Hate Takes a Life in Houston
"I planned on sending him to hell," suspect said of victim.
July 26, 2007 — -- Gay rights activists are furious about the jailhouse claims of a Texas man charged with killing a gay male flight attendant last month.
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, murder suspect Terry Mangum, 26, admitted to the murder and said that he had no remorse over the crime, implying his victim got what he deserved.
"I believe with all my heart that I was doing the right thing," Mangum told the Houston Chronicle. "I planned on sending him to hell."
Mangum, who described himself as "definitely not a homosexual," said in the interview that he'd been called by God to "carry out a code of retribution" against a gay man because "sexual perversion" is the "worst sin."
Kenneth Cummings Jr., 46, was the subject of a massive manhunt after he disappeared early last month. His charred remains were discovered buried on a Houston-area farm reportedly owned by Mangum's grandfather. Mangum admitted to stabbing Cummings to death after luring him from a bar.
Cummings' family told ABC News' Law & Justice Unit that it had been shattered by the murder of a man it described as a gentle, loving son and a doting uncle to his nieces and nephews.
"Life will never be the same," the victim's father, Kenneth Cummings Sr., said. "He was a great big part of the family. I'm going to miss a lot of things about him, but I think I'll probably miss the most is that his mother and I would often meet him for lunch and he'd wait for us at the house and when we pulled up he'd come bounding out of the house to greet us. He never missed a birthday. He never missed flowers for my wife on Mother's Day, Easter lilies on Easter Sunday."
"He was a good boy," Cummings Sr. said.
"This is outrageous," said Mel White, a gay former evangelical Protestant minister, who ghostwrote books for televangelists Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Billy Graham.
"You've got to indict everybody from [Pope] Benedict XVI on down. The church and the Christian right have set up an environment that gays are a threat to the community, and they say this over and over," White said to ABC News.
White says that his book "Religion Gone Bad: Hidden Dangers From the Christian Right" has 450 footnote references to anti-gay rhetoric from Christian leaders like the ones he used to work for.
