Murder victim's father condemns Biden for commuting killer's death sentence ahead of Christmas

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, December 24, 2024

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the situation in Syria in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8, 2024, following a crisis meeting to discuss the sudden overthrow by Islamist-led rebels of President Bashar al-Assad. | CHRIS KLEPONIS/AFP via Getty Images

The father of a 19-year-old girl whose killer threw her into a lake to drown after binding her with duct tape and wrapping her body in chains attached to cinder blocks condemned President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the death sentence of his daughter’s murderer just days before Christmas.

Michigan resident Tim Timmerman is the father of Rachel Timmerman, a teenage girl who was murdered in 1997 before she could testify against Marvin Charles Gabrion II in a rape case. Gabrion, now 71, was found guilty in 2002 of murdering the teenager.

On Sunday, the girl’s father learned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Grand Rapids that Biden had commuted Gabrion’s death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Timmerman questioned why Biden granted the man's clemency during the holidays.

“We thought the timing was despicable,” the murder victim’s father told NBC affiliate Wood8.

“I offered to speak with you today because I’m the family of a victim, and I think President Biden offered a Christmas gift to the perpetrators of murder, but he offered only pain to the victims, the families of the victims,” he added.

The father and the rest of Rachel Timmerman’s family had already accepted the likelihood that his daughter’s killer would probably die of natural causes in prison, as he told Wood8.

“We felt that the best case would be [that he would be] locked in a very small cage and not allowed to hurt anyone else. That was our best-case scenario,” he said.

Gabrion is one of 37 inmates on federal death row who received clemency, according to statement from Biden on Monday. Biden explained that the commutations are consistent with his administration’s moratorium on federal executions, with exceptions for cases that involve terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden stated Monday, calling for an end to the death penalty at the federal level.

For Timmerman, it’s hard to imagine someone who deserves the death penalty more than Gabrion, he told the local news outlet.

In addition to murdering Rachel Timmerman, Gabrion was accused of killing her 1-month-old daughter, Shannon Verhage. The infant's body was never recovered, according to CBS Detroit.

Two fishermen found Rachel Timmerman’s body in 1997 in Oxford Lake in the Manistee National Forest, which gave the federal government jurisdiction in the case. The teenager’s body was bound with duct tape, chains and cinder blocks, and it’s suspected that Gabrion murdered the girl to keep her from testifying against him in a rape trial.

Three others Gabrion was accused of killing included Wayne Davis, Robert Allen and John Weeks. Authorities believe that Gabrion murdered Allen in 1995 before attempting to collect a Social Security check for him in 1997, according to CBS Detroit.

Davis was a witness to Timmerman's rape, and Weeks was named as an accomplice to her murder,” the local station added.

Authorities eventually arrested Gabrion in 1997 in Sherman, New York, according to CBS Detroit. A jury sentenced the man to death in 2002, even though Michigan became the first English-speaking territory to abolish the death penalty in 1847.

Gabrion murdered the 19-year-old on federal property, which allowed the federal government to pursue capital punishment in the case, CBS Detroit added.

In his interview with Wood8, Tim Timmerman stressed that it was a jury, not him, that decided to sentence Gabrion to death. He added that the decision didn't come from just one person and that it was the consensus of the jury.

“From the get-go, we offered to trade the death penalty for information regarding my granddaughter,” he said. “We offered that from the very get-go. Gabrion was unwilling to tell us what he did with Shannon, so that’s always remained an open hole in our heart.”

The father and grandfather remarked that he has accepted that he likely will never see Shannon again, saying that he believes the baby’s body is somewhere in the lake.

“It’s just crazy,” he said. “It’s hard to believe that many years have gone past, and it’s still an open wound.”

Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman