On Thursday night, Andrew Wagner was hit with a bombshell as he casually scrolled through X while taking a break at the gym. His feed was filled with the news that California Gov. Gavin Newsom had commuted the death sentences of all 548 death row inmate in the state.
“My blood was boiling,” said Wagner, a freelance sports journalist in Milwaukee. “One person overturned the will of 548 juries.”
Newsom’s unilateral decision, which he explained in a three page letter, reopened a deep and painful wound for Wagner.
His mind immediately flashed back to the devastating 2001 phone call informing him that his dear friend Christina Burmeister had been murdered near Los Angeles. She was only 20.
“[The news] felt like that call all over again. It’s that same gut punch,” he said. “Christina was this beautiful young soul with her whole life ahead of her.”
Burmeister, a student at Cal Poly Pomona, was headed to a fraternity party when she was kidnapped by James Dixon, his wife Markeisha and Henry Singer, who took her to two ATMs to withdraw money. They then drove her to the mountains, where a sadistic Dixon slit her throat, and left her to die in Azusa Canyon.
“They got a total of $450 from her. That could have been that,” he said of the theft. “Where was their mercy? They killed for fun. They killed for lust. They killed for sport.”
After her brutal murder, her bereft loved ones were tortured even further as authorities embarked on a frustratingly long search for her killers. It took more than six years for the savages to be brought in front of a jury.
In 2006, when the death sentence was handed down for Dixon, Burmeister’s grieving mother Rosalie Burmeister said, “It was true punishment for the crime that he committed.” She called it “justice.”
Dixon was also found guilty of two unrelated rapes. Wagner provided a written victim’s impact statement at the sentencing.
Wagner, who has remained close with the family, said they learned of Newsom’s death row commutation from a victim’s advocate as the story was breaking. “Everyone is in shock. They feel victimized all over again. Who is to know if this clemency goes even further.”
Newsom argued for mass clemency, writing “state-sanctioned killing is incompatible with California’s values, undermines the foundations of our legal system, and diminishes all of us.”
But Wagner said the governor’s decision diminishes the work done by prosecutors and juries. And the will of California voters, who rejected referendums to abolish the death penalty.
“It’s not just about putting these monsters to death,” Wagner said. “They should have to live with the same terror knowing that these are their last few minutes on earth, the same way their victims had to. I keep seeing people talking about sparing the lives [of these inmates] and that pisses me off because these 548 people had no decency to spare any lives.”
Wagner and Burmeister met as children through a German dance group. Their parents were friends, and the pair formed a deep bond, connecting on many levels as they grew older. They had an on-again, off-again romance but most importantly, a deep friendship sustained by regular hours-long phone calls, frequent letters and instant messaging.
