‘It Was a Dirty Little Murder’ but It Lands Him on Death Row

It was, an appeals attorney said, “a dirty little murder.”

Ronald Lee Sanders is not a notorious killer.

Like most of the 167 condemned men living on San Quentin’s two Death Rows, Sanders is virtually anonymous.

The murder for which he was convicted did not make the pages of The Times. It was not even a big story in Bakersfield, where it occurred.

The judge who sentenced Sanders to the gas chamber couldn’t remember the details of the case 3 1/2 years later.

Sanders was sentenced to die for his role in the 1981 bludgeon killing of the girlfriend of a small-time cocaine dealer during a drug rip-off.

“I just cannot believe that Sanders’ case would have been tried as a death penalty case in Los Angeles or in San Francisco or virtually any major metropolitan area,” said appeals attorney Dennis Riordan.

‘Doesn’t Compare’

“But beyond that,” he said, “it’s a dirty little case. It doesn’t compare to cases which, for one reason or another, are so horrid and yet (the convicted murderers) don’t receive the same penalty.”

In the terrible and numbing litany of crimes committed by many of those on Death Row--the torture murders, the rape killings, the child slayings, the mutilations, the multiple murders, the cold-blooded executions and the murders for hire--Sanders’ case does seem less horrible than most.

And, at first glance, the articulate, seemingly well-educated Sanders appears somewhat different from his fellow Death Row inmates.

According to a 1984 report by the state Bureau of Criminal Statistics, two-thirds of the condemned men at San Quentin have an arrest record involving violence. About 41% had previously done time in state prison. Nearly 40% of them had been sentenced to the California Youth Authority as juveniles.

Undoubtedly, many of them, like inmates throughout the state prison system, grew up poor in unstable homes and without family guidance, education or training.

But Sanders doesn’t seem to match that profile.

Insists He’s Innocent

Insisting that he is innocent and that his conviction will be reversed on appeal, Sanders stared with wide, pale brown eyes at a visitor and told of how he copes with life on Death Row:

“To me, life is all about evaluating the images that you have within yourself and projecting those images of who you really are and living comfortably with yourself.”

The image Sanders was trying to project is one of a well-mannered product of a stable, middle-American family. He told of growing up in a pleasant tract home with a two-car garage, of being an athlete at Bakersfield High School, getting good grades, graduating, marrying his high school sweetheart, attending college in Canada. . . .

Sure, he admitted, he got into trouble as a youngster. He was sent to the Youth Authority for minor offenses. And he even did some prison time for robbery, but all he was doing was helping a friend collect a debt. And he had long since returned to middle-class life before he was accused of murder.

It is an interesting image. Maybe it is the way Sanders wishes it could have been. But it is a fantasy.

Ronald Lee Sanders was born in Bakersfield on April 23, 1952. He was the second oldest of five children born to a horse trainer and his wife, who divorced when Sanders was about 11.

The children grew up mostly in Orange County, according to a sister who discussed her brother on the condition she not be identified. The youngsters were shunted from mother to father, and sometimes Ronald was sent to stay with a grandmother in Bakersfield.

The children lived in 25 to 30 different places growing up, the sister said, and when they hit their teens, they ran the streets unsupervised:

“We were just run-around kids, I guess.”

All the youngsters got in trouble, the sister said.

She said she was once married to a drug addict and on one occasion was herself charged with assault with a deadly weapon, kidnaping, burglary and robbery.

Another sister, she said, died of drug-related hepatitis at the age of 17.

Constantly in Trouble

Ronald Lee Sanders is remembered by his family and acquaintances as very intelligent, but although he attended high school in Orange County he never graduated and was in almost continual trouble with the law from his early teens until his early 20s.

He was sentenced to the California Youth Authority four times, the first sentence at the age of 14 for burglary and violation of probation. At 18 he was arrested by the Fountain Valley Police Department and charged with a string of 14 armed robberies.

Sanders pleaded guilty to one of the holdups and was sent to state prison for two years and nine months. His whereabouts during his mid-20s is unclear, but before he turned 30 Sanders was back in Bakersfield, the city of his birth. On his right forearm was tattooed a Nazi, on his left, a half-naked woman wearing a ball and chain.

“He’s a tough guy,” said Sanders’ brother-in-law.

Janice Dishroon Allen was born in Atlanta on Jan. 21, 1952, just three months before Ronald Lee Sanders.

Janice was the youngest of three children. When she was about 15 her father died of a brain tumor. Janice dropped out of high school in the 11th grade, got married, had a child and divorced.

In the winter of 1980, the tall, attractive young woman with long honey-blonde hair moved to Bakersfield to be near her brother, Tommy Dishroon, a school album photographer who, like their father, suffered from an inoperable brain tumor.

Allen lived with her brother, took care of him and got occasional work baby-sitting and cleaning apartments.

“She liked horseback rides, swimming, lying in the sun, dancing,” said her sister, Kathy Schube of Atlanta. “She just wanted to enjoy life.”

At a Bakersfield tavern Allen met and became romantically involved with Dale Boender, then 26, a small-time cocaine dealer. Allen began accompanying Boender on some of his drug sales and used cocaine with him.

Allen’s Birthday

On Jan. 21, 1981, Allen’s 29th birthday, Boender was invited by a regular drug customer to go to a trailer court to meet a man supposedly interested in buying $4,000 worth of cocaine, far more than Boender had at the time. Allen went with Boender to the trailer court.

It was a setup. Boender was attacked by a club-wielding assailant as he walked into the house trailer. But, in spite of being badly beaten, Boender was able to fend off the attacker, who fled after knocking Allen down.

Two days later, on Jan. 23, the couple was fixing dinner in Boender’s apartment when they heard a knock at the door.

When Boender opened it, two men, one holding a large-bore handgun, forced their way in. They bound and blindfolded Boender and Allen and ransacked the apartment, but found only about two grams of cocaine in Allen’s purse and $18 in Boender’s pocket.

Before the intruders left, Boender and Allen were bashed on the head with a club.

Boender survived. Allen died.

Charged With Murder

Ronald Lee Sanders, then 28, and an acquaintance, John Cebreros Jr., also 28, were subsequently arrested and charged with murdering Allen and attempting to murder Boender.

Kern County Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen M. Tauzer prosecuted the crime as a “special circumstances” murder that carries either the death penalty or life in prison without possibility of parole. The special circumstances, Tauzer charged, were that the murder occurred during a robbery, that a firearm was used in the crime and that the victim was killed to prevent her from testifying about the previous rip-off attempt, although that crime had not been reported to the police.

Boender was the key witness.

The first jury to hear the case hung 11 to 1 for conviction of both defendants.

A second jury found both defendants guilty of murder, attempted murder and of all special circumstances charged. It was never determined who wielded the club in Allen’s death.

When the jury was called back to decide whether Sanders should be sentenced to death or life without parole, he refused to allow his defense attorney, Frank Hoover, to present a case on his behalf.

“I didn’t do it with a clear conscience,” Hoover said. “(But) Ron felt like life without the possibility of parole was worse than being killed.”

Prosecutor Tauzer, however, believes Sanders coldly gambled that he would have a better chance on appeal by going directly to the state Supreme Court on the automatic death penalty review than going to the state Court of Appeal with a life without parole sentence.

Whatever Sanders’ motive, the jury’s verdict was death and on March 3, 1982, Kern County Superior Court Judge Gerald K. Davis sentenced Sanders to the gas chamber.

“There is something inhuman about beating someone to death while they are bound hand and foot, blindfolded,” Davis said from the bench. “This man is a menace to society.”

The prosecution, believing Sanders to be the leader in the crime, decided not to seek death for Cebreros, and Davis sentenced Sanders’ accomplice to life without parole on the same day.

Ronald Lee Sanders does not look tough. He is small, pale and paunchy. His sandy-colored, curly hair is closely cropped and he wears a moderately droopy mustache. His long-sleeved shiny blue shirt, sent from the outside, is buttoned at the cuffs, covering the Nazi and the girl with the ball and chain.

Now and then he laughs in quick, high nervous bursts. But, for the most part, he is soft-spoken and articulate as he tells of his life with 67 other prisoners on San Quentin’s old Death Row, which inmates sometimes call “The Shelf.”

Actually, there are two Death Rows at San Quentin. “The Shelf” is on the sixth floor of North Block. The other is in South Block, where about 100 condemned men live in dismal and violent Carson Section, which also houses 130 troublesome prisoners kept in super-secure lockup status. A guard was killed by a prison-made spear in Carson Section in June.

Both the old Death Row and Carson Section are under supervision of a court-appointed monitor overseeing prison conditions.

Called Thoughtful Loner

Sanders is considered by Death Row guards to be a thoughtful loner who nevertheless is willing to help other inmates with their problems, according to prison officials.

“Where we live,” Sanders said, “is the most congenial atmosphere in the CDC (California Department of Corrections). . . . Because we work at it. . . . If a person has a problem, whether it’s racial or anything, we can talk to him. . . . It’s peaceful up there. . . . The whites mix with the blacks, the Mexicans mix with the blacks and whites.”

There is, he said, “a camaraderie of sorts.” It is not based on living under death sentences, he explained, but on a common desire to keep certain privileges, such as being allowed to make collect phone calls.

Sanders described living a cloistered existence on Death Row, doing legal research, reading, studying and praying. Sanders said he does not fear death because he is confident that he can prove his innocence and beyond that, he said, everyone must eventually die anyway.

Describing the routine on Death Row, he said that at about 8 a.m. the men are allowed out of their cells into an area about 12 feet by 200 feet. They are given regular exercise periods in an enclosure on the roof. At 2:30 p.m., they are all locked in their cells for the remainder of the day.

Travel Poster in Cell

Sanders said he has lived the last three years in cell No. 11, where he keeps taped to the wall a travel poster of a peaceful Austrian landscape and a picture of a lion cub. He also tapes Bible verses to the cell wall and said he begins each day with prayer:

“I pray for the institution. I pray for the staff. . . . I pray for the inmates.”

Did he become deeply religious after he was condemned to die?

“When you get to the last bus stop,” he chortled, “you better do something.”

There was in the tone of that comment a hint of the old “run-around kid,” the street-wise, con-wise, tattooed tough guy.

But immediately Sanders’ voice became soft and serious and he said earnestly:

“I mean, you’ve got to start reevaluating the realities in your life. . . . If you’re projecting a false image, or a front . . . that has to be dealt with and broken down. In other words, a person, in order to be happy within himself, to be at peace with himself, must express outwardly what he really is inwardly.”

Scriptures, he said, are helpful:

“One of my favorites is Hebrews 4:12: ‘The word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and the joints of the marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Janice Allen lies buried in the red clay beneath the pine trees in a little country church cemetery in Georgia. Her brother, Tommy, died two months after her murder and is buried in the same cemetery.

Dale Boender, now 30, left Bakersfield and lives in another part of the state where he is now a plumber. He says he has given up using and dealing drugs.

John Cebreros Jr., now 33, is in Folsom Prison. The state Court of Appeal granted him a reversal of the special circumstances verdict against him on grounds that intent to kill was not proven in the trial. The first-degree murder verdict stands, however. He is scheduled to go before the state Supreme Court Oct. 7 on a challenge to a court ruling that barred testimony by a witness identification expert during his trial.

Tauzer, the Kern County deputy district attorney, says he plans to retry the special circumstances allegations in the murder charges against Cebreros. He expects that the state Supreme Court also will overturn the special circumstances verdict against Sanders, and he plans to retry that aspect of the case.

Ronald Lee Sanders, now 33, lives on Death Row at San Quentin. On Oct. 7, the state Supreme Court is scheduled to hear his appeal that the trial court erred in rulings on witness identification and on admitting grisly autopsy photos into evidence. His attorneys will also argue that intent to kill was not proven in the trial and that the death sentence in this case is a disproportionate punishment under the state Constitution.

CALIFORNIA’S DEATH ROW

The state Department of Corrections offers these profiles of California’s Death Row inmates, based on the 165 prisoners last May. There are now 167 inmates. ETHNIC BREAKDOWN

% of inmates % of Calif. pop. White 48% 67% Black 35% 8% Latino 15% 19% Other 2% 6%

AGE BREAKDOWN

Under 19 0.0% 20-29 34.9% 30-39 47.6% 40-49 23.0% 50-59 6.0% Over 60 0.0%

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 41% had at least one prior prison commitment. 48% had seven or more prior arrests. 40% had prior commitments to the California Youth Authority. 39% were on parole or provation at the time of the death penalty offense. 40% had more than one homicide victim. 58% of the homicide victims were male. 67% of the homicide victims were non-Latino whites. COUNTY OF SENTENCING Number of Death Row Inmates Alameda: 6 Butte: 1 Contra Costa: 5 El Dorado: 2 Fresno: 4 Glenn: 1 Humbolt: 1 Inyo: 1 Kern: 7 Los Angeles: 56 Madera: 1 Monterey: 2 Orange: 10 Placer: 2 Riverside: 8 Sacramento: 9 San Bernardino: 13 San Diego: 4 San Francisco: 4 San Joaquin: 3 San Mateo: 4 Santa Barbara: 1 Santa Clara: 6 Shasta: 1 Solano: 1 Sonoma: 1 Stanislaus: 2 Tulare: 3 Tuolomne: 1 Ventura: 3 Yolo: 1 Yuba: 1 VICTIMS AND INMATES BY RACE These Bureau of Criminal Statistics figures reflect California Death Row inmates as of May.

RACE NO. OF NO. OF RACE OF VICTIMS OF INMATE INMATES VICTIMS WHITE LATINO BLACK OTHER White 70 118 106 6 0 7 Latino 23 32 18 13 1 0 Black 53 83 33 9 23 18 Other 5 8 6 0 0 2 Total 151 241 162 28 24 27