Not His 1st Slaying, Jury Is Told : Killer’s ‘Cycle of Violence’ Merits Death, D. A. Argues

In 1975, at age 15, J. D. Adams Jr. killed an ice-cream vendor while trying to rob the man, Deputy Dist. Atty. Frederick G. Stewart said Tuesday in asking jurors to recommend that Adams be executed for his part in a 1982 crime rampage.

During his opening arguments Tuesday, Stewart argued that Adams should be executed because he has “demonstrated a cycle of violence,” including murdering vendor Mohammad Mofrad, 27, as the man sold ice cream to children at a Pacoima apartment project. Adams served three years in the California Youth Authority for the murder, Stewart said.

Adams was convicted last week by a San Fernando Superior Court jury of committing six robberies in the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood and stabbing a Sylmar motel manager and his wife during a four-hour period in July, 1982.

The manager, Kenneth Holbrook, died of his wounds. His wife, Clyda, survived the attack.

Deadlocked on Other Killing

Jurors declared themselves deadlocked on an additional count of murder in the stabbing of a Hollywood man that same night.

Because jurors found Adams guilty of murdering Holbrook during the commission of a robbery, they now must decide whether to recommend that he be sent to the gas chamber or spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Adams was joined in the crime rampage by Chester Longmire, who drove the car that evening, and James Jennings, who accompanied Adams during the robberies and stabbings but did not harm any of the victims, according to their own testimony.

Jennings pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. Longmire was convicted on the same charges as Adams but without the special-circumstances allegations that permit the death penalty. Neither man has been sentenced. Both Jennings and Longmire blamed the Holbrook stabbings on Adams.

Accident Claimed

Retired Police Sgt. John M. Carey, who investigated the 1975 case, testified Tuesday that Adams claimed to have shot Mofrad accidentally.

Carey quoted Adams as saying: “I was just going to scare him. I was standing on the curb, and I sort of slipped, and the gun went off, and I knew it hit him, so I ran.”

But Stewart said after Tuesday’s testimony that a coroner concluded that the shot was fired at very close range and that the ice-cream truck was parked at least eight feet from the curb at the time of the shooting.