Accused killer linked to more deaths

GRANGEVILLE, Idaho – A man convicted and sentenced to death row in the slaying of a couple vacationing in North Idaho in 1983, but who has been granted a new trial, might have killed at least six people in Texas, his brother said.

“He is a sociopath of the first order,” Robert Lankford said about his brother, Mark Lankford, according to documents filed Friday in 2nd District Court by prosecuting attorney Kirk MacGregor.

MacGregor filed the document to support an earlier motion to set Mark Lankford’s bail at $10 million. A hearing to discuss bail, as well as DNA testing of evidence, is scheduled for Thursday.

“The state believes the defendant is a severe danger to society,” MacGregor wrote in the court document.

Mark Lankford, 51, is being held in the Latah County Jail to be closer to his defense attorney, Charles Kovis. Kovis did not immediately return a call from the Associated Press on Saturday.

Mark Lankford was granted a new trial earlier this year when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled he must be either retried or released because of an error in jury instructions during his 1984 trial.

Mark Lankford and a third brother, Bryan, were convicted in the 1983 beating deaths of U.S. Marine Capt. Robert Bravence, 27, and his wife, Cheryl, 25, who were vacationing in Idaho. At the time, Mark and Bryan Lankford were camping in the Idaho wilderness.

Mark Lankford was sentenced to Idaho’s death row; Bryan Lankford is serving a life sentence.

According to the court document filed Friday, Robert Lankford said he heard Mark say things that made him believe Mark might have taken part in murders in Texas.

Robert, 49, is an electrical engineer in Texas, and said he and his family are afraid of Mark.

“I fear for my family, and my family agrees with me that he will seek revenge on us all,” Robert said, according to the document.

He said that two girls were murdered in an area of Houston close to where Mark lived at the time with his grandmother.

“She feared for her life as his mysterious behavior was leading her to suspect he had something to do with the disappearances of the young ladies,” Robert said in the affidavit.

Also in the affidavit, Robert recounted a Christmas gathering in 1980 when their father said he found a body near a spot where he took his sons fishing as children. Mark made a comment about the body being dismembered.

“My father turned white as a bedsheet, then asked Mark how he knew that as that detail was never made public,” Robert said in the affidavit.

Robert also said he thought Mark was involved in the disappearance of two women from a Texas strip club after Mark applied for a job as a stripper under the name “Little Conan” but was “laughed off stage.”

“I believe he picked out those that humiliated his ego and waited for them in the parking lot where he abducted and murdered them later,” Robert said.

The sixth death for which Robert said he believes Mark could be responsible is that of an elderly man. Robert said Mark talked about putting “a hammer off into his head.”

Robert said Mark used the same phrase in discussing the killing of the couple in Idaho.

“He was a career criminal with no conscience or consideration for others,” Robert said about his brother.