Triple Murderer is Spared Death
by Peter Donohue


Queens jurors yesterday spared the life of a murderer who killed three women, saying they were moved to mercy by his horrific childhood.

After deliberating for about 17 hours over three days, the jurors sentenced James Allen Gordon - raised by a drug-addict mother who relatives said beat him regularly - to life in prison without parole.

Gordon, 26, rested his head on the shoulder of one of his legal advisers, Victoria Brown, as prosecutors sat stunned.

Moments later, some relatives of the slain women stormed out of the courtroom and exploded in anger.

"What's it going to take?" shouted Latisha Griffith, whose sister Hadiyah Holliman was shot in cold blood by Gordon in a July 1996 rampage of robbery, rape, torture and murder in a Jamaica House.

"This was brutal murder," Griffith said. "This wasn't justice at all."

After planning to rob the occupants of two apartments in the house, Gordon, a petty drug dealer, raped Darlene Johnson, 28, before fatally shooting her in the head. He shot Johnson's sister-in-law, Mary Mouzon, 33, in the mouth and beat and stabbed her to death, and shot and killed Hadiyah Holliman, 18.

Gordon also tried to strangle Lalisha Crite, then 19, and tried to kill Holliman's twin sister, Zakkiyyah, bashing her in the head with a hammer.

One juror said the panel was moved by testimony that Gordon as a child watched his mother shoot up heroin and that she and her drug-abusing boyfriends beat him.

"It was the mitigating factors," the juror said. "The brother had a hard life. . . They [prosecutors] wanted death, but we thought better than that. What he did was terrible, but you have to look at everything behind that."

Gordon acted as his own lawyer during the trial but was aided by legal advisers Brown, Chris Renfroe and Russ Morea. Renfroe handled the penalty phase of the case and in a tearful plea Wednesday urged jurors to spare Gordon's life.

Gordon, on the edge of bars also apologized for his “sins” to his victims relatives in the courtroom Wednesday.

"It was a victory for decency and humanity," Morea said.

Some relatives of the victims were satisfied that Gordon will never be freed. "We're very pleased with the outcome." said Dock John son, Darlene Johnson's father. "He will never be able to destroy another family."