But she said what hurts the most is that her 18-month-old son, Jaimz, won’t be able to get to know his grandpa.
“He would have been the greatest grandpa to my son,” she said. “He probably would have wanted to teach my son how to be a cowboy and a steer wrestler just like him.”
“All I can ask for is for this boy to pay as much time as he can in prison for taking my dad away from us,” lamented Ashley Gorman.
Her voice breaking, Veda Yazzie, Kee Thompson’s older sister, told Zamora that she helped raise Kee.
“He was both a son and a brother,” she said, adding that he was a special education student.
“He knew his limitations, but he wanted to be independent,” she recalled.
Also asking Zamora to hand down a maximum sentence, Yazzie asked, “Why did he have to die such a cruelly heinous death? Our entire family mourns the loss of Kee. He was precious. The three young men who savagely took Kee’s life must never do this again to anyone.”
Since hearing about their brutal murders, family members have sent Zamora numerous letters and photographs of Thompson and Gorman, which Zamora related she took into consideration in sentencing Tafoya.
“I did review all the letters describing the victims and what amazing people they were,” she said.
“I took heart when I read Ms. Yazzie’s statement. I made a note of what she stated was so true: The two victims should not have died in such a cruel and hideous manner. I think that is exactly right. I think the degree of brutality in this case is unprecedented. I personally have not seen anything like it, and I’ve seen quite a bit,” she added.
Zamora expressed sympathy to the family members for the violence that took the lives of their loved ones.
Jennifer Denetdale, chair of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission, stated in her address to the court, “The sentence handed down by your honor will never be just or answer for the horror of the crimes against Allison Gorman and Kee Thompson, and their families. What the court is allowed to sentence this man, Gilbert Tafoya, is no way any measure of what he deserves and a measure of justice that he should face by the state of New Mexico and this nation.”
Denetdale noted that the murders were violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “No one shall be subject to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
A seasoned police investigator who discovered Thompson’s and Gorman’s bludgeoned bodies the morning of July 19, 2014, was shocked at the brutality of the murders. He said it was the worst murder he had ever seen.
Hispanic teenagers Tafoya, then 15; Alex Rios, then 18; and Nathaniel Carrillo, then 16, were convicted of their murders and the beating of a third Diné man, Jerome Eskeets, who managed to get away and call police.
The trio attacked the defenseless men they found sleeping in an empty lot with a metal pole, concrete blocks and tree branches, then went back to Tafoya’s nearby home to get knives “to make sure they were dead,’’ according to court testimony.
Rios is serving 67 ? years; Carrillo, who took a plea bargain, 26 ? years.
Both in their 40s, Gorman was from Shiprock and Thompson from Church Rock, New Mexico.
In the plea agreement, Tafoya agreed to plead guilty and testify against his buddies in exchange for an amenability hearing, which would determine whether he was amenable to treatment as a juvenile.
In October, Zamora ruled that Tafoya wasn’t amenable to treatment, which set the adult sentencing hearing into motion.
If he had been judged amenable to rehabilitation, he could have been out of a juvenile center when he was 21.
Zamora based her non-amenable ruling in part on several days of hearings last summer with testimony from expert witnesses and probation staff.
Speaking for the defense, psychologist Maxann Shwartz recommended treatment.
Shwartz pointed out that he demonstrated good behavior while detained in the Bernalillo County Youth Services Center.
“He received several merit awards,” she said. “I felt he was getting better. I saw improvement. I saw him change with my own eyes. He’s more introspective.”
But psychologist Dusty Humes, testifying on behalf of the state prosecution, strongly disagreed with an amenability ruling.
She predicted that Tafoya’s risk for future violence was “moderate to high.”
“He thinks of violence as a way to solve problems,” she testified.
Probation Officer Simon Manzanares agreed with Humes.
“The community deserves to be safe,” he testified.
According to a city survey of people living on the streets released the summer Thompson and Gorman were brutally murdered, Native Americans were found to be more vulnerable to violence than others.
At community rallies, several advocates called for the murders to be considered hate crimes and for the construction of a Native American shelter and rehab center to ensure that there’s a safety net with culturally relevant services.
A call to incoming Mayor Tim Keller asking whether he would support a Native American shelter wasn’t returned before deadline.
Several other recommendations were made by a Native American Homelessness Task Force created by former Mayor Richard Berry.
A 2016 homelessness study identified hundreds of tribal members living on the streets of Albuquerque.