Chief Terence M. Delehanty has announced that convicted murder William LaPage, was unanimously denied parole by the Massachusetts Parole Board this month.
“This individual is currently serving a life sentence after being convicted of second-degree murder in Suffolk Superior Court in 2005, for a horrific crime that shocked the community of Winthrop,†Delehanty said.
Lapage is a twice-convicted suspect in a 1995 Winthrop stabbing death murder of his then girlfriend, 33-year old Sharilee Banks, in her Washington Avenue apartment.
“I am extremely pleased with the Parole Board’s decision to deny parole for this convicted murderer who committed such a heinous act and stole the life of an innocent person. His continued imprisonment is just and I hope his confinement in a state prison aids the family of his victim in their grief and healing process.”
LaPage was first convicted in 1997, when a Suffolk Superior Court Jury found him guilty of first degree murder and flatly rejected his claims of self-defense, when he fatally stabbed and slashed Banks in the neck, stomach, face, wrists and hands during an argument over money. Jurors found LaPage guilty under the theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty.
In 2005, LaPage was again found guilty by a jury, this time on a charge of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced on the basis of that conviction.
However, LaPage had moved to have a third trial, claiming that his attorney in the 2005 proceeding should have introduced the victim’s criminal history in support of his claim that she was the initial aggressor. A Suffolk Superior Court Judge disagreed in 2010 and the SJC’s recent ruling upheld that 2010 ruling against the request for a new trial, effectively exhausting LaPage’s appeals in the case.