Nicholas Stanley on Thursday pleaded not guilty of murdering the man convicted of molesting his juvenile relative, but he’s already admitted guilt to a local TV station. Stanley’s sister is hoping for leniency and tougher sentences for child molesting.
Prosecutors say the 35-year-old Stanley waited about two weeks after Allen Cogswell, also 35, was released from prison before fatally shooting him. Cogswell had served seven years of a 12-year prison term for molesting a female relative of Stanley’s and had been staying at the Daylite Inn in Elkhart. On June 23, prosecutors say Stanley knocked on his motel room door and shot him when he answered.
Stanley’s sister, Jessica Stanley, organized a protest outside the courthouse Wednesday calling for tougher child molesting sentencing. She says the family was shocked by the shooting but in hindsight, she recalls remarks her brother made at Cogswell’s 2012 sentencing.
“Somewhere along the lines of, when you come back I’m going to know where you eat, sleep and breathe, but people in the heat of the moment say a lot of things they don’t actually mean.”
But in January her brother posted on Facebook, “If you hurt kids, I hurt you. End of story.”
She added, ”There’s been many of us in our immediate family who have also suffered from sex abuse when we were children as well so my brother is very passionate about not liking pedophiles.”
In a jailhouse interview, Stanley told ABC57, “I did what I had to do, I took him out.”
