A 26-year-old went to prison for leading police on a wild chase in a stolen patrol car, only to find himself sharing a cell with the man who raped his underage sister a few years earlier.
So he killed him.
Shane Goldsby beat convicted child rapist Robert Munger to death in a common area at Airway Heights Corrections Center in Washington last year, after prison officials reportedly ignored his request for a different cellmate. Goldsby hit Munger in the face and head area “about 14 times,” then stomped on his head at least four times, gave him a few kicks and walked away, according to the police report.
Munger, 70, ultimately died of his injuries.
Goldsby was sentenced to just shy of 25 years in prison for Munger’s murder last week, after delivering an emotional apology to the victim’s family in a Washington courtroom.
“I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose a loved one in this kind of way,” his statement said. “To his wife and his whole family, I apologize. I am so sorry and I hope you are able to heal from what I caused.”
Goldsby was originally imprisoned for stealing a Kelso police patrol car and leading the state highway patrol on a lengthy chase, which ended with one trooper being injured in a crash.
He told local broadcaster KHQ last year that he’s had more than a dozen disputes with prison guards, and that those disputes led to a string of prison transfers.
In 2020, he was transferred into a cell with Munger, a man serving a 43-year sentence for child sex crimes. Goldsby said Munger would brag about his crimes, which included convictions for child molestation, child rape and child porn.
“He kept … giving me details about what happened and what he did. About the photos and videos of him doing this stuff, and it was building up,” Goldsby told KHQ from prison last year.
Then he recognized his own underage sister from one of Munger’s stories.
“I was like, ‘What the f—?’… This stuff doesn’t happen,” he told the broadcaster. “You’re talking the same institution, the same unit, the same pod in the same cell as this dude. That’s like hitting the jackpot in the casino seven times.”
Goldsby said he went to the prison guards and asked for a new cellmate, but they did not switch him out and soon the tension became too much.
Goldsby killed Munger and acknowledged doing so afterward, though he blamed prison officials for putting him in that position in the first place.
“I feel set up,” he said last year. “You’re talking about this dude who did some sick, twisted things to my little sis. My family. My blood. My life. And you want to put me face-to-face with this dude?”
The state department of corrections has said that it has policies in place to prevent such volatile crossovers among its inmates. An investigation revealed that officials were not aware of the connection between Goldsby and Munger before they were put in a cell together.
Munger was sentenced in late 2019 after four trials led to him being convicted on several charges, including first-degree child rape, three counts of child molestation and first- and second-degree child porn possession. Police recovered thousands of child porn images during their investigation, and three underage victims were identified in the case.
“It was just a sick scene, (a) depraved, depraved scene,” the judge said at his sentencing hearing.
— With files from The Associated Press
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