Faces Life Without Parole : Man Guilty in 9-Year-Old Slaying of Grocer’s Wife

Nine years after Johann Seigman was kidnaped from her Rossmoor home and shot execution-style in a weed-filled lot, an Orange County Superior Court jury Monday found the man accused of attacking her guilty of first-degree murder.

The jury, after four days of deliberation, also found William Gullett, 35, of Bellflower guilty of three counts of kidnaping for ransom and one count of kidnaping with great bodily harm involved--a charge that could put Gullett in prison for life without parole.

Wife, 3 Children Abducted

To John Seigman, Johann’s husband, Gullett’s conviction was worth the wait: “After nine years, I really feel that the justice system of the United States of America is the best in the world,” he said tearfully after the verdict was read.

Johann Seigman and her three children were abducted from their home on Aug. 25, 1976, by two men who ordered her husband to go to the Long Beach supermarket he managed and empty the safe to pay their ransom.

The children were found unharmed a short time later, bound hand and foot in the family van on Pacific Coast Highway about a mile and a half from the East Anaheim Street market.

Their mother’s body was found on Aug. 27 in a weed-filled ditch in Dominguez Hills. She had been shot five times in the back of the head. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles County coroner at the time, concluded that she had been killed within the preceding 24 hours either in the ditch or nearby.

Gullett and Ronald Lewis Ewing, 35, also of Bellflower, were first charged with the murder and kidnapings in October, 1976. After a preliminary hearing, a magistrate ordered the two men to stand trial, saying the evidence provided “strong suspicions” of their guilt. A judge later overruled that decision, contending that a preponderance of evidence pointing to guilt was required.

Eight years passed before Gullett and Ewing were arrested again, and sheriff’s investigators kept the case alive through interviews with potential witnesses and by keeping track of the two suspects. They were arrested in January, 1984. Ewing is expected to be tried next month, Prosecutor Tony Rackauckas said.

“It was an execution-style murder, and with a murder of that kind of gravity, we just don’t give up on it,” Rackauckas said after the 1984 arrests.

Gullett sat impassively Monday as the verdict was read, but he moved his legs nervously under the courtroom table, causing the chain that bound his feet to swing back and forth.

John Seigman sat in the courtroom, surrounded by his tearful family and friends. When the proceedings ended, he waited in the courtroom to thank the jurors for their decision. Pausing occasionally to choke back tears, Seigman, 55, spoke of nine years of pain and 10 minutes of vindication.

“You would think the hurt would go away after nine years, but it doesn’t,” he said, tears sliding down the creases in his tired face. “When we received a call in 1984 that Gullett and Ewing were being charged again, it came as a great surprise to me. We had gone on with our lives. My first reaction was that it was going to be tough to reopen all the wounds again.”

Help for Other Victims

But for the Seigman family the extra pain paid off. Cathy Seigman, now 28, said the results of her mother’s case should hearten other crime victims who are awaiting justice.

“I want other victims to trust the legal system,” she said. “Even after nine years, justice still prevails. We aren’t the only victims out there waiting for justice.”

“It’s been hard to remember,” she said, clutching a sodden tissue. “Everything hurt, but it was worth it.”

Since the 1976 attack on his family, Seigman has remarried and moved to Florida. His children--Cathy, Paul, 20, and John, 25--live in Los Alamitos, not far from their old home.

Although the nine years that have gone by since the attack have been hard on the Seigman family, the passage of time did not hurt the case against Gullett during the two-month trial.

“It came out in the trial that there was insufficient evidence (to try Gullett) the first time,” said jury foreman Ronald F. Vasquez, 47. “Evidently more evidence came up during the nine years that subsequently caused them to bring this to trial.

“But it didn’t bother us. It never went to a jury the first time. The judge was the one who said it wouldn’t get to trial that time.”

Gullett is scheduled for sentencing on Sept. 12.