Lancaster man pleads guilty, gets life in prison for murder

The Lancaster ex-con with “Satan” tattooed on his face – who stabbed a black man he had just met 39 times and told his mother he “enjoyed it” – was sentenced to life in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to murder.

David Adam Pate, 25, admitted that he lured Rickey James into some woods with wine because, “I just wanted to cut his dadgum head off.” Pate told police that he used a butcher knife “just like the one Michael Myers used in (the movie) ‘Halloween,’ ” then, “I just pulled it out and stick it in his throat.”

Police found at least 20 knives, both store-bought and homemade, and more than 20 masks in Pate’s home after he was arrested a month after the killing in November 2013, when children found James’ decomposed body under some brush. Pate told police that he went back to cover up James’s body the next day because he was tempted to kill again.

“I went back to cover him up because I might want to go back there and kill somebody else,” he said.

Pate, with prison stretches for burglary and other crimes dating back to when he was 17, did not describe the killing in court, but his recorded confession was played. James’ two brothers described Pate as “the devil” in court and said they hope Pate suffers in prison.

In the video confession, Pate said he tied James with rope from neck to ankles so he could drag his body to a nearby creek, but he was too drunk and tired to do so.

Police and prosecutors said the crime was as brutal and heinous as any in recent memory. DNA linked Pate to the crime scene, and Pate’s family told police that he had been covered in blood and had tried to burn his clothes afterward.

“I remember everything,” Pate told his mother after her was identified as a suspect. “I made it a point to remember, because I enjoyed it.” Pate was already in jail for disorderly conduct when he was arrested.

Lancaster County Sheriff’s Detective Spencer McInvaille said even experienced police had not seen such a stone-cold killer in action before Pate, saying Pate “enjoyed what he did.”

Prosecutors said Pate deserves to die in prison.

“This is an evil person here,” said Sixth Circuit Solicitor Randy Newman. “If anybody deserves life in prison, it is David Pate.”

Pate’s lawyer, Sixth Circuit Chief Public Defender Mike Lifsey, asked that Pate be spared life in prison because he admitted guilt in the “horrible crime.”

But in sentencing Pate to the maximum of life in prison without parole, Circuit Court Judge Dan Hall described the murder as “senseless, remorseless and emotionless.”

This story was originally published April 9, 2015 at 7:58 AM with the headline "Lancaster man pleads guilty, gets life in prison for murder."