Summary:

In the midst of a custody dispute, Passaro parked the family minivan in front of his estranged wife's Myrtle Beach condominium, doused the inside with gasoline and set it on fire with their 2-year-old daughter, Maggie, strapped in her car seat.

Passaro planned to die in the blaze, too, but jumped from the van when it exploded. Firefighters who rushed to the scene asked Passaro if anyone was inside, but he refused to answer.

Passaro purportedly believed that after he died he would be reunited in heaven with his dead daughter and his first wife, who died in a car accident.

He had written a suicide note in which he said he hoped his estranged wife, Karen, would "live in pain for the rest of her life." Passaro pled guilty and waived appeals.

Final Meal:

None.

Final Words:

Passaro smiled, blew kisses at his family then told them he loved them and that it was over.

ClarkProsecutor.org

ProDeathPenalty.com

Michael Passaro was so angry with his estranged wife that he set fire to a family minivan, killing their 2-year-old daughter, according to prosecutors at his sentencing hearing.

Against advice from his attorneys, Passaro pled guilty to charges of murder and 1st-degree arson in Maggie's Nov. 23, 1998, death.

Prosecutors presented evidence of the crime to Judge Dean Hall, who imposed the death sentence. A prosecutor read a typewritten suicide note with singed edges that was recovered from the white 1995 Ford minivan.

Passaro set fire to the van outside his wife's condo at South Bay Lakes in Surfside Beach. Passaro left Maggie in the van while he escaped from the fire. "Well, Karen [Passaro] won the war, and it's at the expense of our daughter," the note said. "I guess that I'm getting the last laugh now, Karen.

Whatever anyone does, please make sure Karen doesn't kill herself. I want her to live in pain." "Has he achieved his objective?" the prosecutor asked Karen Passaro. "Yes. I will live like this forever, for the rest of my life. I can't concentrate or even focus some days," Karen Passaro said. "Maggie will never get to grow up. ... And in the process he took away my future."

Jonathan Simons, a clinical psychologist who examined Passaro, testified Passaro knew right from wrong. "My impression is that in Michael's mind his identity became somewhat blurred. He felt his wife was robbing him of his identity, and he had to win that battle," Simons said.

Hembree asked Simons whether "Michael Passaro's hatred for Karen Passaro was greater than the love he had for Maggie Passaro?" Simons said: "I think some people could see that. ... He had this delusion of being with Maggie and going to heaven to see his 1st wife." Susan Lewis, who taught Passaro in a nursing class, testified he needed emotional support and wasn't thinking clearly.

Lewis, who testified for the defense, also said Passaro had poor life skills and judgment, and was under a lot of stress with his classes, work and pending divorce. "He thought he had a solution to his problems, and he hoped she was hurt at the outcome," Lewis said.

Fire investigators testified the fire started near the middle seat of the van. The remains of a plastic, 1-gallon gasoline can also were found melted into the floor near where Maggie was strapped in a child safety seat. Maggie's family members left the courtroom while pictures of the charred van with Maggie's body still inside were shown to the judge.

Passaro, who wore shackles, a light-blue shirt and dark-blue slacks, solemnly stared at his hands while the photographs were shown. "She was alive when the fire was raging. She burned to death as a result of the flame and fire in the car," said Clay Nichols, a forensic pathologist who examined Maggie. "I can't think of a more painful way to die."

Witnesses testified Passaro jumped out of the van soon after it exploded. "We pulled him away to the grassy area," said John Watts, a witness. "We asked him if anyone else was in the van, and he would not answer us." Maggie's body was found after the fire was extinguished and investigators were searching for a cause of the fire.

Paramedics testified Passaro was conscious when they arrived, and the clothing on his right arm and the back of his legs was singed. "There's no joy in sending someone to death row," said Prosecutor Greg Hembree after Passaro, 38, was sentenced. "There's satisfaction that it was the appropriate sentence. Michael Joseph Passaro deserves the death penalty. The burning death of a 2-year-old is inexcusable."

UPDATE:

Michael Passaro has refused to appeal his sentence and urged the courts to ignore the efforts of well-meaning attorneys to spare him from a lethal injection. "You do not have to live this life. I do," he wrote in a letter to South Carolina's Supreme Court. "The state says I should die for what I did, and I am not going to stand in their way." The SC Supreme Court unanimously agreed.

Defense lawyers say shortly after Passaro married his first wife, she was killed in an accident. When she ran out of their house to help the victim of a nearby car accident, another car struck and killed her. "I want to be buried with my 1st and only love, Donna," he wrote in his suicide note.

Passaro was devastated, turning to drugs and alcohol to ease his pain. Eventually, he regained control of his life and moved to South Carolina, becoming a paramedic near Myrtle Beach and studying to be a nurse. He met his second wife, Karen, at a hospital where she worked.

The 2 were married and by 1996 had a baby girl, Maggie. "All he had ever wanted was a family and a home and someone to love him," Passaro's mother, Betty, said in court.

But the marriage soured. Passaro's wife asked for a divorce and got a restraining order. Passaro got to see his daughter one weekend a month. It was after one of those visits he parked his van outside his wife's condominium and set it on fire.

One of the 1st officers on the scene would later testify Karen Passaro heard the commotion and came outside. She recognized the van and demanded over and over to know whether her daughter was inside. Horry County Fire Capt. James Cyganiewicz stalled as long as he could but eventually broke the news. He said she collapsed in sobs.

"It's pretty funny how the system works," Passaro wrote in his suicide note. "I get visitation with my daughter, and I'm allowed to end our lives from existence with the help of the courts and my wife. I guess that I'm getting the last laugh now, Karen." Passaro has hardly made himself a sympathetic character.

His temper in prison has been well documented. One guard testified Passaro got angry when he was told he couldn't have orange juice. "I have burned my child to death, and I'll burn you," Passaro told the guard. "I'll burn your house down with your family in it." A psychiatrist has ruled Passaro is competent to waive all his appeals.

He told his lawyer he was willing to ask the courts to look at his case only if he would spend 15 years or fewer in prison because he didn't want to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Passaro Submits to Execution Without Appeal

By Jeffrey Collins, Associated Press.

TheState.com

09-14-02

The 40-year-old inmate could have stopped his execution any time because he has never appealed his sentence, but with his mom, sister and 11 other witnesses watching, he died by lethal injection at 6:15 p.m.

Friday. Passaro smiled, blew kisses at his family then told them he loved them and that it was over. He let his final few breaths out as his eyes slowly closed.

It was a much less violent killing than the one four years ago that brought him to the death chamber. In the midst of a custody dispute, Passaro parked the family minivan in front of his estranged wife's Myrtle Beach condominium, doused the inside with gasoline and set it on fire with their 2-year-old daughter, Maggie, strapped in her car seat.

Passaro planned to die in the blaze, too, but jumped from the van when it exploded. Firefighters who rushed to the scene asked Passaro if anyone was inside, but he refused to answer.

Passaro was a Navy veteran and former nurse technician with no other violent crimes on his record.

Passaro's court-appointed lawyer, Joe Savitz, sat outside the Broad River Correctional Institution with a cell phone, ready to file an appeal if Passaro changed his mind. Savitz said before the execution that he doubted the phone would ring because Passaro believed he would be reunited in heaven with his dead daughter and his first wife, who died nearly a decade ago as she tried to help a victim in a car accident.

Prosecutor Greg Hembree, who sent Passaro to death and watched the sentence carried out Friday, called him a cold-blooded killer who wanted to hurt his estranged wife, Karen, as much as he could.

He pointed to a typewritten suicide note salvaged from the van. "Whatever anyone does, please make sure that Karen doesn't kill herself over this," Passaro wrote. "I want her to live in pain for the rest of her life."

Two sisters and the grandfather of the young victim also watched the execution through the glass and bars. The girl's family issued a statement that said they would rather focus on Maggie's life instead of the death of her father. There are no words that could describe the horror that a mother must feel to see an ambulance take her child away," the family said. They recalled fond memories of Maggie - reading her bedtime stories and seeing her standing by the refrigerator asking for strawberry milk.

Just 25 months ago, Passaro pleaded guilty to murder and a judge sentenced him to death. He has never appealed, telling his lawyers and judges a trip to the death chamber is better than spending the rest of his life in a cell. "You do not have to live this life. I do. The state says I should die for what I did, and I am not going to stand in their way," Passaro wrote in a note to the state Supreme Court, opposing Savitz's attempts to force him to appeal his case.

Passaro was so determined to die he even personally appeared before the justices in May, asking them to let him go to his death without a judge ever reviewing his case. That hasn't happened since the state renewed the death penalty nearly 25 years ago. The justices granted Passaro's request, noting that 12 percent of the 302 inmates executed in the United States between 1973 and 1995 waived at least some of their appeals. But Passaro's determination didn't stop the state Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Christian Action Council from filing an appeal for clemency to Gov. Jim Hodges.

The groups called Passaro's execution court-assisted suicide and said he should be spared because he suffered from a deep depression after his first wife died and was so suicidal that he slept with a knife. The petition says that judges who have reviewed the case never knew about Passaro's background, and that his own trial lawyers didn't fight to save him. Hodges rejected the appeal Thursday. A South Carolina governor has not commuted a death sentence since capital punishment was brought back in 1977.

Volunteering for Death

Death Row Inmate Set to Die and He Doesn’t Want to be Saved

By Bryan Robinson - ABCNews.com

September 13, 2002

A South Carolina death row prisoner is scheduled to be executed tonight — and he can't wait. Michael Passaro wants to be with the 2-year-old daughter he killed four years ago, the crime that landed him on death row. At around 6 p.m., to the dismay of his attorney and death penalty opponents, he will receive his wish through lethal injection for burning his daughter to death in his own aborted suicide attempt in 1998.

In November of that year, Passaro doused his van with gasoline, strapped his daughter Maggie inside and then sat down in his car before setting it ablaze. However, before the fire could consume him, Passaro jumped out of the car, leaving Maggie to die. Passaro pleaded guilty to murder in 2000 and requested — and received — the death penalty.

Passaro has not, and never wanted to, appeal his guilty plea, and has rejected his attorneys' attempts to help him. In July, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled unanimously that he was competent to waive all his appeals options, clearing the way for his execution tonight.

An ‘Escape’ From Punishment

This has left Joe Savitz, Passaro's appellate lawyer, frustrated. He wants to help Passaro, and is ready to file appeal papers at any time to stop his execution. However, Passaro won't let him. "I could stop it [the scheduled execution] right now if he let me," Savitz said. "I'm ready to file the appeals right now and stop it, but I have to have his consent to do that. But I don't think he will [give his consent] and am confident the execution will go forward. "It's extremely frustrating as an attorney," Savitz continued. "I think he should fight it, personally. His family thinks he should fight. This is not what I was trained to do."

Passaro's desire to die, Savitz said, is rooted in his longtime depression over the death of his first wife, who was killed 10 years ago when a car struck her while she was trying to help an accident victim. Passaro remarried and had his daughter Maggie with his second wife, Karen.

However, the second marriage failed, and Karen Passaro asked for a divorce and filed a restraining order against him. Passaro reportedly only got to see his daughter one weekend a month, and Savitz says, Passaro feared his estranged wife would move, trying to take the girl away from him.

When Passaro lit his van and daughter on fire, he made sure he was parked in front of his wife's condominium. He admitted that he wanted to kill himself and their daughter to get back at his second wife. In a suicide note recovered by investigators, Passaro wrote, "Whatever anyone does, please make sure that Karen doesn't kill herself over this. I want her to live in pain for the rest of her life."

The state of South Carolina is not really punishing Passaro with the execution, Savitz says; it's giving him exactly what he wants. "He does not see the death sentence as punishment. He sees it as an escape from punishment," Savitz said. "He believes that he will be reunited with his first wife and the child that he killed, Maggie. He wants to die and has gotten the state to help him carry it out in what is essentially a state-assisted suicide. He is not doing this because he feels a sense of remorse."

Vengeance for Vengeance

A lack of remorse is one reason why prosecutors have no doubts about their decision to send Passaro to his death. His vindictiveness towards his second wife and willingness to kill his own daughter in revenge make him deserving of the death penalty.

"This is a man filled with spite, hatred and evil," said prosecutor Greg Hembree, after the state Supreme Court ruling in July. "It's always hard to decide to send someone to death, but this was one of the easier decisions I've ever made." Despite the slaying and Passaro's determination to die, a psychiatrist ruled that he was mentally competent to waive his appeals.

Still, death penalty opponents cannot understand how officials can execute someone who showed clear signs of suicidal tendencies and mental illness. "This is a unique case. Passaro was attempting suicide at the time of his crime," said Bruce Pearson, spokesman for the South Carolina Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "He appeared to suffer from severe mental depression with his desire to end his life and the life of his child. He's not exactly the paradigm of rational thinking."

Passaro, Pearson said, seems to be a living example of why the death penalty does not work and another reason why he and death penalty opponents are fighting for a moratorium in South Carolina. "Cases where prisoners seem to be using the state indirectly to commit suicide seem to me to nullify any value of the death penalty and [shows] it is not good social policy," Pearson said.

Volunteer Executions: The Way of the Future?

Still, Passaro's case is not the first volunteer execution Savitz says he has encountered. Since the electric chair has been phased out in most executions as cruel and unusual punishment and lethal injection has become more common, he believes more prisoners will opt to die in the most humane way possible rather than spend the rest of their lives in prison appealing the sentences.

Cases like Passaro's are rare, he said, but could become more common. "You never see anyone volunteering for the electric chair," said Savitz. "But with lethal injection, it's a painless way to go … you go to sleep. Prisoners see it as a way out rather than spending the rest of their lives in prison. It could be the way of the future."

Lawyer Says Inmate Ready to Die Friday

By Rick Brundrett - TheState.com

September 12, 2002

For Michael Passaro -- the man South Carolina will likely execute Friday -- life changed forever one night long ago. His wife, Donna, who was watching TV while he was sleeping, heard a crash outside their New York suburban home. Donna, a nurse, ran to the crashed car. As she tried to help the driver out of the car, an electrical line struck her, burning her to death.

Passaro fell into a deep depression and never recovered, said a petition asking Gov. Jim Hodges to grant him clemency. He was depressed in 1998 when he burned his 2-year-old daughter, Maggie, to death in a van in Myrtle Beach, the petition said. He had planned to kill himself in the fire with Maggie, but he survived.

Passaro, 40, thinks his execution will reunite him with Maggie and Donna, the petition says. The S.C. Carolina Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and S.C. Christian Action Council said the state shouldn't help him commit suicide.

They filed a 19-page petition on Passaro's behalf, against his wishes. "He does not deserve to die for his crime," the petition said, because the judge who sentenced Passaro to death and the S.C. Supreme Court -- which in July said he could waive all appeals -- never knew the "untold story" of his battle with mental illness. The groups want Hodges to commute the death sentence to life in prison without parole. Hodges, as of Wednesday, hadn't decided. No South Carolina governor has granted clemency since lawmakers restored the death penalty in 1977.

Passaro is scheduled for a lethal injection at 6 p.m. Friday at the state Department of Corrections' Capital Punishment Facility off Broad River Road. He would be the 28th person executed since 1977 and the third this year. Passaro is the first South Carolina Death Row inmate to waive his appeals without a trial, the petition said.

Other inmates have dropped cases after jury verdicts and initial appeals. Capital murder defendants nationwide rarely waive appeals, said Brenda Bowser of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Passaro is resolved to die despite others' efforts to spare his life, said Joseph Savitz, his appellate lawyer. "He is convinced that he will be reunited with his first wife, Donna, and his daughter, Maggie. When someone believes that, it's very difficult to change their minds." Savitz said Passaro declined to talk with a reporter. His relatives couldn't be reached for comment and have declined previous requests for interviews.

The average stay on South Carolina's Death Row is about six years, 2000 corrections department figures show. Passaro has been waiting for two years. Death Row has 71 inmates. Passaro could stop his execution by saying he wants to appeal on the grounds his trial lawyers were ineffective, Savitz said. "Even if he should walk into the death chamber Friday and look at his mother and sister and say, 'I don't want to do it,' we would stop it," he said.

Passaro's trial lawyers helped him "complete his suicide, and then convinced the court to help him too," the clemency petition said. The lawyers couldn't be reached for comment. The Attorney General's Office won't stop the execution. "It's his right to waive his appeals. The state Supreme Court found him competent," said Robb McBurney, spokesman for Attorney General Charlie Condon.

Passaro was sentenced to death in August 2000. A month later, he told the state Supreme Court he wouldn't appeal, and he hasn't changed his mind. In a rare move, Passaro went in person in May to tell the five justices his wishes. The court ruled in July that his case met their criteria.

In 1994, the high court ruled that capital murder defendants can waive appeals if they are competent, and their decision is "knowing and voluntary." Clemency petitioners painted Passaro as a young man who had a tough time until he met his first love and first wife, Donna. As he grew up in Long Island, he was a loner with emotional problems. After a stint in the Navy, he worked as a cabby, electrician, ambulance driver and emergency medical technician, and struggled with alcohol and drug abuse, the petition continued.

Passaro and Donna married a short time after they met at a hospital where they worked. She helped him with his emotional, drug and alcohol problems, and encouraged him to pursue a medical career. They had no children, although she had a miscarriage, the petition said. After Donna was electrocuted helping the motorist, Passaro became a zombie, quickly succumbing to drugs and alcohol, the petition said. He drifted, living in New York and Florida and eventually with his parents in Myrtle Beach.

There he met his second wife, Karen, who ran kidney dialysis centers in Horry and Georgetown counties. They began dating shortly after Karen hired him. They married and had a daughter, Maggie. They separated in June 1998. (She couldn't be reached for comment.) Passaro, who was being treated for depression, slept with a knife and often thought about stabbing himself, the petition said. He was very close to Maggie, and desperately tried to protect her from the divorce, the petition said.

Then, on Nov. 23, 1998, he snapped. Passaro was so angry with Karen about holiday visitation he set fire to the family's minivan outside her condominium. Passaro doused the van with gasoline and set it on fire with Maggie strapped to her car seat in the van, police said. He jumped from the van after it exploded, officials said. Investigators found a singed typewritten suicide note in the van in which Passaro confessed to killing Maggie to get back at his estranged wife.

The clemency petition says the note, typed three months before the girl's death, shows Passaro was troubled. It said: "I never wanted my first wife to die or for me to fall apart afterwards, but I did. "I never wanted my second marriage to end in divorce ... but it all happened. I'm tired of fighting. "I just realized that I was never supposed to be happy."

Man Who Killes 2-Year Old Daughter Executed

TheDeathHouse.com

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A man who burned his two- year- old daughter to death to get even with his estranged wife was executed by lethal injection Friday night.

Michael Passaro did not appeal his death sentence and chose to be executed. He was the third condemned prisoner executed in South Carolina in 2002. The execution took place at the Broad River Correctional Institute. Passaro, 40, believed that after he died he would be reunited in heaven with his dead daughter and his first wife, who died in a car accident.

At his trial in 2000, Passaro had pleaded guilty to arson and the murder of his daughter, Maggie. Passaro strapped the child inside a van and started the fire by pouring gasoline in the vehicle. He later said he planned to kill himself, but jumped out of the van. He was burned, but survived. Passaro had written a suicide note in which he said he hoped his estranged wife, Karen, would "live in pain for the rest of her life." The murder occurred in Myrtle Beach.

In July, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously voted to allow Passaro to waive all his remaining appeals. The condemned killer appeared before the justices in May to personally plea for death. "Death or life (in prison) are both death sentences," Passaro said The state’s highest court found Passaro competent to waive his appeals.

Before murdering his child, Passaro and his wife, Karen Passaro, separated because of marital difficulties. She then filed for divorce. A family court issued a temporary order affecting custody of the Passaro's child, Maggie. Passaro’s first wife was killed in an automobile accident in 1988 while trying to help another motorist involved in a separate accident. A custody order had granted Passaro weekend custody of Maggie from Friday, when he would pick the child up from daycare, to Monday, when he would return her to daycare.

The high court said in its decision that on the Monday before Thanksgiving, Passaro did not take Maggie to daycare. Instead, he drove his van to his estranged wife’s condominium complex; poured gasoline on the floor of the vehicle; ignited the gasoline and jumped out leaving Maggie to die strapped in a child's safety seat. "Investigators found a suicide note in the van, written by Passaro, explaining his wish to kill himself and Maggie so they could spend time in heaven away from Karen," The South Carolina high court wrote in its opinion.

South Carolina Attorney General

Execution Date Set for Horry County Killer

August 16, 2002

Columbia, S.C. -- Attorney General Charlie Condon announced today that today the S.C. Supreme Court set an execution date of September 13, 2002 for Michael J. Passaro, an Horry County death row inmate, who pled guilty to murdering his two-year-old daughter, Maggie, on November 23, 1998.

Passaro admitted that he drove his van to his estranged wife's condominium compex, poured gasoline on the floor of the vehicle, ignited the gasoline, and jumped out, leaving Maggie strapped in a child's safety seat, where she burned to death. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to death. Passaro waived his right to appeal, and the S.C. Supreme Court found him competent to make such a decision.

High court grants man's wish for death sentence

By Rick Brundrett - TheState.com

July 30, 2002

The state's top court on Monday granted Michael Passaro's wish to die for burning his 2-year-old daughter to death in 1998.

In a rare move, the S.C. Supreme Court unanimously said Passaro, 40, can waive all his appeals. He was sentenced to death in Myrtle Beach in 2000 after pleading guilty to murder and arson.

Passaro appeared in person before the five justices in May, asking them to waive his appeals and move up his execution. Rarely has the high court approved such a request, and rarely does a defendant appear before the court during an appeals hearing.

Passaro's appellate lawyer, Joseph Savitz, differed with his client in May. He said then that allowing Passaro to waive his appeals would be "little more than government-assisted suicide." But on Monday, Savitz said the justices "did what I asked them to do" when they let Passaro speak directly to them and work through the merits of the request.

He said he doesn't believe Passaro will ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision or seek clemency from Gov. Jim Hodges. "I anticipate he'll be executed in a matter of weeks," said Savitz, deputy chief attorney at the S.C. Office of Appellate Defense.

Robb McBurney, spokesman for state Attorney General Charlie Condon, said his office will ask the Supreme Court for an execution date after Aug. 13, the deadline for Passaro to file his reconsideration request.

Passaro admitted to setting his van on firewith his 2-year-old daughter, Maggie, strapped inside -- at his estranged wife's Myrtle Beach condominium in November 1998. Passaro planned to kill himself in the blaze, but jumped out after setting the fire, investigators said. The girl died.

Passaro was severely burned. Prosecutors said Passaro killed the girl to get back at his wife. Passaro left behind a suicide note in which he said he hoped his estranged wife, Karen, wouldn't later commit suicide so she would "live in pain for the rest of her life."

He told the justices he wanted to waive all his appeals because he had pleaded guilty, so even if he won on appeal, he couldn't win a new trial. The most he could hope for would be a new sentence, he argued, and even then, he couldn't receive anything less than life imprisonment because it was a death penalty case. "Death or life (in prison) are both death sentences," Passaro said, standing before the justices under heavy guard. Passaro first told the Supreme Court in September 2000 he wanted to drop all appeals. He hasn't changed his mind since.

In 1994, the high court ruled in another death penalty case that capital murder defendants can waive their appeals if the court determines they are competent and their decision was "knowing and voluntary." In their ruling Monday, the justices said Passaro's case met their criteria. They also rejected the argument that his request was "tantamount to state-assisted suicide."

Donald Zelenka, an assistant deputy S.C. attorney general, told the justices in May that waiving Passaro's appeals wouldn't be circumventing justice. He said Passaro's request was thoroughly reviewed in a circuit court hearing. Circuit Court Judge H. Dean Hall last year found Passaro to be competent, based on the opinions of two psychiatrists.

Passaro, who is at Lieber Correctional Institution in Dorchester County, could be executed as early as this year. The average stay for the state's Death Row inmates is about 6½ years, according to the state Department of Corrections. There were 72 people on Death Row as of last month.