Tennessee torture killer Sean Finnegan stunned at death sentence
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Monster killer Sean Finnegan quivered then turned white as a ghost.
The 56-year-old Tennessee man was sentenced to death for the savage rape, torture and murder of Jennifer Gail Paxton, 36, with his girlfriend Rebecca Dishman, 26, in 2019.
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A jury returned with the verdict late Wednesday.
WATE reported that the killer was wide-eyed as the death sentence was handed down, by turns quiet and at others playing with his long, greasy hair.
Paxton’s body — mutilated and battered — was uncovered in a freezer at the home they shared in Oak Ridge. Her remains had been on ice for about eight months.
The court heard that Finnegan would often open the freezer to look at her corpse for sexual satisfaction. He had earlier hid the body under his bed.
According to cops, Paxton had been living in a homeless camp near the home. The couple lured her in by offering a roof over her head.
That seeming act of generosity turned into a horror show when Finnegan and Dishman held Paxton against her will and regularly beat her with a baseball bat.
Using a dog collar, the twisted twosome chained Paxton to a bed and bound her arms with zip ties. She was repeatedly raped, starved and denied medical care.
She was eventually choked to death and dumped in the freezer. Her nose and part of one of her breasts were cut off, cops said.
Dishman pleaded guilty after flipping on Finnegan and testifying against her paramour at trial.
The next stop for Finnegan will be the death house at the state penitentiary located outside Nashville. Tennessee uses lethal injection to dispatch convicted killers.
Death was not a decision that came lightly.
Anderson County District Attorney General Dave Clark said in a statement: “It is the heaviest of decisions to seek to put someone to death.
“In concert with the victim’s family, I felt that it was important to ask an Anderson County jury to sentence Sean Finnegan to death based upon what he did to Jennifer Paxton. To do less may have sent the wrong message, dishonoured Jennifer’s memory, failed to acknowledge her suffering or not acknowledged the degree of Finnegan’s conduct.”
Finnegan was convicted on Monday of criminally negligent homicide, first-degree felony murder during the perpetration of/attempt to perpetrate aggravated rape, abuse of a corpse, and conspiracy to commit aggravated rape.
Paxton’s family sobbed in the courtroom after the death verdict was handed down.
Throughout the trial, Finnegan expressed little emotion. Only during his brother’s ex-wife detailing his own physical and sexual abuse as a child did he appear moved.
While Finnegan has been sentenced to the big adios, he may never be executed. Gov. Bill Lee hit the pause button on executions in June 2022 until answers are available from a probe into Tennessee’s lethal injection process.
There are currently 45 men and one woman on the state’s death row.
Finnegan will return to court on Nov. 7 for a hearing on his non-capital convictions.
@HunterTOSun
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