Jury Convicts Man in Acid Attack on Girl, 16 : Guilty Verdicts Reached in 2 Hours on 8 Counts; Victim Underwent Facial Surgery Earlier in Day

Jack Oscar King was swiftly convicted Wednesday of trying to rape and kill 16-year-old Cheryl Bess, then blinding and disfiguring her with sulfuric acid.

The jury of eight women and four men deliberated only two hours before finding King guilty of all eight felony counts stemming from the Oct. 24, 1984, attack in the Mojave Desert that left Cheryl, a former San Bernardino High School honor student who now lives in Orange, virtually without a face.

After the verdict was read, the judge thanked the jurors for their efforts in what he called a “difficult” and “emotional” trial.

King, a painter with the San Bernardino County Housing Authority, showed no emotion as a clerk read the verdict in the courtroom filled with news media representatives, San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators and local victims’ rights activists.

‘Doing Just Fine’

Cheryl was not present to hear the verdict. She was recovering from three hours of surgery earlier in the day at UCI Medical Center in Orange in which doctors took a skin flap from her chest for what eventually will be her nose, and continued their efforts to re-create eyelids to replace the ones destroyed by the acid that King poured over her head. She was listed in stable condition and was “doing just fine,” a burn center nurse said.

Cheryl’s mother, Norma Bess, said in a telephone interview that she was “glad to hear that the jury came to that conclusion.”

“I hope his punishment is stiff, but I think I’ll reserve my feelings for Sept. 11,” she said, referring to the day King is scheduled for sentencing.

Unanimous Vote

Jurors said after the trial that they voted unanimously for King’s conviction in their first ballot on each count in the ninth day of the trial here before Superior Court Judge Don A. Turner.

“I’d say it was virtually unanimous from the beginning. It wasn’t necessary to reballot,” said juror William Henderson, 56, a retired Air Force colonel from Redlands. “The prosecution put on an overwhelming case. There was very little evidence by the defense in any way to effectively refute it.”

King’s attorney, William Dole of the San Bernardino County public defender’s office, had argued that investigators arrested the wrong man and that the real culprit was “still out in the community.” Dole called only one witness and presented his defense swiftly, concluding his closing arguments in a matter of hours Tuesday. He would not comment on the case after the verdict.

‘Impressive Kid’

Juror Henderson said he and his colleagues were strongly influenced by the way Cheryl “so accurately remembered the important things,” and added: “She’s an incredibly impressive kid.”

King, 65, was convicted of kidnap, attempted murder, attempted rape, assault with intent to commit rape, assault with corrosive liquid, mayhem, assault with a deadly weapon (sulfuric acid) and forcible oral copulation.

According to Deputy Dist. Atty. Dwight Moore, who prosecuted the case, King could receive a prison sentence of “about 32 years.”

Until his sentencing, King will remain in the San Bernardino County Jail on $500,000 bail.

King served 14 years of a 16-year prison sentence for the 1961 attempted rape of a 9-year-old Irvine girl. By law, however, King’s prior conviction was not admissible as evidence during the trial.

Prosecutor Moore had acknowledged outside the courtroom during the trial that he had “very little physical evidence but an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence.”

The crux of the prosecution’s case against King was the testimony by Cheryl last Monday. In her first court appearance since the attack, she appeared poised and spoke in a quiet, clear voice. With most of her face bandaged to keep scar tissue from developing, she described her attacker, the van in which she was abducted, the sexual assault and how the bottle of drain cleaner containing the sulfuric acid was emptied on her. After the attack, she said, she played dead and was left in the desert.

‘A Walking Skeleton’

When a worker for the nearby California Aqueduct came upon her hours later, one investigator said, “she was a walking skeleton.” King was arrested later on the day of the attack.

A yearbook picture of Cheryl before the assault, blown up to poster size, was propped up in the courtroom during the trial.

In his closing argument before the jury Wednesday, Moore focused on what he termed “Cheryl’s mistakes”--discrepancies between her description of her assailant and King’s appearance.

Cheryl testified that her attacker was a black maintenance worker at the Waterman Gardens housing project where she and her mother then lived. King was a painter at the project.

But she also said the man weighed about 200 pounds. King is a small man weighing perhaps 140 pounds. She said he was wearing coveralls and black boots. Investigators never found any such clothing.

‘Very Credible Witness’

Moore challenged the jury to try to describe in detail someone they had met nine months ago on only two occasions.

And jurors said after the trial Wednesday that Cheryl’s vivid recollection after nine months of other “more important things” far outweighed differences between her description of her attacker and King.

“She was a very credible witness,” said juror Marianne Edmunds, 37, of Fontana. “That child has been through a terrible thing. . . . I admire her courage in telling her story.”