CAMDEN, N.J. — A woman convicted of killing a local police officer and a county investigator was sentenced to death for a second time Friday, three years after the New Jersey Supreme Court threw out her initial death penalty.
Leslie Ann Nelson, 43, a 6-foot-2 onetime go-go dancer who was born a man but underwent a sex-change operation, kept her head down, her blond hair shielding her face from the cameras, as a 12-woman Superior Court jury delivered the sentence.
Born Glenn Nelson, she again becomes the only woman on death row in New Jersey. She could have been sentenced to life without parole.
She was sentenced to die for killing patrolman John Norcross on April 20, 1995, as he attempted to search for a cache of weapons Nelson had at the home where she lived with her parents in Haddon Heights, a historic suburban community in Camden County.
County investigator John McLaughlin was also killed in the gun battle when Nelson opened fire with an AK-47 rifle.
