‘Crybaby,’ 17, Gets 69 Years to Life in Two Sex Slayings

Calling him “basically a big crybaby,” a judge on Friday sentenced a Rancho Palos Verdes teen-ager to 69 years to life in prison on convictions of sexually molesting and murdering two young girls.

Torrance Superior Court Judge Cecil J. Mills imposed the sentence on Kevin Earl Hindmarsh, 17, who was found guilty last February on two counts each of murder and sodomy with a foreign object in the slayings of the 11-year-old Palos Verdes Peninsula girls.

Hindmarsh will be eligible for parole in 34 1/2 years.

Mills imposed the sentence despite recommendations by both defense attorney Josh Fredricks and Deputy Dist. Atty. Roger Kelly that Hindmarsh begin his sentence at a California Youth Authority facility.

Kelly told the judge that he believes Hindmarsh “should be gassed, really,” but that sending him directly to prison is tantamount to “torture” because of his age. Kelly suggested that Hindmarsh be sent to a Youth Authority facility until he turns 25, then transferred to prison.

However, after listening to a tearful plea by one of the victim’s mothers, Shahla O’Sullivan, that Hindmarsh should be sent to prison, Mills handed down the maximum sentence allowed under law.

Based on his reading of a psychological report, the judge said he believed Hindmarsh is “sociopathic” and “basically a big crybaby and has been all his life.” Mills said that Hindmarsh “apparently was incapable of feeling grief or concern for the victims.”

The judge said that he found it “distasteful” to place Hindmarsh in the presence of other youngsters in a Youth Authority facility for “even one day.”

Limitations of Age

Under state law, a defendant under age 18 cannot be given life imprisonment or the death penalty.

The victims, Neda O’Sullivan and her friend, Kristin Joy MacKnight, were found beaten and sexually assaulted the afternoon of May 10, 1984, in a condominium in the gated Rancho Palos Verdes Ridgegate complex where Neda lived with her mother and a 15-year-old sister, Audrey. Neda was already dead. Kristin died the next day at a hospital.

At the trial, Kelly said that Hindmarsh apparently tried to date Audrey O’Sullivan, and had attempted to convince her to stay home the day of the killings.

Only hours after the bodies were discovered, Hindmarsh, who lived in a nearby condominium complex, told homicide investigators that he had not been to the O’Sullivan home that day. However, a security guard at the condominium complex, as well as two teen-agers, testified at the trial that they had seen Hindmarsh at the complex the afternoon of the killings.

Defense attorney Fredricks has said that he will appeal the conviction.