A 29-year-old Oxon Hill man pleaded guilty yesterday to first-degree murder, eight months to the day after shooting his former fiancee in the head outside her Edgewood apartment complex.
Harford County Circuit Judge William O. Carr sentenced Frank Vernon Rainey Jr. to life in prison as a result of a plea bargain days before his trial was to resume after a November mistrial.
In May, Rainey drove to a county police precinct and confessed to killing Crystal Marie Busta, 26. Her body was found in the passenger seat of his car, and his clothes were stained with blood, police said. Later, police found a hand-written note in his home that detailed his plan to kill her.
Family members who attended the hearing expressed outrage that Rainey did not receive the maximum sentence - life without parole - as a result of the plea. A second charge, possession of a firearm, which carried a maximum sentence of 20 years, was also dropped.
"He didn't offer her a plea deal for her life," Busta's mother, Karen Busta, told Carr.
State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly defended the move, saying that "a life sentence is a life sentence. No one serving life sentences in Maryland is being paroled."
In confessing to killing Busta, prosecutors say, Rainey also admitted killing three others in Washington. Assistant State's Attorney Vernon Gentile told Carr that police there had recently filed an arrest warrant for Rainey in connection with a double killing in Georgetown.
Busta had broken up with Rainey a week before the shooting, after a two-month relationship that began on the Internet, police said. She sought to return the engagement ring, and Rainey traveled to Edgewood to pick it up.
What Busta didn't know was that days earlier, Rainey had scrawled a suicide note detailing his "demons" and purchased a gun.
"To whoever finds this note, I have been fighting demons for the past 3 years and I'm done fighting. I give up on life," it read. "To Crystal's family, I'm sorry but she hurt me and played with my emotions, so in the end I played with her life."
justin.fenton@baltsun.com
