Montana drifter receives life sentence in killing of N.J. woman

MORRILTON, Ark. — A cross-country drifter who sexually assaulted and murdered a New Jersey woman while high on moonshine and heroin was sentenced Thursday to a life term that won't begin until he completes a life-plus-10-year sentence he is serving in Montana for one of several killings linked to him.

A DNA sample ultimately tied Montana State Prison inmate Ronald James Ward to the death of Kristin Laurite, 25, as well as the brutal killings of two other women in California. But sitting in the Conway County courthouse, the man with a stenciled "Already Dead" tattoo across his chest sobbed as Laurite's mother called him a coward for taking her daughter's life.

"I hope your time in prison allows you to experience some of the terror you inflicted on your victims," said Lynn DiBenedetto, supported by family members gathered around the witness stand. "It is you now who will become the prey."

Ward, hobbled by leg irons, did not speak during the short court appearance and refused to answer reporters' questions as officers led him away to a police cruiser.

Prosecutors have described Ward as a drifter who moved between West Virginia and Montana.

John Irwin, his public defender, told the court Ward "would ask the forgiveness of the Lord." Irwin stood in front of Ward during the hearing, blocking the 6-foot-2 felon from those watching.

Laurite, who left her Scotch Plains, N.J., home on a cross-country road trip to Eureka, Calif., stopped at the secluded westbound Interstate 40 rest stop outside of Morrilton on Aug. 25, 2000. Other motorists recalled Laurite splashing water on her face and letting her two dogs out of her yellow 1972 Volkswagen van to run down to a nearby pond. Laurite's dogs led officers to her body the next day.

By 2005, DNA evidence linked Ward to the murder of Jackie Travis, a former Newport, Ark., resident found dead in 2000 in Merced, Calif. Police found Travis brutally beaten and strangled, with symbols carved into her skin. The evidence also matched material from the murder of Shela La Rae Polly of Modesto, Calif.

The DNA traced back to a sample from Ward, already serving a life sentence plus 10 years for the shooting death of Craig Petrich in the Sapphire Mountains of western Montana.

Ward pleaded no contest Tuesday to Laurite's murder, after telling lawyers he could not remember ever seeing Laurite. Irwin said Ward, who had worked on a garbage truck, left West Virginia with "four five-gallon jugs of moonshine and heroin" after finding his girlfriend with another man.

"He was running away from her," Irwin said. Ward "told me she had been a knife in his brain."

Irwin said Ward described himself as "nonviolent." That's a claim dismissed by John Douglas, a former FBI profiler and expert on serial killers who consulted on Laurite's murder. Once caught for a crime, serial killers like Ward will blame drug abuse or fugue states for forgetting their murders, while treasuring the memories in their minds, Douglas said.

"The method or manner in which she was killed — you just don't kill like this for the first time," Douglas said. "There were probably others and there will be more (found) in the future."

Prosecutor Tom Tatum dismissed Ward's courtroom sobs as theatrics.

"He is one of the flattest emotional people I've ever been around," Tatum said. "I don't think he's a very remorseful person."

Speaking to reporters after the hearing, DiBenedetto remembered her daughter as a "little firecracker" and acknowledged she could not find any sympathy for Ward.

"God will have to forgive him," she said. "It is not my place to forgive."

Conway County Sheriff Mike Smith, who was one of the first deputies on the scene at Laurite's murder, said Ward would be held for a few days in Morrilton before being driven back to Deer Lodge, where he is serving his Montana sentence.

For years, Laurite's family paid for a billboard along the well-traveled interstate where she died, asking passers-by: "Do you know who murdered me?" The state later closed the rest stop, the scene of another slaying three years earlier. Concrete barriers now block its off-ramp, as small sunflowers grow between the cracks of the pavement.