EKB News

A federal jury has convicted two Mingo County residents on murder charges, and now George Lecco and Valerie Friend are facing the death penalty. The jury found that Lecco ordered the 2005 murder of drug informant Carla Collins and Friend carried it out. Federal prosecutors say Lecco was trying to cover- up the drug operation he had running out of his Red Jacket Pizza Parlor. The penalty phase of the trial will begin Tuesday in Charleston Federal Court. Although West Virginia does not have the death penalty, jurors have it as an option because the trial was a federal case. In a recent poll conducted by the Charleston Gazette, ninety-two percent of voters say that Lecco and Friend ought to be put to death. In the last 10 years, in West Virginia federal prosecutors have attempted to go for the death penalty on three occasions. They were not successful in either attempt.