An ambushed deputy shot 30 times with an AK-47, an Arizona couple tied to an anchor and drowned at sea, and an abducted young woman beaten to death with a crowbar are among the records a Southern California prosecutor is laying out to stop Gov. Gavin Newsom’s death row clemency push.
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer released detailed case files on 49 local condemned killers this week. The move targets Newsom’s plan to grant blanket commutations to all 548 inmates awaiting execution across California.
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For families who attended trials decades ago, the governor’s proposal alters what they believed were final penalties. California has not carried out an execution in 20 years, but death row prisoners remained walled off from sentencing reductions and parole programs available to other state convicts. District attorneys argue that taking execution off the table moves those inmates closer to future leniency.
The serial predators named in the pushback
Spitzer’s office highlighted several serial killers convicted of terrorising California communities across five decades. Among them is Randy Steven Kraft, known as the Scorecard Killer, the Southern California Strangler and the Freeway Killer. Kraft was convicted of raping, torturing and murdering at least 16 young men between 1972 and 1983, and investigators suspect him of killing 51 more boys and young men.
Another name on Spitzer’s list is Gerald Parker, dubbed the Bedroom Basher. Parker broke into homes in the 1970s, raping victims and killing five women along with an unborn baby. He stayed free for two decades until DNA testing linked him to the murders in 1996, resulting in a death sentence in 1998.
The release also points to Steven Dean Gordon, a convicted child molester who worked with an accomplice to kill at least four women between 2013 and 2014. It cites Billy Joe Johnson, a White supremacist gang member who took part in five killings, including the murder of a childhood friend, and asked jurors to sentence him to death.
Three murdered law enforcement officers
Three of the inmates Spitzer singled out sit on death row for killing police officers. Each case involved sudden, unprovoked violence against uniformed or off-duty personnel.
In 1997, Crips gang member Kevin Dewayn Boyce robbed a hair salon where off-duty Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Shayne York was visiting with his fiancee. When Boyce spotted York’s badge during the holdup, he called the deputy a slur and shot him directly in the head.
One year earlier, California Highway Patrol Officer Don Joseph Burt pulled over Hung Thanh Mai in Fullerton. Mai fired multiple rounds into Burt before walking up to deliver an execution-style shot to the officer’s head.
The third officer was Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Riches. In June 1999, Maurice Gerald Steskal walked up to Riches as the deputy sat in his patrol car and sprayed the vehicle with an AK-47 rifle, striking Riches 30 times.
Grisly motives and locked freezer trucks
The files also detail murders carried out for financial gain or opportunism. One of the most infamous involves John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Skylar Deleon, known as the Yacht Killers.
The pair kidnapped an Arizona couple in Newport Beach, took them aboard a vessel, tied them to an anchor and dropped them into the Pacific Ocean 55 miles offshore. Investigators revealed the victims were drowned so Deleon, a former child actor born John Jacobson Jr., could fund a gender-affirming surgery. Deleon later received the procedure in state prison at public expense. Deleon also holds a separate murder conviction for the 2003 killing of Anaheim associate Jon Jarvi.
The county records also detail the murder of 23-year-old Denise Huber. In 1991, John Joseph Famalaro pulled up beside Huber’s car on the highway after she suffered a flat tire. Famalaro kidnapped her at gunpoint, took her to a warehouse, assaulted her, and beat her to death with a hammer and crowbar. Police later discovered Huber’s body stored inside an industrial freezer truck.
Spitzer’s revolt and the fight over death row clemency
Spitzer is now leading a widening resistance among prosecutors who view the governor’s commutations as an overreach that ignores victims.
“Gov. Gavin Newsom’s commutation of the death sentences of all 548 condemned inmates in California is mercy for the wolves…while inflicting the ultimate act of cruelty on the sheep,” Spitzer said.
Newsom’s administration has defended the sweeping move, arguing that death row clemency does not mean prison gates will open. The governor’s office stated that commuting these sentences to life without parole does not qualify the inmates for newly updated state parole board guidelines.
Still, prosecutors fear future legal challenges could weaken those barriers once the death sentences vanish. Before any commutations become final, the California Supreme Court must review hundreds of individual files involving inmates with prior felony convictions.
Source: Fox News
