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A California prosecutor is highlighting the twisted impact of nearly 50 death row inmates in his county after Gov. Gavin Newsom called for blanket clemency for all of the state's condemned prisoners.
Three of them killed police officers, according to Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer's office. One killed at least 16 young men and is suspected of dozens of additional murders. Another killed an Arizona couple to raise money for a sex change, which was finally obtained behind bars on the taxpayers' dime.
Spitzer's office released information on all of the cases. Here are just a few:
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Randy Steven Kraft acquired multiple nicknames in a murder spree between 1972 and 1983, the "Scorecard Killer," the "Southern California Strangler" and the "Freeway Killer." He is on death row after convictions for raping, torturing and murdering at least 16 young men over 11 years. He is the suspect in 51 additional deaths of young men and boys.
"Bedroom Basher" Gerald Parker, a serial home invasion rapist who killed five women and an unborn baby in the 1970s, remained free until DNA testing linked him to the crimes in 1996. He received a death sentence in 1998.
Steven Dean Gordon was already a convicted child molester when he and an accomplice killed at least four women between 2013 and 2014. Billy Joe Johnson, a White supremacist gang member, "begged for the death penalty" after his role in five murders, including that of a childhood friend and fellow gang member.
Crips gang member Kevin Dewayn Boyce killed off-duty Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Shayne York during a hair salon robbery in 1997. York was inside with his fiancee. During the robbery, Boyce saw York's badge, called him a "pig" and shot him in the head.
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In 1996, a California Highway Patrol officer stopped Hung Thanh Mai in Fullerton. Mai shot Officer Don Joseph Burt multiple times before "a final execution-style shot to the head."
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Maurice Gerald Steskal ambushed Orange County Sheriff's Deputy Brad Riches in June 1999, shooting him 30 times with an AK-47 rifle as the victim sat in his patrol car.
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy and trans accomplice Skylar Deleon are known as the "Yacht Killers" after they kidnapped an Arizona couple in Newport Beach, tied them to an anchor and drowned them 55 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean to raise money for a sex-change operation. DeLeon is a former child actor, born John Jacobson Jr. and was separately convicted of the 2003 murder of an associate named Jon Jarvi from Anaheim.
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"Cold Storage Killer" John Joseph Famalaro abducted a 23-year-old woman named Denise Huber at gunpoint in 1991 when he saw her on the side of the road with a flat tire. He brought her to a warehouse where he sexually assaulted her, tied her up and beat her to death with a hammer and a crowbar, then kept her body in an industrial-grade freezer truck.
Spitzer is among a wave of California district attorneys pushing back after Newsom's call for clemency last week. The state's Supreme Court is expected to review hundreds of cases before clemency would be official.
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While California hasn't executed a condemned inmate in 20 years, death row inmates have largely been excluded from progressive criminal justice reforms made to lighten sentences on other offenders.
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"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 in a prior statement. With death row off the table, critics like Spitzer consider them closer to further leniency — and even potential release.
Newsom's office has countered that the prisoners in question are not eligible for new state parole board guidelines that critics warn could one day clear a path to freedom.
At least not today.
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