Anthony B. Mertz took the stand Monday, recalling for the jury an unhappy childhood filled with abuse and neglect, as well as why he “enjoyed” being a Marine.

Wearing a tan suit and blue dress shirt, Mertz looked the part of any young man as he testified on his own behalf, in hopes the jury will not send down a death penalty sentence at the conclusion of this sentencing hearing.

Mertz will continue his testimony at 9 a.m. in Courtroom 1 of the Coles County Courthouse. He was found guilty of murdering Shannon McNamara on June 12, 2001. He also was found guilty of aggravated criminal sexual assault and home invasion.

Mertz testified Monday that he had spent most of his very early childhood living with his grandmother, after he and his two older sisters were taken away from their biological mother.

“I don’t recall ever seeing her,” he said.

“Everything was perfect,” for the children when they lived with their grandparents, Mertz said. He only remembers being reprimanded once while living with them, and never being physically hit.

He said he attended the Rossville Methodist Church every Sunday for 13 years with his grandmother and continued attending the church occasionally until the week before he was arrested.

Mertz’s older sisters, Christina and Brandy, moved into their father’s house a few years after they were placed with their grandparents, with Mertz following about two years later. The children’s father remarried and wanted them to live with him.

Mertz said he had seen his father only a few times, two or three, before moving to his house. He became teary as he explained that it was difficult for him at the time to understand that he had parents other than his grandparents.

“I really didn’t understand it,” he said.

He testified to having been sexually abused and molested by his stepsister, Rose, who was 6 or 7 years older than him. He said he now holds “a general contempt and dislike of her.” At the time of the abuse Mertz said he was 8 or 9 years old.

“I had no idea what sex was — you have no sexual desire to women, you’re still in the ‘ick’ stage,” he said. “I’ve blocked most of it out, quite frankly.”

Mertz became choked up as he explained what he could remember of the abuse.

“It happened several times that summer,” he said.

The encounters stopped after his father interrupted one time. Mertz was not sure his father knew what was going on, but his stepsister stopped the abuse.

In his father’s house, he shared a bedroom with his stepbrother and lived with his sisters and one stepsister. He said it was easy to see who his stepmother preferred.

“It was obvious there was a different way me and my sisters were treated,” he said.

He said he often was blamed for things his stepbrother did, and was beaten for the infractions many times. He also said his oldest sister, Christina, would try to shift blame from him onto herself to protect him.

“She basically was my mother while I lived there,” Mertz said.

His father did not do most of the discipline himself, but Mertz did remember one time when he was reprimanded, even though he was unsure of what he had done wrong.

“Dad came flying out of the garage, pulled his belt off and started beating me,” he said.

He also said he remembered seeing his father punch his stepmother in the nose on one occasion.

Mertz said he spent a month of each summer at church camp.

“Any excuse not to be home was a good excuse,” he said.

Mertz recalled drinking alcohol on a regular basis, beginning as early as the seventh grade. He also said he smoked marijuana before school and during lunch through the eighth grade.

He began experiencing blackouts from drinking in the eighth grade, beginning the night of his eighth-grade graduation. Friends told him the next day that he had been crying, saying no one loved him, and that he had nearly been hit by a semi-trailer truck.

“I basically walked out and laid down in the road,” he said.

He recalled the one and only fight he’d been in during high school, and said he had tried not to fight the other teenager. He said the other boy continued to confront him and he finally gave in. He said that was one of his only fond memories from high school.

“Graduation –(and) probably as bad as it sounds, the fight with Brad” were what he remembered as the best moments of high school, he said.

His only goal after graduation was to leave his father’s house, he said. He signed up to join the Marines as soon as he graduated one year before his graduation.

He said he found the first day of boot camp “slightly amusing,” and that if a person follows orders in boot camp they would be “OK.”

Boot camp lasted 12 weeks, and was a “quasi-brain washing,” he said.

“I enjoyed it,” Mertz testified. “It was the first really regimented lifestyle I ever had.”