Joshua Wayne Andrews

Case record: Joshua Wayne Andrews

Joshua Wayne Andrews was a serial killer accused of killing several people in Virginia and New York.

Background

In April 1982, Joshua Andrews’ father, Maurice Andrews, was accused of murdering two men during the robbery of a jewelry store in Beaumont, Texas. Joshua Andrews was two months old at the time. Andrews visited his father on Texas’ death row until Maurice Andrews was fatally stabbed by another death row inmate in April 1995.

When Joshua Andrews was eight years old, he suffered third-degree burns on his face after a neighbor threw gasoline on him and lit a match. His vocal cords were severely damaged, and one of his ears had to be medically rebuilt. Other children teased him about the scars, and he earned nicknames including “crispy critter” and “scarface”.

As a nine-year-old, Andrews tried to help his mother when her third husband chased her down a street with a butcher knife.

Andrews’ juvenile arrest record in Colorado began in 1995. At age 12, Andrews was sentenced to two years’ probation following his conviction for attempted aggravated robbery in Arapahoe County, Colorado. He spent time in several youth mental health programs and was prescribed various medications “to calm him down.” He fought and remained active in gang activities. His mother, Imani Taymullah, turned him into the police on several occasions.

“I did everything I could to help him, God knows I did.”

In early 2000, Taymullah reconciled with her fourth husband and moved to Virginia, leaving her sons, Joshua Andrews and Roman Martin, in Colorado. Joshua Andrews was 18 and Roman Martin was 19 at that time.

The offence

Virginia and New York shootings and robberies

Andrews and Jamel Crawford were accused of the shooting deaths of one man on December 12, 2001, and two others on January 2, 2001, in Virginia. A survivor was cooperating with police.

The pair were also linked to a shooting and robbery at a store in Stafford, Virginia. They were believed to have wounded four people in New York.

Andrews was arrested in New York City with Crawford. The allegations included killing one man on December 12, 2001 in Prince William, Virginia, over an apparent drug transaction, and killing two others on January 2, 2001 in northern Virginia. After that, they resurfaced during a robbery at a small Spanish grocery store in Queens, where they shot the clerk.

The fleeing vehicle slid on ice onto the front lawn of an off-duty civilian employee of the transit police. When the officer came outside, one of the men shot him.

In Virginia, Prince William Assistant Commonwealth Attorney James Willett said:

“These are individuals who, for whatever reason, quickly developed an insatiable appetite for killing,”

Investigation

Aurora police Detective Chuck Mehl said he and fellow investigators worried about Andrews’ potential for violence.

“Rage in his heart? Wanting to be noticed? The sickness he has?” she wonders. “Is it the sins of the father? I don’t know.”

Imani Taymullah wondered why her son would do something like this and said:

“I love him because he’s my son, but there’s a point in my life when a mother has to let go.”

In a phone conversation after Andrews’ arrest, Taymullah said Andrews admitted involvement in the January 2, 2001 shootings, but not the December 12, 2001 shooting. Taymullah also said Andrews told her Crawford forced him to participate by threatening to kill him or his family.

“I told him if that was true, it was because of something he did, not something we did,” Taymullah said.

Virginia law enforcement authorities described a law enforcement dragnet after the suspects were identified in the three Virginia homicides. Andrews and Crawford were captured after running a red light in the South Bronx.

Arrest

Andrews was arrested in New York City with Jamel Crawford after being pulled over for what investigators called a routine traffic infraction in the Bronx. The arrests followed an urgent exchange of information with New York detectives after shootings in Queens.

Andrews and Crawford were held in New York City and did not have lawyers on the murder charges.

Trial

Acquittal in the Colorado case

Public defenders said the deaths of Martin and his girlfriend involved a drive-by shooting of a rival gang, and a gang member had killed Martin and his girlfriend. Andrews proclaimed his innocence and Taymullah stood by him, which led to an acquittal in a court case held in July 2001.

A juror account described the jury’s view that Andrews was guilty but that the prosecution had not proved it beyond a reasonable doubt. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News reported that the jury forewoman said jurors thought Andrews was guilty but that the prosecution had not proven it beyond a reasonable doubt.

She also said:

“We prayed and prayed and prayed,” she said.

Taymullah said:

“prayed and looked into Joshua’s eyes, and I know he did not commit this crime.”

In a victim impact statement, Taymullah said her son was a “scapegoat” because he was “poor, black . . . and has a criminal history.”

Sheila Hampton, the jury forewoman, said prosecutors failed to prove the case:

“beyond any doubt in our minds.”

She also said:

“We felt like (Andrews) did it, but it couldn’t be proven. It’s not that the defense did a great job as much as it was prosecutors not proving it. All we needed was one or two credible witnesses. At the time, I think it was the right thing to do.”

Aurora police Detective Chuck Mehl said investigators worried about Andrews’ potential for violence.

Prince William County trial and verdict (2007)

In July 2007, a Prince William County jury convicted Joshua W. Andrews, a 25-year-old Woodbridge man, of capital murder connected to a 2002 shooting rampage spanning Virginia and New York. The prosecutor urged the panel to send Andrews to death row.

Prosecutors said Andrews went to a Dumfries-area apartment on January 2, 2002, as part of a planned robbery. Prosecutors said he forced three men inside to climb naked into the bathtub and started shooting. Roommates and high school friends Romanno A. Head and Robert I. Morrison, both 22, were killed, and their friend Rutherford Berry was shot in the head but survived.

The jury found Andrews guilty of several other offenses, including robbery, abduction, and weapons charges, connected with the apartment shootings.

The jury acquitted Andrews of first-degree murder in the unrelated death of a 24-year-old Woodbridge man who had been slain a few weeks before the apartment shootings. Clayton Breeding was shot on December 12, 2001, in the parking lot of Rippon Middle School in Woodbridge. Andrews’s acquittal on that unrelated charge was described as “in the unrelated death.”

Defense attorney Thomas B. Walsh said in court:

“He’ll die in jail, that’s the bottom line,”

Walsh also said:

“We’re going to ask you for mercy. . . . We’re going to ask you to have him spend the rest of his life in a 6-by-8 cell.”

During the penalty phase opening, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney James A. Willett told jurors:

“You know what he’s done in his past. . . . You fully understand the horror that those three young men had to go through because of him,”

Willett described Andrews as “more dangerous, more violent, more cold and calculated than he has ever been in his life.”

The prosecutor also said Andrews had threatened court officials, attacked an inmate who testified against him, and offered a guard cash to help him escape. Willett also told the jury that Andrews shot and wounded two people in New York after the apartment shootings.

Andrews’s defense team described his troubled past, including that his father was on death row, his mother was drug-addicted, and his stepfather was abusive. The defense team stated that Virginia law allows only two sentences for capital murder: life without the possibility of parole or death.

The jury deliberated for about 5 1/2 hours over two days.

Evidence regarding planning and accomplice

During the trial in Prince William County Circuit Court, prosecutors said that Andrews and another man, Jamel S. Crawford, went to Head and Morrison’s apartment in January 2002 to steal cash and marijuana. Crawford was described as a key prosecution witness who testified he helped plan the robbery but that he never intended for anyone to get hurt. Crawford was scheduled to go on trial next month.

Sentencing

In the penalty phase, prosecutors urged the panel to send Andrews to death row.

Appeals

No appeals outcome was provided in the record.

Outcome

Andrews was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2007.

Aftermath

After the verdict was read, Andrews’s mother Imani Taymullah wept outside the courtroom and said:

“I’m sorry for the pain that the families are going through. I’ve always prayed for them,”

She also said:

“I hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive.”

Clayton Breeding’s mother, Karol Santmyer, said she was distraught by the acquittal but took comfort knowing Andrews would never be free and said:

“He’s evil, that’s what his name is,”

Other details

Colorado killings described

In early spring 2000, Colorado police charged Andrews with the shooting deaths of his brother and his brother’s girlfriend. Andrews was acquitted.

Martin and his 15-year-old girlfriend, Krisunda Jeanne Temple, were found dead in their Aurora, Colorado home. They both suffered eight gun shots, and two of the shots had been fired twice in Temple’s face. Martin also suffered eight gun shots.

Arapahoe County prosecutors claimed Andrews had been fighting with Martin for weeks. Public defenders said the couple were involved in a drive-by shooting of a rival gang and that a gang member had killed Martin and his girlfriend.

Taymullah’s account of prior fire and recovery

Taymullah said:

“We prayed and prayed and prayed,”

and she also said:

“He woke up one day and said, ‘Mommy, I’m hungry.’ I just cried, because his voice had come back.”

She described the fire as the turning point for a son who was described as a normal boy prior to the tragedy.

Colorado family account of innocence

Taymullah said she met Jamel Crawford in Woodbridge. She described him as:

“He was a cold man.”

Taymullah said Crawford had been convicted in 1997 in the shooting death of a 20-year-old man in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and that Crawford was scheduled to appear in court on an unrelated firearms charge.

She asked her son again if he killed his brother. She said Roman was “my child, too” and described Andrews as swearing he did not kill Roman and Krisunda.

“Roman was my child, too. ... He swears he did not kill Roman and Krisunda.”

Taymullah said:

“If I had known, I swear on my life I would have turned him in,”

and:

“I wouldn’t stand for it, especially taking a life.”

Bail and charges described in New York proceedings (2002)

The Washington Post reported that Jamel Saleks Crawford and Joshua Wayne Andrews each were charged with two counts of capital murder, one count of murder, and two counts of attempted murder, among other crimes, in a shooting binge beginning Dec. 12 and stretching from Stafford County to New York City. It also reported that both were free on relatively low bail for unrelated crimes in Prince William during the spree.

The Washington Post reported that Andrews’ criminal history included his acquittal on two counts of murder in the deaths of his brother and brother’s girlfriend in Colorado, and that those charges came after nearly a dozen juvenile charges that began when he was 11.

The record described that Andrews was arrested for minor offenses in Denver when he was 11 and later faced increasingly violent misdemeanors and felonies.

The record stated that Andrews was acquitted by a jury in Denver after being charged with the April 3, 2000 murder of his brother, Roman Martin, and Martin’s girlfriend, Krisunda Temple.