Gary Craig and Victoria E. Freile

Staff writers

Try as she might, Dawn Nguyen could not remove the horrific specter of Christmas Eve 2012 when she was sentenced in federal court Wednesday.

She hoped that the fact that she bought the guns used in the 2012 killings would be irrelevant, especially since the purchase occurred more than two years before the slayings.

She hoped that the sentencing judge would believe her when she said she did not realize just how dangerous William Spengler Jr. was. Yes, she knew Spengler had been imprisoned for the death of his grandmother, but, she insisted, she did not know the grisly reality that he had bludgeoned her to death with a hammer.

She hoped that the sentencing judge — U.S. District Court Judge David Larimer — would see the firearms purchase as a naive mistake of a young woman trying to help an oddball neighbor, Spengler. And she hoped that her in-court apology Wednesday would reflect her remorse for that mistake.

But Larimer saw things differently. While sentencing recommendations suggested a maximum sentence of two years for Nguyen, Larimer exercised the discretion allowed him in extraordinary cases and on Wednesday sentenced Nguyen to eight years.

"It's hard for me to picture a person more dangerous to receive weapons," Larimer said of Spengler.

For Larimer, Spengler's violent history and Nguyen's apparent willingness to overlook it, for whatever reason, were the significant factors that elevated her crimes above those of a typical "straw purchase" — a transaction in which one person illegally buys a gun for another.

Spengler "used (the guns) mercilously," Larimer said. "Ms. Nguyen's actions enabled Mr. Spengler to enact the havoc that he did."

On June 6, 2010, Nguyen and Spengler went to the Gander Mountain store in Henrietta, where she bought a semiautomatic rifle and shotgun for him. She lied on a federal firearms form, claiming the guns were for her.

On Christmas Eve 2012, Spengler fatally shot his sister, Cheryl, then started a fire that set his house ablaze as well as others along the Lake Road strip in Webster. Using the weapons bought by Nguyen, he ambushed volunteer firefighters as they responded. He killed Michael Chiapperini, 43, and Tomasz Kaczowka, 19.

He wounded two others — Theodore Scardino and Joseph Hofstetter — before killing himself. They were among a contingent of West Webster firefighters who joined law enforcement in a packed federal courtroom Wednesday.

In court, Nguyen, wearing a red jail uniform with her hair braided back in a ponytail, turned to the courtroom and apologized.

"I made the worst decision of my life,"she said. Nearly 90 minutes later, when Larimer imposed the sentence, some members of her family turned tearful in court. They did not speak to the media afterward.

In June, Nguyen pleaded guilty to three federal crimes: lying on the purchase form; giving the guns to a convicted felon who could not legally have them; and also lying when she said on the purchase form that she was not a drug user, even though she did smoke marijuana.

Each crime carried a maximum 10-year sentence, and federal prosecutors asked for Nguyen to serve a decade in prison.

A state Supreme Court jury earlier this year convicted her of falsifying a business record — lying on the purchase document — and Justice Thomas Moran sentenced her to 16 months to 4 years. That sentence will run concurrently with her federal sentence.

Federal sentencing guidelines, which are advisory for judges, typically dictate sentences in federal court. But judges can deviate from those recommendations, either with more or less severe sentences.

This case was a "poster child" of the dangers of putting guns in the hands of convicted felons, Larimer said.

"I'm sure Ms. Nguyen wishes she could take back that decision she made on that June day," he said. "But life is not like that."

Nguyen's attorney, Matthew Parrinello, argued in court that she only knew Spengler as an eccentric neighbor who had a kindly bent. The killing of his grandmother occurred 30 years before the gun purchase, Parrinello said, and Spengler had done nothing violent in the years since returning from prison to Webster.

"This was a quirky, weird crazy neighbor that she knew," Parrinello said. "But he was very nice, very kind and he did things for her family."

After court, Parrinello said he intends to appeal the sentence.

In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Noto contended that evidence at the state trial showed that Nguyen knew of Spengler's past, and that he paid her for the guns. (In a letter left behind in 2012, Spengler said he gave money to Nguyen's mother, who has denied that claim.)

Nguyen "armed a known killer, a man that beat his own grandmother to death with a hammer," Noto said.

The families of those slain by Spengler will be haunted by the deaths at Christmas, and the Webster community — and the community at large — will long be scarred by the killings, Noto said.

"Look at the faces of the men and women in uniform in court today," Noto said to the judge.

Al Sienkiewicz, the public information officer for the West Webster Volunteer Fire Department, said afterward that he felt the sentence was just.

Asked whether the sentence could provide closure, he said, "I don't know if it really closes it.

"You try to move on," he said.

GCRAIG@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/gcraig1