TOLEDO -- Jamie Madrigal pled guilty in the Lucas County Common Pleas Court on Friday to the murders of both Larry Loose and Misty Fisher, whom he killed in 1995 and 1996, respectively. Madrigal received two consecutive life terms in prison.
Madrigal was already in jail awaiting a second trial for the Fisher case. His guilty plea has solved the Loose case, which had baffled detectives in Maumee for more than a decade.
A Lucas County grand jury indicted Jamie Madigral on Thursday for the April 1995 murder of 55-year-old Larry Loose. Loose was a dishwasher at the Pacific Crabhouse restaurant in Maumee when Madrigal and Chris Cathcart reportedly robbed the place. Police say during that robbery, Madrigal shot Loose, and Cathcart shot bartender Craig Tammarine, who survived.
A jury convicted Chris Cathcart in June of 2006 on charges of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, and seven counts of kidnapping for his role in the robbery and the shootings. He's now serving a term of 44 years to life.
Madigral had long been suspected in the case, but he wasn't indicted until Thursday.
In January of 1996, the 18-year-old Fisher was killed execution-style by a robber trying to get cash from the Kentucky Fried Chicken in south Toledo. Shortly after the crime, a Lucas County jury found Jamie Madrigal guilty of the crime.
That conviction was upheld by several Ohio courts, the Ohio Court of Appeals, and the Ohio Supreme Court. The 6th Circuit federal Court of Appeals overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial, saying there was a problem with co-defendant Chris Cathcart's words that the court says unfairly influenced the jury.
"We introduced a statement of a co-defendant through a detective, and the co-defendant Cathcart did not take the stand himself," said prosecutor Dean Mandros in a story first broadcast on WTOL last year.
