‘Monster’ sentenced 170 years in Hartford City murders
HARTFORD CITY, Ind. (WANE) – It was a crime the likes of which Judge Dean Young said he’d never seen before. One that took away his sadness. One that elicited only anger.
On Monday, Young acted on that anger with the power his Blackford Circuit Court bench afforded him, sentencing 60-year-old Charles Whittington to serve out his days in prison – to wit, 170 years – for the Feb. 5 slayings of 40-year-old Shane Paul Williamson and his 14-year-old daughter, Katelin, inside the Hartford City apartment building where they lived.
And in the end, it won’t be enough, Young said.
“This is a first for me, in 35 years of being in the legal profession,” said Young. “I always feel a little bit of sadness after sentencing. At the end of the day, there’s always sadness. But that changes today.”
“No matter what sentence is imposed, it’s not enough.”
Whittington was taken into custody as a person of interest hours after Shane Williamson was found dead in parking lot and his daughter, Katelin, the same, steps away in their apartment. His image and a shot of his truck were caught on surveillance cameras, and he was arrested and charged two days later with two counts of murder.
Nine months later, a Blackford Circuit Court jury convicted Whittington of the killings earlier this month.
The killings, as Young described them, were executions.
Whittington, apparently agitated by Shane Williamson’s online contact with his former girlfriend, broke into the apartment that February morning to confront him. Instead, he found young Katelin, home when she’d normally be at school because of a weather delay.
He shot her in the mouth. She drowned in her own blood.
Then Whittington waited for Williamson to come home. He shot him to death inside his truck in the apartment complex parking lot.
“You executed these two human beings,” Young told an emotionless Whittington in court Monday. “If I could execute you back, I would. This is the poster child for capital punishment.”
I am sentencing a monster today. You are simply a murderer.
Vicki Petit, Williamson’s mother and Katelin’s grandmother, addressed Whittington in court Monday, attaching full blame to him for their sorrow.
“You are the one who is responsible for our pain, our sadness, our tears,” Petit said. “I want you to spend the rest of your natural life in prison with no chance of parole.”
“The one question I have for you is, why? Why? Why? Why? I understand why you disagreed with Shane, but why Katelin? Why would you take your anger out on a 14-year-old girl?”
Whittington offered no reasoning – or remorse.
