Feb 18, 2015 3 min read

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — A jury began deliberating Wednesday whether to send a man to death row for the 2002 strangulation deaths of a pharmacist and his girlfriend, weighing the brutal nature of his crimes against a defense request to show mercy.

Hugo Selenski, 41, was convicted last week on two counts of first-degree murder for killing Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fassett with plastic ties during a robbery at the pharmacist’s home.

Police found their bodies, along with three other sets of human remains, in Selenski’s yard in 2003.

Before killing Kerkowski, Selenski and another man tortured him into revealing the location of tens of thousands of dollars he’d hidden in the house, prosecutor Sam Sanguedolce reminded the jury Wednesday.

“The defendant has repeatedly used fear and lies and pain and death in order to obtain frivolous, material things,” said Sanguedolce, Luzerne County first assistant district attorney. “The defendant has earned his sentence.”

Selenski’s attorney, Edward “E.J.” Rymsza, begged the jury to spare his client’s life, asking them to ignore “voices of vengeance and retribution.”

The defense tried to cast Selenski as a good father, brother and uncle even behind bars, with family members testifying earlier Wednesday that he wrote frequently and gave life advice.

Two of Selenski’s daughters and four of his sisters spoke of their love for him, calling him an intelligent and caring man who’s protective of his family — a portrait starkly at odds with the greedy, manipulative killer described in earlier trial testimony.

His two youngest sisters, both nursing students in their 20s, said he served as a father figure while briefly taking care of them more than a dozen years ago while their dad, now deceased, was ill.

“I wouldn’t be who I am today without him,” said Katlyn Selenski, 22.

Another sister, Ruth Ann Pollard, 38, said Selenski sends artwork to her children, some of it painted with Kool-Aid and coffee that he tells them to “scratch and sniff.”

“No matter what, I will always want my children to know of Uncle Hugo,” she said.

Selenski has spent most of the last 20 years in prison, with convictions for a 1994 bank robbery, a 2003 home invasion and robbery, and now murder.

In 2006, he beat two other homicide charges in the deaths of two suspected drug dealers whose charred remains were also found in his yard north of Wilkes-Barre.

The fifth body found on the property was never publicly identified.

Luzerne County Assistant District Attorney Jarrett Ferentino had told the jury in his opening statement Tuesday that Selenski’s lawyers would show he was surrounded by a loving, supportive family.

“That makes his crimes and his life that much more confusing to me,” Ferentino said. “He chose the path that he chose despite those people, and that’s a tragedy of its own.”

Pennsylvania’s governor recently declared a moratorium on the death penalty, but the law remains on the books.