Son pleads in dad's slaying

Guilty plea yields 20-year sentence

HILLSBOROUGH -- In the hours before Adam Sapikowski shot his father, the two had gone head to head about his high school grades and his girlfriend, the teenager told an investigator weeks after the fatal shooting.

Glimpses of the teen's simmering animosity toward his father emerged in Orange County Superior Court on Friday, when Sapikowski pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of James Sapikowski.

James and Alison Powell Sapikowski were found dead May 14, 2005, in their eastern Chapel Hill home, their decomposing bodies wrapped in blankets and bed linens.

Sapikowski, 16 at the time, told a Chapel Hill investigator that he shot both parents April 29 before going to school, District Attorney Jim Woodall said Friday.

Sapikowski told the investigator, Woodall added, that his father more than once had jabbed and threatened him with a baseball bat.

"He said on that morning, when his father said something about the bat, he went upstairs and got the shotgun," Woodall said.

In the kitchen of their large home in the Oaks neighborhood, Sapikowski fired three shots from a .410-gauge shotgun into James Sapikowski.

The teen told investigators his father did not die immediately, that he came at him,Woodall said.

But the autopsy report indicated that any of the three gunshot wounds to James Sapikowski -- one on his neck, another on his head and another near his eye -- could have been instantly fatal, Woodall added.

As Woodall described the shooting, Sapikowski's stepbrothers and sister sat quietly in the courtroom.

The teenager, dressed in khaki pants, black jacket, white shirt and tie, said little during the hearing, answering most questions with a word. He looked down as Woodall gave Judge Carl Fox the facts of the case.

After killing his parents and moving their bodies into their bedroom and blocking the door with chairs and bath towels, Sapikowski fled the home and spent two weeks in two hotels. He told friends and family various stories about where his parents were.

Fox sentenced Sapikowski to at least 19 years and nine months behind bars for the death of his father.

As part of a plea arrangement designed to give Sapikowski nearly 40 years behind bars, the teen will return to court Friday to plead guilty to the second-degree murder of his mother.

Sapikowski, who will be 20 in May, will be imprisoned in a youth center until after his 21st birthday. He will be nearly 60 when he is eligible for release.

'Prison isn't like "Oz" '

Fox painted a bleak picture for the teen, who told the judge at the start of the hearing Friday that he was on Prozac, an antidepressant.

"You have lost a lot of years of your life," Fox said. "While prison isn't like 'Oz' on HBO ... the clock ticks very, very slowly when you're serving time. If you're extremely good and you're able to get out at the lowest possible point, you'll be aging out of the middle years of your life and almost able to go into your older years."

Rosemary Godwin, Sapikowski's lawyer, interrupted the judge to ask for a private talk at the bench.

Immediately after the whispered conversation, Fox tried to offer a glimmer of hope to Sapikowski, who could have faced life in prison had he been tried and convicted of the two counts of first-degree murder.

"There is a good side of this," Fox said. "At some point you're going to be eligible for release. ... The odds are that you're going to have possibly as much as 25 to 30 years of your life left to live."

Godwin said after the hearing that she could not discuss details of the case with the second plea pending.

But she told Fox that if the case had gone to trial, the defense would have offered much more about the troubled relationship between father and son.

Sapikowski's sister, stepbrothers and aunt issued a statement.

"The pleas speak for themselves and provide some solace and a sense of safety to family members in that Adam will remain behind bars for many years for his crimes," it said.