Prosecutors seek death penalty against man who confessed to killing 3 at Tucson prison

More than a year after he confessed to stabbing and beating three men to death at a Tucson prison, the Pinal County Attorney’s Office has filed its intent to seek the death penalty against Ricky Wassenaar.

Wassenaar, 63, was already serving 16 life sentences for crimes he committed while trying to break out of prison in 2004. Those crimes, along with a robbery he pulled off in 1997, plus the fact that he is charged with three murders, are the alleged aggravating factors that qualify him for a capital trial.

And he faces trial without legal counsel — his court-appointed attorney withdrew from the case this week. 

Wassenaar defended himself in his last two trials, and it’s not a stretch to see him turning his murder trial into the kind of circus he ran during his 2007 trial on the prison-break charges.

In April 2025 Wassenaar objected to prison officials placing another prisoner, Saul Alvarez in his cell in a sex-offender unit. He strangled and stabbed him to death, then placed a rock in his fishnet laundry bag, walked to where prisoners were waiting to get into a mess hall for breakfast and started swinging, killing two more men, Thorne Harnage and Donald Lashley.

He also claimed that he had killed another cellmate, Joseph Desisto, in November 2024, though an autopsy ruled he died of natural causes.

“Child molesters,” he told the Mirror in a phone interview shortly afterward. “I wanted to kill them all.”

Nonetheless, he pleaded not guilty when he was indicted for the murders of Alvarez, Harnage and Lashley.

But the case has moved at a glacial pace. The murders were committed in Pima County, but the county attorney there, Laura Conover, conflicted out of the case because her office had put Wassenaar’s victims in prison in the first place.

Then Wassenaar suffered a ruptured appendix and spent weeks in the hospital before he was well enough to attend court.

The Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty was filed May 8. In order to seek death, prosecutors have to allege aggravating factors that set the murders among “the worst of the worst.” In Wassenaar’s case, the notice lists the multiple murders as well as a litany of crimes that Wassenaar was already serving time for — assaults, robbery, sexual assault, escape, plus the fact that most were committed while he was in prison.

Those allegations will go before a judge to determine if there is probable cause before the case goes forward.

And in the meantime, the court needs to find two new death-qualified defense attorneys to represent him.

Veteran capital case attorney Victoria Washington withdrew this week. And though attorney-client privilege prevents her from saying why, she issued a statement to the Mirror.

“After careful reflection and in accordance with my obligations under the Arizona Rules of Professional Conduct, I have filed a motion to withdraw as counsel in this matter,” she wrote. “This was not a decision I made lightly. I remain committed to ensuring my former client receives the vigorous, effective representation that every person — regardless of the charges they face — is entitled to under our Constitution. I wish him well and am confident the court will ensure his rights are fully protected going forward.”