US mass murderer George Banks dies in prison 43 years after rampage | US crime

George Banks, one of America’s most famous mass murderers, has died.

Banks, 83, died Sunday afternoon at Phoenix state prison in Pennsylvania, the state Department of Corrections said. Montgomery County Coroner Dr Janine Darby said Banks died of complications from a kidney neoplasm, or kidney cancer.

Banks was in prison after shooting 14 people and killing 13, including her own children, during a 1982 rampage in Wilkes-Barre. It was once considered one of the worst mass shootings in American history. He was found guilty of 12 counts of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder.

Banks had been drinking at a party late at night before using his AR-15 rifle to launch an attack on his home.

Five of the victims were his children between the ages of one and six. Four more were mothers of his children. Other victims were bystanders, including an 11-year-old boy who sometimes stayed with his parents, a seven-year-old boy, and a teenager who saw Banks leave his home with a rifle and recognized him.

Authorities say Banks killed three women and five children in his home. Banks then left when he saw four young men, dressed in green army fatigues and carrying an ammunition bandolier across their chest and shoulders, walking from a nearby friend’s house toward their car. Authorities say he fatally shot one, while the other survived.

He stole a car and drove to Heather Highlands Caravan Park; There, police found the bodies of Banks’ son and his mother, as well as his mother and nephew.

From there, Banks went to his mother’s house and told police that Banks told him, “I killed them. I killed them all.”

Banks surrendered after a four-hour standoff at a friend’s house after police tried to convince him that his victims were alive.

State courts eventually blocked his execution, saying he was mentally unstable. This left Banks facing life imprisonment.

Jim Olson, the teenager who survived being shot by Banks, later expressed his disappointment in Banks not being executed in 2012: “What’s the point of having the death penalty if you don’t use it or enforce it?”

Defense attorneys had argued that Banks was insane at the time of the shooting.

Banks, who is biracial, claimed after her arrest that she killed her children to spare them the pain of growing up in a racist society. During his trial, he rejected his lawyer’s strategic decisions and instead argued that prosecutors, the judge and the mayor of Wilkes-Barre were conspiring against him.

Banks also showed the jury bloody photographs of his victims, even after his lawyer had them banned on the grounds that they were gruesome and prejudicial.