A California district attorney is drawing attention to the devastating crimes tied to nearly 50 death row prisoners in his county after Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed blanket clemency for every condemned inmate in the state.
According to the Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer’s office, three of the inmates were convicted of killing police officers. One was convicted of murdering at least 16 young men and is suspected in dozens of other deaths. Another killed an Arizona couple in an effort to finance a sex-change procedure, which he later received while incarcerated at taxpayer expense.
Spitzer’s office released details from the cases. Among those highlighted are the following:
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer speaks with reporters after announcing a murder charge against David Wenwei Chou in connection with the Laguna Woods church shooting on May 17, 2022, in Santa Ana, California. Spitzer said the charge could make Chou eligible for the death penalty. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Serial murder cases:
Randy Steven Kraft became known by several grim nicknames during a killing spree that lasted from 1972 to 1983, including the “Scorecard Killer,” the “Southern California Strangler” and the “Freeway Killer.” He remains on death row after being convicted of raping, torturing and killing at least 16 young men over an 11-year period. Authorities have also linked him to, or suspected him in, 51 additional deaths involving young men and boys.
Gerald Parker, dubbed the “Bedroom Basher,” was a serial home-invasion rapist who killed five women and an unborn child during the 1970s. He avoided arrest for years before DNA evidence connected him to the crimes in 1996. Parker was sentenced to death in 1998.
Steven Dean Gordon had already been convicted of child molestation when he and an accomplice killed at least four women between 2013 and 2014. Billy Joe Johnson, a member of a White supremacist gang, was involved in five murders, including the killing of a childhood friend and fellow gang member. Prosecutors said Johnson ultimately “begged for the death penalty.”
Handout photo provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.”nRandy Steven Kraft, shown at left in 1983 and at right in June 2007, is considered one of California’s most prolific serial killers. He may have killed as many as 65 young men in Oregon, Michigan and California over a 13-year period that ended in 1983. Kraft was sentenced to death after a trial lasting nearly a year. His crimes came to light after he was stopped on suspicion of drunk driving in 1981 and officers found a dead Marine inside his Toyota. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via Getty Images)
Cases involving slain police officers:
Kevin Dewayn Boyce, a member of the Crips, killed off-duty Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Shayne York during a 1997 robbery at a hair salon. York was inside with his fiancée when Boyce noticed the deputy’s badge, called him a “pig” and shot him in the head.
In 1996, California Highway Patrol Officer Don Joseph Burt pulled over Hung Thanh Mai in Fullerton. Mai shot Burt several times and then delivered what prosecutors described as “a final execution-style shot to the head.”
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Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Riches was sitting in his patrol vehicle in June 1999 when Maurice Gerald Steskal ambushed him. Steskal fired an AK-47 approximately 30 times.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a campaign appearance for then-Senate candidate Chris Pappas at Exeter Town Hall on Oct. 17, 2026, in Exeter, New Hampshire. (John Tully/Getty Images)
Other high-profile murder cases:
John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his transgender accomplice, Skylar Deleon, became known as the “Yacht Killers” after kidnapping an Arizona couple in Newport Beach. Prosecutors said the pair tied the victims to an anchor and pushed them overboard roughly 55 miles off the Pacific coast to obtain money for a sex-change operation. Deleon, a former child actor born John Jacobson Jr., was also convicted separately in the 2003 killing of Anaheim associate Jon Jarvi.
John Joseph Famalaro, known as the “Cold Storage Killer,” abducted 23-year-old Denise Huber at gunpoint in 1991 after seeing her beside a disabled vehicle. He took her to a warehouse, sexually assaulted her, restrained her and beat her to death with a hammer and crowbar. Famalaro then concealed her body in an industrial freezer truck.
Skylar DeLeon speaks with attorneys at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach, California, on March 4, 2004. (Glenn Koenig/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Spitzer is one of several California district attorneys challenging Newsom’s clemency proposal, announced last week. Before any clemency becomes final, the California Supreme Court is expected to review hundreds of related cases.
California has not carried out an execution in two decades. Still, death row prisoners have generally not qualified for the progressive criminal justice changes that reduced sentences for other incarcerated people.
“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 an earlier statement. Critics argue that eliminating the death penalty could open the door to additional sentence reductions—and eventually, in some cases, possible release.
Newsom’s office has responded that the affected prisoners do not qualify under the state’s updated parole-board guidelines, which opponents say could eventually create a path to freedom.
At least for now.
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