Once-condemned killer receives life term instead

A man sentenced to die four years ago for killing a Lake Forest Park man will instead spend the rest of his life in prison, a King County Superior Court judge decided yesterday.

Michael Kelly Roberts, 46, a prison escapee from Canada, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in a deal that sends him not to the death chamber but to prison for life without the possibility of release.

Roberts and an accomplice, Timothy Cronin, also from Canada, were sentenced in 1997 for killing 57-year-old Elijio Cantu, whom they tied to a chair in his Lake Forest Park home, beat and stabbed. They then stole his sport-utility vehicle.

Roberts and Cronin were found guilty of aggravated murder and of the lesser charge of first-degree murder. Roberts was to be executed for the crime and Cronin to spend the rest of his life in prison.

But in December, the state Supreme Court overturned the aggravated-murder sentences, saying the King County Superior Court case was flawed. The high court upheld the first-degree-murder convictions.

The court had trouble with the fact that both men, in separate trials, had said the other was the killer. The court said that a person should not be sentenced to death unless it could be proved that the individual "personally caused the death or was a major participant in the homicidal acts."

The cases were returned to King County, where Cronin was re-sentenced on the first-degree-murder conviction in June and given 43 years. But prosecutors were unwilling to sentence Roberts on the lesser charge and planned to retry him on the aggravated-murder charge. Roberts pleaded rather than risk another death sentence.

Cantu's family greeted the guilty plea with mixed feelings.

"It's been hard," daughter-in-law Lupe Cantu said. "Some of the family members wanted death." Others were relieved that the plea arrangement meant there wouldn't be a retrial.

Cantu's oldest son, Ray, described his father as a "very caring person who was nice to everyone he met. I never knew him to have an enemy."

For 22 years Cantu worked as a janitor at the University of Washington, raising eight children, fishing, hiking and camping with them.

Cantu met Roberts while fishing on the Edmonds Pier. In 1994, after Roberts and Cronin escaped from a minimum-security prison in Canada, they burglarized an Edmonds residence, went to Cantu's home and tried to talk him into letting them use his SUV.

When Cantu said no, they killed him and drove to Oregon, court records say. They were apprehended in Salem after robbing a store.

In addition to the life sentence in Washington, Roberts has sentences to serve for the Oregon robbery and for crimes in Canada.