6NEWS

David Crespi, his wife Kim and twin daughters Samantha and Tessara

David Crespi was taken back to prison in handcuffs after a judged accepted his guilty plea and sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences for the murders of his twin daughters.

Crespi did address the court. In doing so, he apologized to his family and his late daughters Tess and Sara.

He said the girls “deserved to grow up” and continued to do what they did best which is, “to give love and receive love.”

He also thanked the doctors who treated him in prison and said “for the first time in my life I have been diagnosed correctly. It made me appreciate the horror of what I have done.”

David Crespi pleaded guilty Friday morning in the January stabbing deaths of his twin daughters in a plea deal that will spare the Matthews father a death sentence.

It is a very trying and emotional time for some of the first officers who arrived on the murder scene.  Those officers took the stand and described what they saw.

A 20-year veteran of the police department broke down on the witness stand and his partner said seeing the murder scene was the worst thing he has ever seen.

Officer Valerie Gordon talked to Crespi after the murders at police headquarters.  She said Crespi told her that he planned to kill the girls together during a game of hide-and-seek.  Crespi told Gordon he stabbed Samantha in the kitchen and that Tessara ran away from him and hid upstairs.

Crespi told Gordon that after stabbing Samantha he went and found Tessara hiding upstairs in a master bedroom closet.  Gordon said Crespi pulled Tessara from the closet and stabbed her as she yelled, ‘No daddy no.’”

Crespi tells police he was suffering from severe depression when he killed Tessara and Samantha on Jan. 20.  Crespi called 911 and told dispatchers he stabbed the girls multiple times. 

He was a senior vice president of Wachovia and had been on medical leave at the time of the murders.  He was home alone with the twin girls.  His wife and their other three children were not home at the time.

Officer J.T. Franklin was one of the first officers on the stand Friday morning and talked about finding Samantha in the kitchen.  “She had a very large knife sticking out of her chest.”

Franklin then realized she was dead.

“She looked like a little China doll lying there,” he said on the stand.

Officer Andy Motloch also took the stand Friday.  He was one of the first officers to arrive at the murder scene.  Motloch thought he found a faint pulse on one of the girls and took her outside in an effort to get her to paramedics faster, but she was already dead.

A blood stained knife used in the stabbings was introduced as evidence. 

Crespi agreed to an interview with our news partner The Charlotte Observer.  Reporter Gary Wright talked with Crespi behind bars during a recent interview at Central Prison in Raleigh.

“I asked him if he had nightmares and said he didn’t have nightmares.  But that he woke in the middle of the night crying and asking himself what have I done and how could I have done this?” Wright said. 

The sentencing phase in the now underway as part of the plea deal.  6NEWS reporter Mark Boone is inside the courtroom.  He said they expect to hear from Crespi himself.

Crespi is expected to face life in prison without the possibility of parole.