The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. As it is, Mangum won’t be eligible for parole for 30 years. A Brazoria County reporter for The Facts tells how Mangum believes God called on him to “carry out a code of retribution” by killing a gay man because “sexual perversion” is “the worst sin.” The graphic nature of Mangum’s crime has also been reported in The Facts.Īccording to the Dallas Voice article, jurors in Mangum’s trial agreed the murder was a hate crime, which could make it less likely that he’ll be granted parole. Mangum has said that he believes he was “anointed and appointed by God” to commit the murder, which entailed stabbing his victim in the head, cleaning the crime scene, moving his victim to a ranch south of San Antonio, Texas, and then burning and burying Cummings’s remains in a shallow grave. In June 2007, Mangum met Cummings at a gay bar in the Montrose area of Houston, Texas, went to Cummings’s home in Pearland (a metro-Houston city), and attacked his victim. Terry Mangum receives life sentence for 2007 hate crimeĪn article appearing in the Dallas Voice reports Terry Mangum, the murderer of 46-year-old Ken Cummings Jr., has been sentenced to life imprisonment.