Mason Found Guilty of Murdering Shevawn Geoghegan; Faces Life in Prison

By Jorge Casuso

Thursday, July 15 -- After more than three days of deliberations, a jury Thursday found Glen Mason guilty of the Feb. 24, 1998 murder of Shevawn Geoghegan in an abandoned mental health facility where he allegedly performed Satanic rites.

The stoic defendant - who spent most of the trial scribbling notes and scrawling drawings - showed no emotion when the verdict was read, witnesses said. But the verdict - which Judge Bernard J. Kamins said he agreed with -- sent Shevawn's family and friends weeping, laughing and embracing in the hallway.

Mason, who was convicted of strangling the 14-year-old Santa Monica girl after binding her to a metal chair, faces a life prison term with no chance of parole. Sentencing is scheduled for August 16.

"I'm happy he's never getting out," said the victim's father, Edward Geoghegan, who attended every pretrial and court hearing. "This was the last thing we could do for our daughter. This really became our last act for her.

"Taking this many days, we thought we wouldn't get the sentence we were hoping for," Geoghegan said. "It took me by surprise."

Jurors, who were visibly shaken after delivering the verdict, said they had split 8 to 4 on who had actually pulled the strap around Geoghegan's neck. The defense had argued that it was not Mason, but Jimmy "Linus" Turner, who is still at large.

The jurors also were split 10 to 2 over whether to charge Mason, who was known on the streets as "Jason Ballis," with murder in the first degree, which requires premeditation.

"A couple of the persons at first didn't quite believe that it was planned way in advance," said Virginia Paris, one of the two jurors who held out. "But with time, they came to believe it. It think it's fair and just."

"It was hard, very difficult," said another juror, Michelle, who asked to be identified only by her first name. "There were holes in the case that made it hard for people to see things, and the only person who could give answers was Shevawn."

One of the key questions, the juror said, was why the Santa Monica girl continued to see Mason - with whom she was having an on-and-off affair -- after he allegedly threatened to kill her for being a snitch. Even Shevawn's closest friends said they didn't understand.

"I asked her that when she was alive and I couldn't get an answer," said her close friend Tanya Zerkov. "There was never an answer that made any sense."

Mason, who was portrayed during the trial as a Satanist, remains an enigma.

"You looked in his eyes and nothing," Zerkov said. "He's the devil to me, but that's what he wants to be, Satan."

Jurors said that evidence that Mason engaged in Satanic practices - scrawling pentagrams in blood, crucifying headless pigeons, speaking in weird tongues - was not an issue during the deliberations.

"The Satanic issue was no big deal," Michelle said. "There was a lot of other things behind it where we didn't have to look at that."

Defense attorney Marc Lewinstein said he was "disappointed" with the verdict and will file an appeal.

"Clearly the jury was not convinced that Mason was the actual killer," Lewinstein said. "It was very difficult for the jury to focus on the evidence when there was so much inflammatory rhetoric. It's almost impossible to make a decision like this and leave those very human emotions out of the equation."

Prosecutor Stephanie Sparagna said she was "very pleased" with the verdict.

"I'm ecstatic for the family, which has waited so long for justice," she said. "This has been so painful for them."

Outside the courtroom, family and friends wept and embraced some of the jurors, who were visibly shaken after delivering the verdict. Shevawn's mother, Eileen, clutched a wallet-sized picture of her only daughter, while the victim's aunt, Louise Cummings, wept, laughed and danced in the hall.

"I'm elated," said Cummings, who sat through the entire trial. "I'm speechless. We got what we wanted. Well, we didn't get Shevawn back, but he'll never get out of jail, ever."