Opinion ID: 1375029
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: facts

Text: A jogger found the bodies of Scott Fowler and Ralph Chavez, Jr., sprawled 178 feet apart near a pond in John Anson Ford Park in Bell Gardens early on the morning of July 26, 1976. Fowler was 12 years old, Chavez 10. Each victim's throat had been cut with a sharp instrument. Witnesses testified that the boys had been fishing for hours the day before, staying well into the evening. They were placing their catch in a plastic gallon-size milk jug with the top excised so as to keep the handle intact. The police found the jug nearby, along with bologna wrappers, which were evidence of the boys' picnic. A trail of blood suggested that Chavez had tried to run after the attack. The medical examiner fixed the time of death at about midnight. Carl Carter, Jr., was reported missing in South Gate on October 22, 1978. He was seven years old. His body was found some five days later amidst dense scrub alongside a road. He had been strangled to death  a cord was still bound around his neck. An enzyme found in his anal area suggested an attempt at sodomy.

The prosecution's case was based almost entirely on defendant's confession, which he gave during the last of three interrogations at the South Gate city jail. The police became aware of defendant when they were interviewing individuals who might have information regarding Carter's whereabouts. They went to his apartment, and he introduced himself by saying, in the words of Officer William Sims, `I knew you were coming.... I['v]e been in Atascadero [State Prison]....' At the time, there was wide awareness in South Gate that Carter was missing. At the apartment, defendant and the police discussed Carter's disappearance. Defendant either said nothing about Carter at all or provided no useful information. The police returned to the Carter residence, and while they were there, defendant came over to drop off a part for his Volkswagen with Carl Carter, Sr., an occasional automobile repairer. Officer Sims testified that he asked him where he had been and what he might have seen on the night he dropped off his car. Officer Sims testified that he told him, `I remember now.... I took  I came to the Sizzler for dinner.' ... He said it was just before dark, and he had come up to the Carter residence ... to talk to Carl Carter, Sr., about working on his Volkswagen. [¶] Stated that when he got to the rear of the house that Carl Carter, Jr., was at the rear and they had a short conversation, and he ... had taken him for a Coke. Officer Sims then arrested defendant for kidnapping. There followed the three interrogations that evening at the jail. At the third, four officers were present: Sims, Lloyd Carter, Louie Gluhak, and Dennis Greene. Officer Sims treated defendant severely and Officer Carter more kindly. If this was a psychological tactic, it evidently worked, for Officer Carter, an experienced police investigator, won defendant's confidence. Officer Carter took notes of his confession, but it was not transcribed or taped  in fact defendant requested that all policemen except Officer Carter leave the room so that he could check it for bugs before making a statement. After they returned, defendant told his story. Officer Carter testified that he stated that he had known Carl Carter, Jr.'s, father for quite some time, that he was a personal friend of his, [and] that he was a mechanic.... He decided it would be a good time to stop and talk to him about repairing his Volkswagen. That he pulled in the back of Carl [Carter], Sr.'s, house and was preparing to exit his car when little Carl, Jr., rode up on his bicycle.... Carter said he wanted a soft drink and defendant invited him into his car and drove him to his apartment. He said the reason he wanted to take him over to his apartment was  that he liked to take pictures of little boys in the nude and he was hoping to take some pictures of Carl, Jr., in the nude. He said he went into his apartment and took him into his bedroom, and he turned on these real fancy strobe lights. And these lights began flashing on and on and he said that Carl, Jr., seemed to be fascinated with these lights. Shortly thereafter Carl, Jr., said he wanted to leave. This made defendant angry. He grabbed the clothesline that he had on the nightstand there and put it around Carl, Jr.'s, neck and choked him. He says he then threw him on the bed and that he took off his clothes and that Carl  then he took off Carl, Jr.'s, clothes, all except his T-shirt, and he said that sometime he taped his hands behind his back with masking tape that he had on the nightstand. He then tried to engage in anal intercourse with Carter's dead body. After this, he knew that he needed an alibi, and he decided to use the victim's father for the purpose. [H]e knew that he had to get his Volkswagen fixed so he tried to call Carl, Sr., to see if he could get his Volkswagen fixed and Carl said that he could. Defendant arranged to have a friend drive with him to the Carter home. Before the friend arrived, a neighbor boy stopped by and with Carl, Jr., ... still laying in on the bed, [defendant] conversed with [the neighbor boy] for quite sometime, and started showing [him] slide pictures of naked girls. The boy left after helping him jump-start his Volkswagen. He drove the car over to the Carter residence and dropped it off. He returned to his apartment, wrapped Carl, Jr.'s, body in a[n] army-type green blanket and rolled him up in it with his clothes. He said at this point he forgot to put the boy's shoes and socks in the blanket, but the rest of the clothing was in the blanket. He dumped the body and the blanket over the side of a rural road. The next morning, after a troubled sleep, he went to work. He had heard about Carl missing because it had been in the newspapers.... Officer Carter testified that defendant told him he had tied a square knot in the clothesline wrapped around Carl, Jr.'s neck, and that he had enclosed his shoes in a red suitcase in his garage and put it under a workbench. Officer Carter further testified that he invited defendant to confess to any other crimes he might have committed. Defendant then told Officer Carter that about two years before he had visited John Anson Ford Park in Bell Gardens on a red Yamaha motorcycle to take pictures of young boys. About dusk he saw two young boys walking toward a pond with fishing poles and what he believed to be a sack lunch. He started conversing with them and taking pictures.... He says one of the boys was named Scott, and he was a male, white about 13 and blond-headed and good-looking. The other boy was a Mexican boy named Ralph that was a little younger, about 12[;] he said he was fat and ugly. Defendant explained that they had a lunch of bologna sandwiches and that Fowler offered him one. As he lingered with them he was thinking about sucking Scott's dick because he liked blonds and just had a thing for young blonds. He says that it finally got real late and Ralph fell asleep on the bank while they were fishing. Defendant persuaded Fowler to walk to the other side of the pond. When they got there, he just got real smart and said something about fucking faggots. He said this pissed him off, and he grabbed his 2-inch Barlow knife out of his pocket and bent Scott backwards and slit his throat and put his knee in his back. He says this caused quite a commotion and apparently it woke up Ralph who was asleep over on the other side of the pond. He says Ralph started [waking] up and screaming, that he ran around to where Ralph was and chased him and grabbed him from behind and he says he slit his throat and ran on  and was running across the grassy area to get on his motorcycle. And he says as he was getting on his motorcycle he looked back and Ralph ... had gotten up from where he had slit his throat and left him and was trying to walk. He said this scared him quite a bit and really made him sick, and he rode his motorcycle on home.... He discarded his knife at work the next day. Officer Carter testified that defendant then started crying and sobbing, and he said, `Let's go find Carl, Jr.'s, body.' The police escorted him to the area he had described and found the decomposing body, clad in underwear. A cord was still bound around the neck. Although defendant agreed to take the police to the site, he begged them not to make him look at the scene. Officer Carter, accompanied by other members of the South Gate Police Department, then went to defendant's apartment. There was testimony that he had given them permission to search it. They recovered a pair of boy's shoes and socks in a red suitcase stored partly underneath a workbench. They also found boy's clothing in the suitcase and a length of clothesline that resembled the cord tied around Carter's neck. In addition, they found sexually explicit magazines featuring young men and boys, and a wealth of photographs of young boys, literally hundreds of which showed them unclothed. Some of the photographs were of neighborhood children. The next day defendant confessed to Officer Donald Barclift of the Bell Gardens police. In essence he repeated his confession to Fowler's and Chavez's murders. He told Officer Barclift how he had cut the milk jug (see ante, p. 811), and chided the police for failing to recover any evidence from it given that he had his fingerprints all over it. Officer Barclift testified that only the killer could have known precisely how the milk jug was cut so as to leave the handle intact. The prosecution's case essentially rested on the foregoing testimony and evidence consistent with it. The coroner's representative, Dr. Joseph Choi, testified that the cause of death of both Fowler and Chavez was a cutting wound to the neck, and that Carter was strangled by a rope. Dr. Choi testified that an examination on Carter with an anal swab was negative for ... spermatozoa and two plus for acid phosphatase. The positive result for that enzyme revealed the presence of seminal fluid that came from the prostate gland of someone other than Carter. The prosecution's theory of the case departed from the confessions as described by Officers Carter and Barclift only in that the prosecutor asserted that defendant either tried to or did have sex with Carter before killing him, rather than making an attempt on his dead body as he described.
Defendant did not take the stand. He did, however, present a defense. With regard to the Fowler and Chavez murders, the defense was alibi. Defendant maintained that his confession was a fabrication based on second-hand knowledge of the killings, which were widely publicized. He theorized that one or both of two men seen near or talking to the children killed them. Certain witnesses recalled seeing two men. Alfie Feliciano remembered a man on a motorcycle and another with a long knife strapped to his belt or his leg. The latter was wearing a green Army jacket. He had no camera, and he talked to Alfie for about an hour. Jose Feliciano, Alfie's brother, told a police officer immediately after the killings that he saw two men near Fowler and Chavez. One of them wore a green Army jacket and had a long hunting knife strapped to his leg. That individual spoke to a man on a yellow offroad motorcycle with a green gasoline tank. In his confession, it will be recalled, defendant said that his motorcycle was red. Scott Bushea, a witness for the prosecution, accompanied Jose Feliciano to the park that evening. He testified that two men were with Fowler and Chavez. Shown in court a picture of defendant taken immediately after his arrest, he testified that the photograph did not depict either of the people he saw at the park. The police prepared a composite sketch of one of the men. Defendant argued that he could have learned all the details of the killings from media accounts notwithstanding the testimony that only the killer would know how the milk jug was cut. And he asserted that in significant respects his confession failed to match the evidence found at the crime scene or the most plausible inferences to be drawn from that evidence. For example, the person in the composite drawing did not resemble him, and the motorcycle that the witnesses described did not match his. Defendant conceded that he killed Carter. However, he argued that the killing did not amount to first degree murder: the prosecution's account of his confession showed that he killed Carter in a rage and without reflection.

The prosecution introduced evidence of prior violent conduct. In May 1972, David Schroeder, the child of neighbors, was nine years old. Defendant beat him and left him bleeding from the face, ears, nose, and the back of the head. The attack was severe enough that the police officer who arrested defendant said he asked whether he had killed him. Schroeder spent the night in the hospital and was left with a nine-inch scar on his scalp. On cross-examination, the jury learned that the police perceived defendant to be distraught and that he told them he did not know why he assaulted Schroeder.
Over defendant's objection, the defense summoned one witness: Kathy Klabunde, his sister. She testified that their father, an alcoholic, verbally abused the children. Defendant, the eldest, would care for the others. He had migraine headaches on and off for years. His headaches would cause him to get very angry easily. I remember a period where he stayed downstairs for a couple of days where it was dark and cool to stay out of the light because his head hurt. As stated, defendant sought to bar his sister's testimony  he objected to a specific question at one point and called her a liar from his chair at another. After the jury retired, he asked to reopen the case so that he could testify, and the court acceded to his request. He stated to the jury, I just have a short statement I'd like to read to the jury. [¶] While I do not concede the truth, accuracy or correctness of the jury's verdicts, I do feel that since the jury has returned the verdicts of guilt in the maximum degree possible on all counts and the special circumstance, that they should also now return with a verdict of death as the appropriate penalty. Thank you. At closing argument, counsel emphasized defendant's mental problems, his cooperation with the police, lingering doubt regarding the special circumstance in light of his alibi defense to the killings of Fowler and Chavez, the grimness of life imprisonment, his lack of a prior felony conviction, the likelihood that he would not be dangerous in prison, and positive aspects of his background and character, including his remorse when he was discovered.