Advocates for Sarah Gonzalez-McLinn are calling on Governor Laura Kelly to grant her clemency after she was convicted of murdering a man she says repeatedly raped her.
Gonzalez-McLinn is serving 25 years to life for the 2014 killing of Hal Sasko in Lawrence. Sasko was her former boss at a local restaurant. She moved in with him when she was 17 years old and he was 50. She says he began grooming her as a young teenager and raped her for months before the murder. The judge didn’t allow her defense to introduce those claims in court and the jury that convicted her of first-degree murder in 2015, didn’t know about the months of abuse that preceded her crime.
Advocates for Gonzalez-McLinn say that her Clemency Application contains new evidence that Sasko was also grooming two other 16 year olds, possibly for human sex trafficking. The Governor’s office declined to comment on the case.
