Delling gets life sentences, no parole for murders

BOISE - A Boise man convicted of killing two college students in a murderous road trip across the West was sentenced Tuesday to two life terms in prison with no parole.

John Delling was enslaved by mental illness when he killed David Boss and Bradley Morse and nearly killed Jacob Thompson, but that didn't stop him from thoroughly planning and carrying out "a multi-state murder spree," said 4th District Judge Deborah Bail as she sentenced him after nearly a day of testimony from medical experts and relatives.

Delling's spree started on March 20, 2007, in Tucson, Ariz., where he shot former high school classmate Jacob Thompson, according to court records. Thompson has since recovered.

On March 31 of that year, Delling shot University of Idaho student Boss in the back of the head after Boss let him into his Moscow apartment. He then drove to Boise, where he stalked Morse at the park where he worked. On April 2, he shot Morse as he was leaving for the day.

Before being sentenced, Delling apologized but said the crimes wouldn't have happened if other people hadn't been "using me as Jesus or something like this, trying to sacrifice me to give people eternal life."

"First of all a sincere apology to the families, especially Dave's family for what I did," Delling said. "Dave was a really good friend of mine."

The testimony from medical experts and Delling's mother described him as a child who lived under the tyranny of mental illness, his adolescence and adulthood punctuated by violence and bizarre delusions.

Ultimately, Delling became entrenched in an elaborate delusion that a group of children had begun stealing his energy - and that the energy theft would kill him if he allowed it to continue.

By the time he was about 17 years old, Delling began hitting himself hard enough to leave bruises, pulling his own hair and believing people were stealing his aura, his mother, Carol Ogle Delling, said.

Bail said there was no denying that Delling was motivated solely by paranoid schizophrenia, but she agreed with prosecutors that he showed cunning and forethought in his crimes and could hide his delusions when it suited him. That makes him especially dangerous to society, she said.

"The deaths were deliberate. There is evidence of enormous premeditation," she said. "There were four other people on the list that were also marked for death as a result of the defendant's delusions."

"His mental illness does not affect his lethality," Bail said. "It is unfair and unreasonable to place society at any risk. He could conceal his delusions and act on them against anybody again."