Crime & Safety

Jury: Serial Killer Should Get Death for 1984 Murders

The state's high court had reversed in 2004 allegations that led an earlier jury to also vote to execute Kevin Haley. Last week, a jury found that he killed during the commission of rape, sodomy, robbery and burglary.

A jury recommended today that a man be sentenced to death for the 1984 murders of two women in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Superior Court panel deliberated just under a day before determining that Kevin Haley should be executed for the June 25, 1984, killing of Laverne Stolzy and the Sept. 27, 1984, killing of Dolores Clement.

Judge Kathleen Kennedy ordered Haley, 50, to return to court July 29, when he is set to be formally sentenced.

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It marks the second time a jury has recommended the death penalty for Haley, who was initially sentenced to death in 1988 for Clement's killing.

In an August 2004 ruling, the California Supreme Court upheld his conviction, but reversed the special circumstance allegations that legally underpinned his death sentence, resulting in his retrial.

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Last week, jurors found true the special circumstance allegations that Clement was murdered during the commission of rape, sodomy, robbery and burglary.

The panel also convicted Haley of first-degree murder for Stolzy's killing -- a charge on which the first jury had deadlocked. Jurors found true the special circumstance allegations that Stolzy was murdered during the commission of rape or attempted rape, burglary and robbery, but deadlocked on two other special circumstance allegations -- murder during the commission of sodomy and oral copulation -- that subsequently were dismissed.

Haley acted as his own attorney during his retrial and did not present any mitigating evidence or give a closing argument during the penalty phase of his trial, in which jurors rejected an option to recommend that he be sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

Deputy District Attorney Iliana Alvarez, who handled the retrial with colleague Teresa De Castro, told jurors in her closing argument Thursday that Haley is a "monster," "predator" and "cold-blooded killer" who preyed on women.

Clement, 55, was strangled in her apartment in the Miracle Mile area of Los Angeles while getting ready for bed when she was attacked and left "half- naked" to die alone, the prosecutor said.

"She was robbed of her life for no reason other than his perverse and sadistic thirst for violence," Alvarez told jurors. "... In his wake, he leaves devastation."

Stolzy, who had turned 56 a week before she was killed in her South Los Angeles home, was hit so hard with a two-by-four that huge gashes were left in her head, according to the prosecutor.

Jurors also heard about a series of other crimes in 1984 in which Haley was suspected, including the May 17, 1984, execution-style killing and robbery of a 15-year-old girl who was shot in the back of the head while walking about 1 1/2 blocks from her home in South Los Angeles, and the attempted murder of a woman shot while out for a morning jog in the Miracle Mile area about 75 minutes earlier.

Authorities determined that a bullet recovered from the back of the teenage girl's head and a bullet recovered from the scene of the attempted murder were fired from the same gun, Alvarez told jurors.

Prosecutors also put on evidence about two other sexual assaults in which Haley -- who was 20 at the time -- was suspected, including the April 1984 rape of a woman who was on a date at Dockweiler Beach in El Segundo and an August 1984 attack on a woman in the Miracle Mile area.

"Kevin Haley must pay the ultimate price for his crimes," Alvarez told jurors.

--City News Service


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