A 27-year-old man who killed a 10-month-old Montgomery County girl's grandmother then the infant herself during a botched kidnapping for ransom attempt wants to die.
Before the jury entered the courtroom Friday, convicted killer Raghunandan Yandamuri told a judge Friday that he wants to receive the death penalty rather than life without the possibility of parole for killing Saanvi Venna and her grandmother, 61-year-old Satyavathi Venna. Yandamuri did all this while asking the judge to allow him to also represent himself during the penalty phase.
"I don't want this hearing," Yandamuri quietly told the judge, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. "I would rather take the death penalty." After consulting with his court-appointed attorney at the judge's urging, however, he agreed to be present for the hearing and allow it to move forward.
A series of people then testified including a doctor who said Yandamuri has a gambling addiction and obsessive compulsive disorder. A county jail social worker also testified about some of Yandamuri's run-ins behind bars including a suicide attempt and a fight that each landed him in solitary confinement.
A day earlier, the jury found Yandamuri guilty on all counts including two counts of first-degree murder, kidnapping, burglary, robbery and abuse of a corpse.
Shortly after the jury returned its verdict late Thursday afternoon, Yandamuri's mother took the stand to plead for her son's life. She spoke of how Yandamuri's father, a police officer in his native India, died when he was 10. She also mentioned that he tried to kill himself by drinking gasoline before he was even a teenager an since then has remained medicated while under the treatment of psychiatrist.
Prosecutors argued Yandamuri hatched the 2012 plot to pay for a gambling habit. They said he was mired in gambling debts and told police he committed the crime after losing at least $15,000 at a casino near his office.
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He told investigators he panicked after the grandmother, who had opened her family's apartment door to him, was killed in a struggle over a kitchen knife he had carried.
He told police he accidentally dropped the baby, put a handkerchief over her mouth to quiet her and tied a towel around her head. He said he then left the baby -- with her dark hair, huge dark eyes and white dress -- in a trash-strewn, unused sauna in a basement fitness center and when he returned hours later with milk for her she was unconscious.
Yandamuri knew the baby's parents from his King of Prussia apartment complex. Like him, they were young technology professionals from India. He had gone to a birthday party for the baby's mother, had met the visiting grandmother and used family nicknames in a ransom note demanding $50,000, authorities said.
"They both are working, so I thought maybe they have some money," Yandamuri told police in a videotaped statement played at a preliminary hearing. "My intention was not to kill anyone or not to harm anyone. I only tried to kidnap the baby."
