HAMILTON — Jurors who will decide if Victor Gantt will be sentenced to death heard about the defendant’s rough childhood and drug abuse as the penalty phase of the trial opened Tuesday in Butler County.

The jury of six men and six women found Gantt guilty of aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery and tampering with evidence last week and are now charged with recommending a sentence.

Gantt, 26, smashed through a French door with an ax at the home of 75-year-old Middletown resident Leroy Jones last May, struck Jones six times in the head and then trashed the house. After he relaxed on Jones’ bed and watched a porn movie he stole from an acquaintance earlier that morning and Gantt tried to burn the house down to cover his crime. All Gantt took from the house was $150 in pocket change.

After a brief opening statement by Prosecutor Mike Gmoser Tuesday morning, the prosecution rested its case.

“I am asking you to return a verdict for the death penalty,” Gmoser said, after he told jurors they will find no mitigating factors that outweigh the aggravating circumstances.

Testimony on Tuesday centered on Philip Gantt, Sr., who family members say was a tyrannical, brutal man who sired 18 children, including Victor, with seven women. Gantt’s mother left him at the hospital after he was born and he stayed there for three months before hospital staff came looking for his parents, one of the senior Gantt’s wives testified.

Defense attorney Melynda Cook called two of the mothers of the elder Gantt’s children and four of Gantt’s half sisters to the stand. All reported their father brutalized them.

“He was an evil monster, he was evil to everyone,” one sister testified. “He taught evil.”

Another sister, who is nine years older than Gantt, said her older half brother sexually abused her and she sexually abused her baby brother, Victor.One of the mothers who testified said she lived with Gantt’s father for 12 years and Gantt was kept locked on the other side of French doors at the Baltimore Street house, usually alone, from the age of three. She and her children were usually not allowed interaction with Gantt when he was a toddler.

“I remember he was always crying, reaching his little hands under the French doors,” she testified.

With each witness Gmoser and Assistant Prosecutor Brad Burress asked if the father, now deceased, was on trial. The answer was always no.

The family members also said they knew Gantt abused marijuana and was a different person when he was high. The prosecutors pointed out that no drug tests were administered the day of the murder. Most didn’t know how the jobless man obtained drugs and acknowledged he was kicked out of couple of the family members homes for stealing.

Cook told Judge Keith Spaeth she has seven more witnesses for Wednesday and he told the jury they will begin deliberations on Thursday.

Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.