SPRINGFIELD — Before convicted serial killer Stewart Weldon was sentenced Thursday to three consecutive life terms, he listened expressionlessly to more than a dozen family members and the women who survived his attacks.
They included a brother wracked with guilt because he couldn’t save his big sister, a mother who still expects her daughter to walk through the door and a child haunted over the final moments of her mother’s life.
“For three months I wondered every single day where my mom was and if she was OK,” Kiara Starks, one of Ernestine Ryans’ daughters, told a judge in Hampden Superior Court. “Then to find out, she was lying alone in a dirty, dark garage.”
Ryans, 47, was one of three local women Weldon kidnapped and murdered in 2018.
Weldon also pleaded guilty on Tuesday to abducting, sexually assaulting and killing America Lyden, 34, and Kayla Escalante, 27. Investigators discovered their bodies in and around Weldon’s former home at 1333 Page Blvd. in varying states of decomposition.
Escalante’s partially clothed body was found with packaging tape over her mouth, her wrists and ankles bound, in a basement bathroom. Lyden’s remains were discovered in a hole in a shed on the property. Ryans’ body was found wrapped in a tarp in a detached garage.
All of the women were addicted to drugs and peripherally ran in the same circles as Weldon, a chronic crack cocaine user. He would charm the women back to his home with promises to get high, according to assistant district attorney Max Bennett, lead prosecutor in the case.
Weldon also pleaded guilty to a slew of other charges linked to kidnapping, choking and sexually assaulting five more women who survived — three of whom also testified at the sentencing.
“I really thought I was going to die on that day,” one victim told Judge John S. Ferrara, describing how Weldon brought her home and temporarily held her captive, beat and raped her. “But I asked God for forgiveness and he gave me a second chance.”
The woman took that second chance and has been clean and sober for two years, she told the judge.
Bennett said Weldon employed the same “choreography” with all his victims: bait them with drugs, bring them to his basement to smoke crack, then attack them in a nearby room. Investigators believe he choked all of them. Bennett said medical experts estimate it takes a full four minutes to strangle a person to death.
“They could not breathe. They could not scream. They could not make any noise,” Bennett told Ferrara. “It was personal, slow and agonizing.”
Weldon was arrested by two uniformed police officers who pulled him over for a broken taillight on May 27, 2018. Weldon attempted to flee, smashed into a cruiser and nearly ran over one of the officers before his car was blocked in. He had a large knife stuffed in his hoodie.
A woman in his car, the mother of his child, told police he had been holding her against her will for weeks and beating her with a hammer, a copper pipe and his fists.
Weldon had weeks earlier discarded a GPS bracelet he had been ordered to wear in an unrelated criminal case. He was arrested and held without bail.
His mother called police three days later regarding a “putrid smell” at their home. Police discovered the three women’s bodies over two days. Once the victims’ names were publicized along with Weldon’s image, other women began calling and reporting that they, too, had been attacked by Weldon but escaped or were let go.
The early days of the investigation prompted nerves among family members who had been eyeing news reports and hoping their loved ones weren’t among the dead.
Anthony Ryans told Ferrara he still vividly remembers the call he received from his mother after police informed her Ernestine Ryans was dead.
“I ran up the stairs as fast as I could. She said to me: ‘She’s dead. She was found in that house,’” Anthony Ryans testified.
He recalled his older sister as popular, mischievous, a loving mother and someone who protected him as a shy youngster from bullies.
“I know my sister. She was a fighter and I’m sure she put up one heck of a fight,” he said.
Lyden’s family remembered her as a kind soul who went out of her way to help others, despite her own struggles.
“For her life to end in such a cruel way is not something I can wrap my head around,” Taje Rivera, Lyden’s daughter, told Ferrara. “I know justice will be served but that won’t bring my mom back.”
Escalante also was a mother of a small child when she was killed. Her mother, Lori Escalante, told the judge she is heartbroken over losing her daughter and also knowing her granddaughter won’t remember her mother.
“Her daughter will never know how wonderful her mother was, or how much she loved her,” she told Ferrara, also touching upon the weeks her daughter was missing.
“Every day she was alive, I prayed she would knock on my door and say, ‘Mom, I’m home’ and be free of her demons,” Escalante said.
Rob Escalante, Kayla’s younger brother, was the first of the family members to offer his victim impact statement. He said he was focused on his career and other things during the last months of his sister’s life, wearied by her drug abuse.
“This happened to be the time when she needed me the most, and I’ll have to live with that regret for the rest of my life,” he said. “If she were here now I would start by telling her I’m sorry and I love her. I want my big sister back.”
Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni became overcome with emotion when reflecting on the case and the intense work it required for Bennett and a team of detectives led by Springfield police Capt. Trent Duda. Gulluni also lauded Weldon’s living victims for coming forward.
“They’re courageous and their willingness to relive their trauma is admirable,” Gulluni said. “The horrors wrought by Stewart Weldon were indescribable, grotesque and cruel.”
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