‘Hatred in my heart.’ Family of Columbus woman stabbed to death speaks at killer’s sentencing
The ex-convict who was on a crack binge when he stabbed an 83-year-old Columbus woman 14 times while robbing her of $15 will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Superior Court Judge Ron Mullins sentenced Angelo Bernard Short, 45, to life without parole plus 40 years in prison for fatally stabbing Peggy Gamble in her 2324 Eighth St. home in 2016.
Besides murder, a jury Friday convicted Short on charges of first-degree burglary, robbery, theft and obstructing police.
While sentencing Short to life without parole for the murder, Mullins added 20 years each for the burglary and robbery charges. He also ordered Short to serve a year each on the theft and obstruction counts, but that time will be served concurrently with his murder sentence.
“In this difficult case, the court hands down today’s sentence with a sense that it is entirely justified by the facts of this case,” Mullins said.
The facts
Short knew Gamble because his father Eddie Short had married Gamble’s daughter Miriam. He had just been released from prison in Alabama when he went to her house looking for money to buy crack the night of Nov. 27, 2016.
When she told him to come back the next day, he kicked in her door.
During a recorded interview on Dec. 5, 2016, Short gave this account of the break-in, robbery and murder:
After breaking through her door, he confronted Gamble in her kitchen, where he emptied her purse of $15.
“Take it and leave. I won’t tell nobody,” she told him.
He replied, “I don’t believe you,” and then pushed her down in a hallway, grabbed a paring knife from a wooden block housing a set of knives in her kitchen, and started stabbing her in the neck.
When he bent the blade on the paring knife, he returned to the kitchen and got a butcher knife, and started stabbing her again, leaving blood spattered on nearby walls and pooling under her body.
Then he left to smoke more crack, but twice returned to Gamble’s home to steal two TVs and take her 2015 Toyota Corolla, which he drove around Columbus for two days before he was arrested Nov. 29, 2016, the same day he punched a store clerk in the face while taking a carton of Newport cigarettes from the Piggly Wiggly on Brown Avenue.
When police caught up with him at a vacant house near Gamble’s home, Short tried to make officers kill him, shouting “Shoot me!” before pulling out a crack pipe and lighting it in front of them. They used a Taser to subdue him.
The family
Before Mullins announced Short’s sentence, Gamble’s family vented their outrage while testifying to how the murder had affected them.
Gamble’s oldest son Richard “Ricky” Gamble called Short a snake: “When you look at him, he does not look like a monster. I would describe him as a coral snake…. You look at it, you wouldn’t know how dangerous that snake is. To me, that’s him.”
Short has left the family with memories they now want to forget, he added:
“He horrifically murdered our mother and then reopened those wounds by making us go through that trial,” he said. “We want to forget everything having to do with the manner and method of our mother’s death.”
But those memories haunt them. “To this day it is so hard for me to use a butcher knife, without thinking about my mother being stabbed over and over again,” said Peggy Gamble’s youngest daughter, Cenneta Gunn.
She used to call her mother every day at 10:30 a.m., to make sure she was up and about. She often remembers that old routine, when she checks the time. “There are countless times I look at the clock at 10:30 and I want to call her,” she said.
Short’s trial was another reminder of all the family has endured, she said: “It was like we had to start grieving all over again.”
Nicole Gamble, Peggy Gamble’s granddaughter, said the murder has left her constantly on guard.
She and another granddaughter, Capri Gunn, said they called their grandmother “Mother Dear.” Gunn said Peggy Gamble thought “grandmother” sounded too old.
After the murder, Nicole Gamble started seeing to her own safety.
“Mother Dear’s brutal murder made me afraid,” she told Mullins. “I will not live in a home that does not have storm doors. Days after Mother Dear’s murder, I obtained a license to carry a concealed weapon. I am never without a few weapons on my person, unless I am in a government building.”
Of Angelo Short, she said, “I have hatred in my heart, as do many other family members.” And they resent news reports characterizing him as a relative, just because his father married Peggy Gamble’s daughter Miriam.
“In my mind that is purely coincidental,” she said. “It does not make him a family member.”
The harshest comments came from Miriam Gamble-Short, who remains married to Angelo Short’s father.
“He sold his soul to the devil,” she said. “May he burn in Hell.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 5:27 PM.