Monday means life or death for Alcolu man

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There are only two possible outcomes to the sentence that John Moses Ragin will be handed on Monday after a Virginia jury convicted him Thursday of the summer 2011 slayings of his wife and three stepchildren. He will either spend the rest of his life in prison, or be put to death by lethal injection. The 39-year-old Alcolu native was charged in August 2011 in the stabbing deaths of his wife, Crystal Ragin, and her three children, Sierra, 15; LaKwan, 11; and Rasheed, 6. He was found guilty Thursday in Hampton Roads, Va., of three counts of capital murder for the childrens' deaths and second-degree murder for that of his wife. According to prosecutors, Ragin stabbed the four victims and then set fire to the family home in Virginia before fleeing to his former home in South Carolina. Crystal Ragin, a member of Army at Fort Eustis, Va., had just returned home from Iraq. John Moses Ragin's father, Ernest, said his son didn't act differently when he showed up on a hot August afternoon in 2011. "Came here just like he always do, didn't act no way out of the ordinary," Ernest told The Manning Times. "It's just a sad situation. I can't begin to picture in my mind my son doing anything like that." Clarendon County Sheriff Randy Garrett called Ragin a "butcher" during both bond and extradition hearings later in August and September 2011. Ragin was ultimately returned to Virginia in October 2011. PREVIOUS (Thursday, March 27, 2014): Ragin found guilty in wife's, step-kids' deaths