When Judge Thomas Miller asked Justin Dallas if he had anything to say before he was sentenced to 46 years in state prison for stabbing to death two women in Liverpool, the 27-year-old defendant said nothing.
The mothers of Dallas’ two victims, however, had plenty to say at his July 28 sentencing at Onondaga County Courthouse in downtown Syracuse.
“You are not a human being, you are an animal,” said Sherry Jones, mother of Dallas’ 24-year-old estranged wife, Brandy Dallas. “You will be locked up in a cage like an animal.”
Jennifer Fox — the mother of Samantha Rainwater, 30, who Dallas also killed last Oct. 28 at the house she owned at 915 Second St. in Liverpool — submitted a statement read in court by Senior Assistant District Attorney Jeremy Cali. “I am no longer a mother because Justin Dallas murdered my only child,” her statement said.
Dallas had worked with Rainwater at Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse.
Cali also read a poem titled “Sometimes Love Hurts for Real,” which he said was written by Brandy Dallas as a document of her husband’s pattern of abuse.
On the day of the slayings, Cali said that, after an altercation with his wife in July 2013, Dallas was charged with menacing, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon. A judge issued a restraining order against him at that time. But, according to Sheriff Kevin Walsh, someone dropped off Justin Dallas at Rainwater’s house that Monday morning. None of the women’s children were in the home at the time.
Noting that Justin Dallas had inflicted more than 70 stab wounds on the two women, Miller called the crime “senseless” and “maniacal,” causing “inconceivable loss.”
A letter submitted by Rainwater’s 13-year-old daughter described her deep sorrow that has resulted in fits of anger and depression. Brandy Dallas was also the mother of two young children.
Another woman, Brandy Wilcox, 36, of Syracuse, was at 915 Second St. when the murders occurred and suffered minor injuries when Dallas pushed her down a flight of stairs.
On June 19, Dallas had pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree assault as a result of what he did to Wilcox, as well as pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree murder.
Wilcox delivered a halting, emotional statement in court at the sentencing. “You had no right,” she said to Dallas. “We were defenseless. We were sleeping.”
Cali indicated that Brandy Dallas and Samantha Rainwater were attacked as they slept at approximately 11 a.m. Oct. 28.
After stealing his wife’s car from the driveway, Dallas was arrested on the shore of Onondaga Lake after a brief pursuit by Liverpool Police Chief Don Morris and sheriff’s deputies Mike Quigley and Karen Munroe.
A resident of 119 Radisson Court in Syracuse, Dallas was indicted by an Onondaga County Grand Jury in January.
Defense attorney Thomas Ryan had planned to argue that his client’s actions had resulted from extreme emotional disturbance, but when the defendant appeared in court last month, he entered a guilty plea on all counts.
Miller sent Dallas to prison for 46 years as a result of a plea agreement that spared the defendant the possibility of being sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. He was also sentenced to seven years for the assault on Wilcox, but that sentence will be served concurrently.
Ryan insisted that his client felt remorse for what he did, but when asked to speak on his own behalf at sentencing, Dallas declined to speak.
