College student who killed a man with sword sentenced twice to 55 years in prison. Samurai saw
College student who killed a man with sword sentenced twice to 55 years in prison
Peter Manfredonia was sentenced to 55 years in prison for killing two people, injuring another, holding a man hostage and kidnapping a woman in 2020.
A Connecticut court issued a second 55-year prison sentence to a man who attacked two people with a samurai sword, killing one and severely injuring the other.
It’s the second sentence — and identical in length — for Peter Manfredonia, 26, who also fatally shot a man and kidnapped his girlfriend before leading police on a six-day manhunt across several states in 2020.
Manfredonia was a senior studying finance and mechanical engineering at the University of Connecticut when he “just flipped,” according to his arrest warrant, and fatally struck 62-year-old Theodore DeMers with a sword on May 22, 2020, outside the man’s home in Willington, Conn.
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Manfredonia then attacked the man who came to DeMers’ rescue, John Franco, who was 80 years old at the time, leaving him with severe injuries to his hands, neck and head.
Manfredonia broke into a nearby home and took a third man hostage for 24 hours. A day later, he drove across the state to Derby and fatally shot a former classmate and kidnapped that classmate’s girlfriend. He let her go, physically unharmed, at a rest stop in New Jersey.
After a six-day search, police arrested Manfredonia at a truck stop in Hagerstown, Md., without incident.
On Wednesday, the defendant was sentenced to 55 years in prison for the second killing and the kidnapping. On Thursday, he was sentenced to an additional 55 years in prison for the sword attacks, court documents show.
Between the two cases, Manfredonia pleaded guilty to five counts of murder, assault, kidnapping and home invasion. Both of his sentences will run concurrently, and he agreed not to seek early release as part of his plea bargains, The Associated Press reports.
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The victims and their families in both cases agreed to the plea bargain after months of discussion, according to reporting from Connecticut Public Radio.
This weeks’ sentencing hearings came with several days of emotional testimony from victims and eyewitnesses.
Cindy DeMers, the widow of the man killed by samurai sword, told the court she believed her husband’s killer deserved the death penalty, even though Connecticut outlawed capital punishment in 2016.
“It was like being in a war zone,” she said, according to the Associated Press. “All I could FOCUS on was reassuring Ted that he was going to be OK and we would put his body back together. We will get through this. We had gotten through so much together up until this point.
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“He was still alive when he was taken away, but he never came home,” she added. “My husband’s life was stolen from him viciously. Life as I knew it [was] stolen from me. My world as I knew it came to an end.”
State Attorney Matthew Gedansky said that Manfredonia was in DeMers’ neighborhood because he planned to kill his ex-girlfriend, who lived nearby, the AP reported. Michael Dolan, the defendant’s lawyer, said his client has bipolar disease and anxiety and was actually planning to commit suicide in front of the woman as part of a psychotic episode.
Witnesses said DeMers thought Manfredonia had crashed his motorcycle and was offering to help when he was attacked, according to several media accounts of the trial.
Manfredonia apologized twice in court this week, directing separate Комментарии и мнения владельцев to each of the victims and their families.
Correction April 22, 2023
An earlier version of this story misspelled Willington, the town where the attack occurred, as Wilmington.
Most products have a specific use, but isn’t it more fun discovering whether something is capable of exceeding its perceived boundaries? With this in mind, I purchased a Samurai C-330-LH Curved Pruning Saw seeking to discover if it was more than an expert tool for tree branches.
With restrictions still in place and people experiencing life working at home, most of us have some unexpected extra time on our hands. There’s now little excuse to tackle all those jobs that we’ve cast aside, and one of the main areas benefitting from some newly-found attention is gardens.
At one of our properties, there was a job needing to be addressed. It wasn’t an ‘I’ll get round to it when I can ‘ job, it was one that needed to be dealt with and frustratingly kept playing on my mind.
In the garden, we had a fir tree that seemed to be taking over and behind it was fencing that needed replacing. The problem was, we couldn’t get close to the fence because of the tree.
The fields next to us are used for lambing, and the thought of a cute lamb wandering in separated from its mother was a ‘no-no’. I should also mention the property is currently being renovated, so no one is living there compounding the matter.
A couple of weekends ago, I convinced my wife we needed to address the issue. I told her I’d do the more labour-intensive work and she could help with cleaning up and motivation. In the garden was one of those fir trees which was so thick, it blocked out the sunlight and chose to grow horizontally rather than vertically.
In readiness for the task ahead, I purchased some rachet-loppers designed for inch thick branches. We headed to the property and with the sun shining and after a matter of hours I had taken all the greenery off the tree only to be left with something that could best be described as the devil’s fingers protruding eight feet out of the ground.
I looked at the twin handled branch lopper in my hand and realised something extra was needed. Without a tape measure, I guessed the branch measurements, and I decided that around 60 per cent of them were 3-4″ inches thick. All I needed to do now was find something capable of dealing with them.
Once home and after a shower, I started searching Google for best pruning saws. One that kept popping up was the Silky Zubat with many stating it was the professionals’ favourite. However, I am not a professional; I am a middle-aged man bereft of tree surgery skills. Plus I had no idea if I would be capable of fully utilising what I’d purchased. When faced with a decision like this, I always consider the wallet and head for something with a mid-range price.
After reading numerous branch saw reviews and watching videos, I opted for the Samurai C-330-LH curved pruning saw which came with a plastic safety scabbard. It was under £30 and from the pictures, looked very similar to the far pricier options. I took the plunge and purchased the saw from the official Samurai UK eBay shop.
Later that week the Samurai C-330-LH arrived, I looked at it and remembered thinking it was smaller and lighter than I thought it would be. I did start to worry; would it be up to the job? Now that I had the saw, any excuses had disappeared and I knew I had to build the enthusiasm to tackle the main event.
Once again, we were blessed with fine weather so I convinced my wife we should take the 20-minute drive to the property. After unpacking the car, I was once more face to face with the devil’s fingers, and today they looked considerably thicker than I remembered.
I adopted the attitude I was one of the last people on earth and needed some wood to burn and build with. I popped my mobile on a table, tuned into Heart FM 70s, donned my gloves and goggles and started cutting.
I was surprised at just how easy the Samurai C-330-LH dealt with smaller 1-2″ branches; it whipped through them in no time at all. After 30 minutes of cutting, I stepped back coffee in hand and thought to myself, that was easier than I thought.
The big test was how it would cope with 5″ and 6″ Thick branches? I didn’t need to worry as the Samurai C-330-LH cut through those too. Admittedly, it took more time and effort, but it did the job. I noticed that the blade was becoming loose from the handle. I found two screws that required tightening, and I didn’t have a screwdriver with me. I looked over the rubble surrounding my feet and found a coin; amazingly, I was able to tighten the screws using the coin and was primed and ready to tackle the fatter fingers.
I sat on the old plastic garden chair, put in place for my building crew, trying to work up the enthusiasm to take on the thick trunks. My arms were still tired from dealing with the multitude of 5-6″ branches. “How the heck was I going to cut through the thickest ones? It’s a branch saw, not a goddam trunk saw.”
I remember watching some reviews on YouTube where people cut ‘V-shaped’ notches in trunks. So that was the plan. Cut notches in the front and the back and see what happens? Incredibly it worked, this sub-£30 pruning saw was capable of taking out trunks triple or quadruple what other reviewers said it was capable of, and I am a novice!
I was never going to remove the tree completely, I knew from the outset this would require a specialist, but I did once again prove to myself, never to judge a book by the cover.
Final thoughts The Samurai C-330-LH Pruning Saw far exceeded my expectations. It’s perfect for undertaking a wide variety of pruning jobs, including ones a little more extreme as detailed above. It’s a lightweight tool, and there is a handy clip on the scabbard. In addition to its gardening capability, I feel it would be ideal for those outdoorsy-types who like to enjoy the wilds, in particular the growing number of ‘preppers’.
Congratulations Samurai Saws on producing a first-rate, realistically priced product that is capable of far more than its looks would suggest.
Samurai Saws – Where and how?
You can view the full range of saws at the company’s website: www.samuraisaws.co.uk.
Samurai Saws UK Ltd Unit 10, Lake Enterprise Park Lancaster, LA1 3NX
Disclaimer: I purchased the Samurai C-330-LH saw using my own money. The manufacturer had no prior-warning this review was going to be done and was only informed after the review was compiled.
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Read our guide on how to make your garden picture-perfect here.
Samurai Champloo
Fuu Kasumi is a young and clumsy waitress who spends her days peacefully working in a small teahouse. That is, until she accidentally spills a drink all over one of her customers! With a group of samurai now incessantly harassing her, Fuu desperately calls upon another samurai in the shop, Mugen, who quickly defeats them with his wild fighting technique, utilizing movements reminiscent to that of breakdancing. Unfortunately, Mugen decides to pick a fight with the unwilling ronin Jin, who wields a more precise and traditional style of swordfighting, and the latter proves to be a formidable opponent. The only problem is, they end up destroying the entire shop as well as accidentally killing the local magistrate’s son.
For their crime, the two samurai are captured and set to be executed. However, they are rescued by Fuu, who hires the duo as her bodyguards. Though she no longer has a place to return to, the former waitress wishes to find a certain samurai who smells of sunflowers and enlists the help of the now exonerated pair to do so. Despite initially disapproving of this idea, the two eventually agree to assist the girl in her quest; thus, the trio embark upon an adventure to find this mysterious warrior—that is, if Fuu can keep Mugen and Jin from killing each other.
Set in an alternate Edo Period of Japan, Samurai Champloo follows the journey of these three eccentric individuals in an epic quest full of action, comedy, and dynamic sword fighting, all set to the beat of a unique hip-hop infused soundtrack.
Background
Samurai Champloo is the only anime to have featured music from the Japanese hip-hop producer Nujabes prior to his death in 2010. The anime also spawned the 2006 video game Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked for the Playstation 2.
The show aired in two parts, with the first half airing Thursdays at 2:28 AM on Fuji TV from May 20, 2004 to September 23, 2004, and the second half airing Saturdays at 10:30 AM on BS Fuji from January 22, 2005 to March 19, 2005.
Geneon Entertainment USA originally licensed and released the show in North America, but after their closure in late 2007, the show went out of print. FUNimation Entertainment later entered a distribution deal with Geneon to distribute some of their titles, including Samurai Champloo. After the distribution deal ended, FUNimation later outright licensed the series.
Characters Voice Actors
Reviews
“Samurai Champloo” may not have the same ring to it as “Cowboy Bebop,” yet it is a title that has a similar function: to illustrate a combination of multicultural pulp fiction sensibility. Where Cowboy Bebop was a past future fusion of jazz, rock, and blues, spaghetti western, kung fu, and noir cinema genres, and a setting equating outer space to the great frontier, Samurai Champloo is a more wildly anachronistic mélange of Edo-period history and contemporary hip-hop and bohemian culture. “Champloo” itself comes from the word “chanpurū,” Okinawan for “something mixed,” and source of Okinawa’s pride in multicultural acceptance. Cowboy. Bebop was a trend-setting marriage of anime traditions and Tarantino-inspired cultural hodgepodge — it could be said that Pulp Fiction influenced Cowboy Bebop as much as Cowboy Bebop influenced Kill Bill — and Samurai Champloo continues in this meta style, taking it even further.
Of course, Cowboy Bebop was not Shinichiro Watanabe’s first foray into resonant crossover in anime: Macross Plus was a monolithic amalgamation of Top Gun’s hot-headed romantic drama and sci-fi tropes including a pop-idol hologram version of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL, in turn influencing the famous cyberpunk writer William Gibson to write Idoru, a novel about a Japanese virtual idol and her marriage to a real-life rock star. Of course, all of this was before the invention of the Vocaloid, though I suppose the future imagined by Watanabe and Gibson was, in a way, not so far off.
Anyhow, now that I’ve finished my little history lesson — which I feel is relevant, as having such a perspective may deepen your enjoyment of Samurai Champloo as much as it did for me — let’s continue on to the review. In light of all the prescient futurism found in Watanabe’s other works, it’s rather interesting that he decided to shift his FOCUS to the past and present. Of course, the world’s future is always in its past. and what we have here is, in a nutshell, Edo-period Japan: the remix. Baseball, tagging/graffiti, Van Gogh, zombies, and Catholicism are tossed into the “chanpurū” with a whole lot of revised Japanese pseudo-history. As such the medley of influences and tangential tale-spinning occasionally smacks of filler, but one would do well to understand that this show is simply all /about/ the filler — and this is all for the better, because Samurai Champloo is at its freshest and most hilarious when it’s veering off the rails. It even has the single most entertaining recap episode I’ve ever seen. Even with all this episodic improv, Fuu’s journey in search of a “samurai who smells like sunflowers” provides a compelling core to the story, much like a steady hip-hop beat giving structure to the mix of samples and freestyle verses. Her ronin traveling companions Mugen and Jin mingle like oil and water, and there we have the perfect cast for hilarity and drama.
Samurai Champloo is one good-looking show, with its thick linework giving an impression of manga blended with graffiti style. One episode even takes a quick trip into the psychedelic, with a sudden burst of colorful hallucination, Mind Game style — courtesy of episode key animator Masaaki Yuasa, of course. A wide variety of such notable animators were brought on board and thus the style occasionally varies slightly from episode to episode or even scene to scene, but it’s always pleasing and completely in tune with the show’s theme. Rural Japan has never looked so urban; almost any given scene in Samurai Champloo would be right at home spray-painted on the side of a city building or underpass.
Samurai Champloo is a show for everyone. Plenty of great sword-slashing action, clever comedy, and a good share of moments that will tug at your heartstrings — often all at once. If you enjoy anime, this is one you can’t miss.
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I caught Samurai Champloo as it aired back in 2004, and though I liked it enough, it didn’t impact me as much as I hoped it would. Though maybe that’s not entirely true, as the soundtrack did indirectly change my life, thanks to the composer Nujabes introducing me to instrumental hip hop and providing a soundtrack to my life for the next few years.
I recently re-watched the show and felt compelled to write a retrospective/review of the series. While watching Jin, Mugen and Fuu traipse around 19th century Japan getting into ridiculous adventures, I realised Shinichirô Watanabe’s follow up to Cowboy Bebop is one of. the most subversive animes ever made. Taking a staple genre, dressing it up in anachronism, but continually tackling subjects often avoided by the medium.
It takes 25 episodes until a character literally says “I was born in the wrong era.” Champloo is basically saying Japan’s lofty samurai era was actually a shit place to live for common people like us actually thank you very much.
It’s a divisive show that tested the patience of many viewers, drove others away entirely after a few episodes, and frustrated people who were too used to watching a plot move characters forward for 26 episodes. Champloo doesn’t even have characters who move the plot forward. The hook of how the three disparate characters end up travelling together through Edo period Japan is just that, it’s a hook to draw you in.
Samurai Champloo is about, and also not about, three characters hunting a samurai who smells of sunflowers. There’s an episode late into the series which features two street gangs having a graffiti battle across town, and though somewhat amusing also served no benefit towards the journey of the three characters. So if you hop into any forum thread you’ll see a multitude of complaints about it. However, the point of the episode is the same as the theme running throughout the entire show: people from a bygone era rebelling against authority and social norms in a way 21st century people do: through counter-culture.
I’ve gained a new appreciation for this show. It’s been so so long since I saw it, but rewatching it I realise how the story is about how incompatible Tokugawa era Japan is with our way of life; all the things we take for granted were rare luxuries back then. This is an obvious fact for anyone with a remote understanding of Japanese history, but still, the show rams it home with stark contrasts. Each episode highlights a 21st century aspect of our lives, a form of freedom (creative, sexual, geographical, etc) that characters in the 19th century yearned for despite the odds.
It’s set in an era ruled by rigid order, social rules and hierarchies. Stifling to the point of causing grief among the downtrodden populace. Yet a populace we should not treat as foreign aliens. The show asks us to empathise with them; they were just like us. Some of them had our modern spirit and ultimately struggled to exist in such a society as a result. Our heroes are a ronin, vagabond, and an orphan. Fighting against their era’s rules with a modern spirit.
One of the things I love about this show is how the three characters hate each other for the majority of the 26 episodes, but their hatred gives away inch by inch. They initially try to break apart, to run away from each other, but situations conspire to brig them back together, until a turning point where they actively make a choice to stick together, grudgingly recognising that they are of the same fiery rebellious soul. This is infinitely more satisfying than characters who automatically stick together from the outset. Another theme of Champloo is that travelling a journey with strangers can bring you together like family.
Champloo is more known for its scenes that are juxtaposed with modern quirks such as people beatboxing to humorous and surreal effect, and scene transitions that look like a DJ playing with their deck.
Episode topics try to cover every area that is barely explored by other samurai-era anime that are more concerned with traditional ‘fight evil’ plots (or even movies for that matter) from the prevalence of the yakuza co-existing with samurai, the tragedy of women forced into prostitution to pay off their husbands’ debts, human trafficking in the art world, existence of homosexuality, persecution of Christians and Ainu, and graffiti gangs with too much time on their hands. There’s even a hilarious baseball game with members of an American expedition that predates Commodore Perry’s by a few years.
Champloo features one of the best soundtracks ever, brought to you by Nujabes, whose life was tragically cut short in 2010. Instrumental hip hop might bring to your mind a certain perception of what to expect, but the soundtrack is a mixture of traditional beats with Japanese influence, floating ephemeral sounds constantly conjure a feeling of melancholy, or ‘mono no aware’, the fleeting transience of things.
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The appeal of the show is ‘style over substance’, however that is a great discredit to what Champloo accomplishes. All the modern quirks in historical context are not just there to make the show stand out visually. The show is about entertaining this idea, this hope, that even back in Edo era Japan there were open-minded people fighting for creativity, individuality and basic human rights. Sure, most of them didn’t last long, but they didn’t die without a fight. Banzai!