SLAYER Fan's Lawyers Appeal First Vermont Death Sentence In Decades

June 27, 2007

According to Newsday.com, lawyers for the first man sentenced to death in Vermont since 1957 appeared before a federal appeals court Wednesday, trying to get his punishment overturned on a variety of grounds, including comments prosecutors made about the T-shirt he wore for his killing spree.

Donald Fell (photo),27, wore a shirt celebrating the heavy metal band SLAYER when he and an accomplice stabbed his mother and one of her friends to death in Rutland, Vt., after a night of heavy drinking in 2000.

He was wearing the same shirt when he carjacked and kidnapped a stranger, Terry King, as she arrived for work at a nearby supermarket.

Fell later beat and kicked the 53-year-old North Clarendon, Vt., woman to death after driving her to upstate New York.

It was that last crime — the carjacking and murder — that landed Fell on death row. Vermont does not have a death penalty, but Fell was charged under a federal law that allows capital punishment in certain types of kidnap killings.

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