Boy Sentenced to Life Term in Fatal Stabbing of Drug Dealer

A cherubic 15-year-old Thousand Oaks boy who was described by his probation officer as completely amoral was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for the stabbing murder of a man from whom he bought drugs.

Because of his age, however, Charles Kenneth Craig will likely be kept in a California Youth Authority facility until he is 25 and then freed, state officials said.

The 220 pound, 5-foot, 6-inch Craig, his curly brunet hair sheared off since his conviction, smiled at his mother, Barbara Lee Craig, after Ventura County Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Storch pronounced sentence.

The sentence was automatic following Craig’s first-degree murder conviction two weeks ago for the Feb. 4 slaying of 21-year-old Jeffery Anderson.

No Jury

Storch, who tried the case without a jury, found that Craig stabbed Anderson while robbing the convicted drug dealer of drugs and cash.

The three-day trial was marked by the playing of a dramatic tape recording of a deathbed interview with Anderson, who died of a single stab wound in the back from a kitchen knife with a seven-inch blade.

Minutes before he died at Los Robles Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, a hoarse, panicky Anderson twice shouted “Charley Craig” to a detective who asked who had stabbed him.

Barbara Craig has steadfastly defended her son, maintaining, in an interview, that he acted out of fear that he would be harmed by Anderson, “who lured my boy into drugs and also corrupted many other young boys.”

In the interview, she attributed her son’s previous troubles with the law to his being upset at his parents’ divorce three years ago.

3 Previous Charges

In a 23-page report to Storch, probation officer Julie Foster Hedrick termed the mother’s defense of her son “pathetically appalling” in light of the youth’s persistent troubles with the law and his admitted drug use.

In the 12 months before the slaying, Craig had been charged with purse snatching, burglary and disturbing the peace in three separate incidents and had spent 120 days in custody.

In one case, police said, Craig and friends harassed a shopper outside a local market until she fled from her car screaming.

In the murder trial, the youth testified that he stabbed Anderson because they had had an argument over a drug deal and he feared Anderson was about to hit him with a two-foot-long metal pipe.

Craig, who fled the scene on his bicycle, said he was under the influence of the drug LSD at the time.

Maximum Sentence Sought

Beverly and Roger Anderson, the victim’s parents, were present throughout the trial and sentencing. They refused to comment on the case, but sent a two-page letter to Storch, largely filled with biblical quotations supporting stern punishment for wrongdoers.

The letter concluded: “We therefore request you impose the maximum penalty on Charley Craig.”

Art German, a spokesman in Sacramento for the Youth Authority, said that, although the law requires imposition of a life sentence for a juvenile convicted of first-degree murder in the commission of a felony, “that sentence has no practical effect on the authority.”

He said that youths turned over to the custody of the authority “have, in effect, received an indeterminate sentence that ends at age 25, when our jurisdiction ends.”

A seldom-used provision of state law allows the authority to extend a prisoner’s sentence in two-year increments beyond age 25, he said.

Hearing Every 2 Years

Such extensions require a jury hearing every two years, German said, and the state’s case “cannot be based on the original charge, no matter how horrible that was, but must be based on evidence gathered while in custody that the person is a danger to society.”

Under state law, Craig, who was 14 at the time of the slaying, had to be tried as a juvenile.

Deputy Public Defender Roland Short said after sentencing that he would appeal the conviction on the ground that Craig should have been granted a jury trial.

State law provides for only trial by judges for juveniles, but Ventura County public defenders, among others, have been seeking a state appeal court decision mandating jury trials.