a few other places too. As far as I know they stopped doing it a while ago here
>>18387863Did he thumb the ride in Salisbury too?
>>18387873/thread
Hey Maryland mentioned >Salisbury Checks out. It has a reputation for being one of the most dangerous smaller cities in the state and it's one of the only parts of the Eastern Shore with a significant crime problem. Can't imagine it was any better in the 1990s. Also the mayor is a drunk retard>>18387921They do now. MD has pretty strict gun laws. Maybe it was different back then.>>18388269Just checked, on MD court records it's under Talbot County. Could have been on Route 50 - I've actually driven through that area a lot. Kinda freaky to think about it.
>>18388342>Hey Maryland mentionedMaryland doesn't get much attention in crime OP's threads compared to Florida and Texas, being only a small state.
>>18387859>Doctors administered him with sedatives to calm his nerves.I wish my doctors would do that. Lucky bender
>Thanos
>>18388352Yeah it doesn't seem to have so many serial killers, though anecdotally I've heard of some pretty unusual individual crimes, like a lady who kept her kids' bodies in a freezer.
Somewhere there's an article about this
>>18390044I think Medium had one but they won't let you read it without an account on the site.
>>18390053I found this https://www.baltimoresun.com/1990/11/15/md-to-discipline-others-in-wake-of-thanos-probe-prisons-chief-says-at-least-2-face-personnel-action/
>>18390053Link?
