Sean Finnegan receives death penalty for murder of Jennifer Gail Paxton

An Anderson County jury returned a verdict Wednesday against Sean Shannon Finnegan in the killing of Jennifer Gail Paxton of Knoxville.

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On Monday, the same 12 jurors found Finnegan, who had lived on Fairview Road in Oak Ridge for several years, guilty:

Two counts of premeditated murder
Manslaughter (instead of another charge of premeditated murder)
Attempted aggravated rape
Aggravated rape
Serious kidnapping
Particularly serious kidnapping
Conspiracy to commit aggravated rape
Conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping
Abuse of a corpse
Manipulation of evidence

He was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder and another count of aggravated rape.

A sentencing hearing will be held on November 7 to determine the sentence for the lesser charges (excluding murder) for which Finnegan was convicted on Monday.

Assistant District Attorneys Sarah Winningham Keith and Kevin Allen said Paxton's body was kept in a bedroom freezer for about eight months, but Finnegan quickly moved it under his bed before police arrived to search for the body, which was found in early August 2020. They believe she was strangled in December 2019. Finnegan's girlfriend or fiancée, 26-year-old Rebecca Dishman, told officers Finnegan killed Paxton by strangling her with thread over an extended period of time, taking breaks and stopping to smoke.

Dishman reached a plea deal with prosecutors last year. She pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and agreed to testify against Finnegan in exchange for a life sentence. She testified against him last week.

The sentencing hearing for Finnegan began Tuesday morning. Attorneys for both sides made opening and closing statements, allowed Paxton's relatives to read statements about the negative impact her death had on their family, and called two character witnesses for Finnegan – a co-worker and his former sister-in-law, who painted a grim picture of his childhood.

Finnegan will never be released, attorney Forrest Wallace assured Anderson County jurors Tuesday morning as the verdict began. He said the minimum sentence they could impose on him for the premeditated murder of Jennifer Gail Paxton is 51 years. Finnegan turns 57 next month.

“Do the math,” he said.

Anderson County Assistant District Attorney Kevin Allen argued for the death penalty, saying, “Sean Finnegan must be given the same mercy that they (he and Rebecca Dishman) showed Jennifer Paxton.”

The early life of Sean Finnegan

Wallace presented the jury with two witnesses who he said demonstrated Finnegan's humanity. The first was the manager who had worked with him at the Knoxville bar and who testified during the trial that he worked most of the time and was reliable.

His former sister-in-law painted a darker picture of Finnegan's early life.

Roxanne Mundy of Indiana testified about his personal life when she married into the family. Finnegan was in his early to mid-teens. He had two younger brothers and a sister, as well as two older brothers, including John Finnegan Jr., whom Mundy married. They are now divorced.

“I was terrified of the man,” she said of her former father-in-law, Sean's father. She described the man, known as John Sr. or “Big John,” as a violent alcoholic and gambler who frequently verbally and physically abused his wife, Sean's mother, including at least once beating her “beyond recognition” and causing the children to run to their rooms when he came home. The violence went so far that it led the woman to seek a restraining order against him, she said, but he ignored it. She said she and John Jr. helped her get an apartment in their building for her, Sean and his younger brother and sister, since the older brothers had already moved out of the Florida home by then.

Mundy said before she met her husband, the family had fled Ohio, leaving their home and belongings behind and living in a car at a rest area in Florida until they had enough money for a house. Sean and one of the brothers were sent to live with uncles. She said she didn't know if they were actually relatives or not. The younger siblings stayed in the car with their mother.

The subject of the uncles came up later. She said that when a truancy officer showed up at the Finnegan home to report that Sean Finnegan and a brother were not coming to school, it turned out that the uncles were picking them up. She recalled that one day Sean came home completely disturbed and very upset and revealed that he was being sexually and physically abused by the uncles and others.

As Mundy testified, Finnegan wiped tears from his eyes.

She said that when the father found out Sean had been missing so much school, he beat him so badly that he was unable to attend school for about a week because of the bruises. Attorney Williams presented school records showing that Sean had essentially only attended school until eighth grade.

Jumping forward in the timeline, the former sister-in-law told of an adult Sean Finnegan getting a job at a Fort Lauderdale restaurant where he was the master chef and general manager and enjoyed his job, which involved wearing a white coat and chef's hat and mingling with diners and restaurant critics.

“He was a great cook,” she said.

That restaurant would eventually close and he would go to another one, she said. He moved to East Tennessee when the restaurant wanted to expand to Knoxville. When his siblings could no longer care for his mother, he offered her to live with him, she said. During the trial, it emerged that she was in hospice at the time of the crimes and has since died.

Mundy said she had not seen him in about 34 years, but she knew the adult Sean Finnegan as someone no one would suspect otherwise, with a beautiful wife, dogs he loved, nice houses and clothes, and kind to people. When asked, she said she knew he drank alcohol in the evenings, smoked marijuana, and often got drunk.

Sean Finnegan receives death penalty for murder of Jennifer Gail Paxton

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