Almost 50 years after a 16-year-old boy on a weeks-long heroin bender terrorized the gay community in New Orleans, killing at least three gay men after accompanying them to their homes, he’s earned an early release.
Warren Harris Jr. was convicted in 1977 on three counts of first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of Jack Savell, Alden Delano, and Ernest Pommier and was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.
He was acquitted on charges of killing a fourth gay man, Robert Gary.
As police combed the city for clues to the murders, newspapers across the country reported breathlessly on The French Quarter Stabber.
In April 1977, the Times-Picayune in New Orleans described Harris’ crimes as motivated by a “revulsion of homosexuals.”
Prosecutors alleged Harris was a sex worker who committed the murders after having sex with his victims. The drug-fueled killing spree earned a rare caution to the gay community from the New Orleans police superintendent.
On appeal, Harris accused police of coercing him into a confession; the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld his convictions.
Decades later, Harris got a reprieve along with hundreds of other “juvenile lifers” when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that no-parole life sentences for minors are unconstitutional for all but “the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.”
As of 2017, “juvenile lifers” in Louisiana could be eligible for parole once they served 25 years, earned a GED, and had no major disciplinary actions for a year. In September, Harris, discipline-free for seven years, finally earned his GED after six tries.
At his parole hearing last week, Harris, now 63, attributed his crimes to the influence of heroin.
“I was in need of money to support that drug, the drugs I was using at the time. I became affiliated with some of the victims and was asked to accompany them to their home, and at the time when we entered the home, I robbed and killed those men, and I regret it, and I’m so sorry every day,” Harris said.
Harris was accompanied at the hearing by his lawyer, a representative from the nonprofit Louisiana Parole Project, which plans to help Harris with housing and services on the outside, and his sister, Brenda Palmer.
Tearing up on a video call, Palmer said she and her brother had returned to “the foundation on which we were brought up on, and that was the foundation of Jesus Christ.”
“Warren has been a father, uncle to my children, my grandchildren, and we lean on each other. When I go to visit, I don’t just go to visit him. I go because I need him,” she said. “I’m here to be here for him until the day God calls us all home.”
Harris assured the board that drug courses in prison have prepared him for release, and Kerry Myers with the Parole Project testified that the influence of heroin on Harris as a young man was a lifetime ago.
“Mr. Harris is now not a 16-year-old addicted child,” Myers said. “He is a 64-year-old man who has served 46 years for these crimes. He has a support system.”
Still, the board mandated drug testing for Harris twice a month for six months.
No family members of Harris’ victims were present.
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