San Diego

The man who police arrested Saturday in connection with the killing of a Pacific Beach man, whose dismembered body was found near Mission Bay, was convicted of murder in Texas in 1975, police confirmed Wednesday.

Kenneth Dee Stogsdill, 45, was convicted of killing an oil field worker near Wichita Falls in April, 1975. He was sentenced to death but served only four years in prison before the conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Bail was set Wednesday at $1 million for Stogsdill, a San Diego service station employee who used the name Kenneth Carl Dee. Stogsdill pleaded innocent to murder in the death last month of Kenneth Beachell, 29.

On Sept. 11, campers found a human head on some rocks near Campland, a recreational vehicle park at the northeast corner of Mission Bay. A few days later, bones, some of which were wrapped in plastic trash bags, were discovered nearby. Using dental charts, the coroner’s office identified the victim as Beachell, who had been living in a Garnet Avenue apartment for four weeks before his disappearance in early September.

Beachell had moved to San Diego from Vancouver to look for work and was living with friends.

An examination of the head revealed that it had been severed from the neck with a sharp tool and that flesh had apparently been cut away from the skull.

San Diego Police Lt. Paul Ybarrondo said that, once the victim was identified, detectives were able to trace where Beachell was before his death. Witnesses told police that Stogsdill and Beachell had met casually at a bar in Pacific Beach.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Wayne Mayer said Wednesday that police recovered human tissue from Stogsdill’s apartment.