He’ll die in prison.
It was as close to an apology as Khari Sanford would come this morning at his sentencing hearing for the murders of Beth Potter and Robin Carre:
“If taking my life is what it takes to repay them, to resolve the grievances of this beautiful family and define justice, I will be honored, your honor. Take it.”
Now aged 21, Khari Sanford will never again be a free man. Dane County Circuit Judge Ellen Berz denied him any chance for parole for the murders he committed at age 18 on March 30, 2020.
“I see no evidence of remorse,” Judge Berz commented. “Not a scintilla.”
The one hour and 15-minute sentencing hearing was emotionally draining. At times, heart-breaking.
Judge called the case ‘inexplicable’
“This is a sad day,” said prosecutor William L. Brown. He detailed Sanford’s Dickensian childhood of poverty, hunger, homelessness, physical and emotional abuse. “It was a horrible childhood by any definition.”
Sanford grew up one of seven children to an abusive mother and an imprisoned father in Chicago. Often locked out of his own apartment.
Given his opportunity to speak, Sanford began: “Mom, I love you. Dad, I miss you.” Wearing glasses, he was rather eloquent. He described “Watching my mother get beat by men. … Forced to grow up and be an adult for my siblings.” Once he even called social workers for protective services.
He was sometimes homeless even in Madison before meeting the Carre-Potters. “That was me standing at the bridge and looking down at traffic. That was me sitting on a cold floor with a knife at my throat. The suicidal football player after practice, wondering where I would sleep that night. That was me.”
Even the car he stole from a foster parent 11 months before the murders was for someplace to sleep that night — the foster parent having left the house locked for a trip abroad.
“He had two personalities,” Asst. D.A. Brown said. “He will speak and sound intelligently when it suits his desires.”
Sanford had long planned the murders and gulled his accomplice, Ali’jah Larrue, into driving the minivan the Carre-Potters had loaned him so Sanford could train his .357 Glock on them.
Asst. District Attorney Brown recreated Sanford walking up the steps of the home in on Rowley Avenue, where Dr. Potter and Mr. Carre had retired for the night. Marching them down the stairs in their nightwear at gunpoint, and loading them into their own minivan, still in their night clothes — the two “knowing they were going to die.”
‘The personification of a nightmare’
The next day, Sanford worried that one of them might survive after shooting each in the head and leaving them to die in a ditch in the UW Arboretum. He had tried to cash out the dead couples’ debit cards. “He was entirely focused on money. Khari Sanford has no remorse for human life.”
"He committed one of the worst crimes I've ever seen." — prosecutor.
Yet Madison gave him “a good deal of community support.” The prosecutor said Sanford had support from his teachers, his varsity high school football coach, trips to scout out colleges. He was awarded an internship in the mayor’s office, elected vice president of the Black Students Union, and was recognized as “an outstanding young leader.”
Roughly during the period when Sanford was sleeping in the stolen van he met Miriam Carre-Potter, the adopted daughter of the slain couple. “She gave me unconditional love” and “introduced me to two beautiful people [who] saw my potential, accepted my adversities, and took me in.”
The victim impact statement from Miriam was less flattering. She said Sanford had brought guns to West high school, where they were both students. “I watched him steal and hurt numerous people.” Even after his arrest on 04-02-22, Sanford threatened her. “Never let Khari out of prison. I’m afraid he’ll come for me some day,” she wrote.
The best of humanity
Judge Ellen Berz: “Beth Potter and Robin Carre both reprinted the best of humanity; the world was a better place with them in it. They gave so much to you, Mr. Sanford. In return for their endless kindness and generosity you killed them. …
"Other people have had difficult and traumatic childhoods — some worse than yours — and they don’t kill people.” — Judge Ellen Berz.
“Despite your glowing words to describe Beth and Robin, you said they ‘treated you like a slave.’ Because they gave you a toothbrush and had you over for dinner! And when Covid started, they wanted you and everyone to be safe.”
Recounting Miriam Carre-Potter’s criticism of her adopted parents as suffering from a “white savior complex,” Judge Berz commented, “They were saviors — in the best sense of the word.”
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
Such a waste. He might even have had his college loans repaid if he had stayed on the straight and narrow…..
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Thanks for illuminating this case. It’s horrific and people will probably make a meal (and big profits) out of it on some future TV series, but it cuts through all the social BS programs that are enabling scum to just keep on coming at good people with no remorse, and certainly no consequences. What a sad and evil tragedy.
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Admirable in ways but best of humanity? No.
“If you’re harmless you’re not virtuous, you’re just harmless, you’re like a rabbit; a rabbit isn’t virtuous, it just can’t do anything except get eaten! That’s not virtuous. If you’re a monster, and you don’t act monstrously, then you’re virtuous.”
Jordan Peterson
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Sanford: “If taking my life is what it takes to repay them, to resolve the grievances of this beautiful family and define justice, I will be honored, your honor. Take it.” (https://madison.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/calculated-homicide-brings-life-with-no-possibility-of-release-in-killing-of-uw-doctor-and/article_46a5e906-f80f-560d-9be7-889528ee0844.html#tracking-source=home-top-story). David’s right, that’s no apology.
But it is Miriam’s role that remains unexplored, at least satisfactorily. She “urged Berz to never allow Sanford to be free. She said in the statement is afraid of him, and that during their relationship he abused and manipulated her.” Maybe, but her self-interest powerfully inclines her in that direction (both to maintain the integrity of her immunity agreement and to preserve her share of her parents’ estate). Lots of moving parts to this story, in other words, and westsidesue is undoubtedly correct: a tv production is inevitable. One can only hope that it treats the story with minimal honesty.
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I am speechless, this girl is the most ungrateful person ever and so is her murdering boyfriend. I still find it hard to accept this most horrific and senseless murder. I wonder if she has any sort of conscience , she deserves it to drive her insane, and I wonder how her siblings feel. I will never forget this terrible act on two such wonderful people, this will always make me remember as they died on my birthday. I am glad of the sentence he received, wish it could have been more.i don’t think he was sorry about the act he committed I just think he is sorry he was caught.
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GREAT investigative reporting, Blaska.
Yet we’re left to ponder why Rickert or Brogan didn’t take a stab at it…..?
The Gotch
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At 20 now, Khari will find out that in Waupun state prison he will be purchased for a pack of cigarettes. No one will give a damn about his repeated rapes either.
But I really question the way that his bad actions were treated when he was younger. According to what I have read, his bad actions were either ignored or let go.
Again, we see that past behavior is indicative of future behavior.
Question is: How can we stop someone from doing such a hideous act by correcting bad behavior when they are younger.
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“How can we stop someone from doing such a hideous act by correcting bad behavior when they are younger.”
Encourage a certain demographic to consider that responsibility ought ensue before you’s drop yer pants…and especially afterwards.
The Gotch
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I’d say that faith in God is the best way of stoping bad behavior.
I am answerable to God Himself and no one else.
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Khari is a scorpion, you know the story, the “woke” frog swims the scorpion to safety only to be killed by him. Because…, well…, he is a scorpion.
Khari felt justified in the murders, in part, because he was “a slave” to his “white savior” masters. What was his descent into “slavery”? He began by sleeping in family vehicles that Miriam would unlock, sneaking him into her room on the coldest nights. She begged her parents to let him “spend the Holidays” with them, and they relented. After the Holidays he made no effort to make other arrangements, and was allowed to stay. I suspect, at this point, things noticeably soured. Absolutely critical to gangstas/gangsta wannabes is the appearance of “getting over” and being in control. The transition from “guest” (“What would you like for dinner?” “Would you like another blanket?”) to “resident” (“Here is dinner, take it or leave it” “You know where things are, get it yourself”) would have been harsh. Perhaps they asked him to take out the trash, or pick up after himself (the kind of stuff we slaves have to do). PLUS, given the occupations of the victims, he couldn’t have ended up in a worse place. Beth was one Covid panicked liberal whose literal JOB was to BE Covid panicked. Match this with a party dog who just wants to “hang” with his boys nightly. Mr Carre is described as being “quiet”, but still, it was a case of bullshit artist/slacker meets professional life coach. (“What are your goals?” or “Did you follow up on the suggestions I made?” “Here is what you need to be doing!” Khari’s goals were to eat their food, hang with his friends, smoke weed, and screw Miriam, – (not the response they were looking for). The BNB was a temporary arrangement dependent on them both getting jobs to support themselves (just like slaves do!) They stopped yielding to his “blackness”. Now, top off this grievance sundae with the popular socialist notion that wealth is not CREATED, but is instead a finite commodity that is taken from the oppressed “people of color” and hoarded by white people. These folks needed to give Khari his due!!!
Madison is rife with other “scorpions”, stealing cars, robbing people, and shooting cars, houses, and each other. They have no respect for property, or human life (other than their own). All are schooled in victimhood, white privilege, and socialistic wealth theories. These murders expose the violent extremes a crime must reach before the woke restorative justice warriors stop putting lipstick on the scorpions, (so they can call them something else), and, instead see them for what they are.
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I’m right in the middle of reading a book entitled “Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself” a story of the downfall of nazi Germany. At the end of WWII the red army came into Germany, raped around a 1/2 million German women and girls, looted and burned whole towns to the ground, and shot many a man who was left standing. Of course, this behavior is in no way limited to the red army. The German army did exactly the same to the Russians, the Poles and so on. They saw themselves as the master race and treated anyone else as less than swine.
If you have a chance, get this book and read it. It is a study of history that you won’t readily find on the shelves of most book stores.
People, especially women in Germany, at the end of WWII decided to kill themselves and their children rather than to endure the torture of the red army machine.
What I now see in America today, in the face of wokeness and political correctness, is the same desire to commit national suicide in order to “right the wrongs of the past”.
To this I say BULLSHIT!
That past was so long ago. I and most of America today had no part in it. While I am sorry that white people enslaved black people I also am sorry that black people enslaved white people in America and around the world.
My family came from Ireland and Germany in the early 1800’s, long before the Civil War.
At that time, the Irish were considered swine by the British. They were made to work under deplorable conditions by the British and eventually fought to free themselves from British control and won.
The lesson we need to learn from history is that history repeats itself no matter who is in charge.
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