Conviction of Letter Carrier’s Killer Upheld in Appeals Court

A state appeals court has upheld the murder conviction of Gabriel Deluca, who bludgeoned and stabbed a letter carrier whose route went by his family’s home in Huntington Beach.

Superior Court Judge Leonard H. McBride in Santa Ana had set aside a jury’s 1984 guilty verdict, claiming the prosecution had not shared with defense attorneys a crucial police report about Deluca’s behavior after his arrest.

However, the 4th District Court of Appeal said in an opinion handed down Tuesday that prosecutors did not try to hide the report and that it was readily available to defense attorneys if they had just asked for it.

The appeals court also said that the information contained in the report was not significant enough to have changed the jury’s verdict.

Deluca, 20, a high school dropout and part-time student at Orange Coast College, was arrested the day after the partially clad body of Ida Jean Haxton was found sprawled on the back seat of her mail car in a Costa Mesa church parking lot on Jan. 3, 1984. She had disappeared while delivering mail in a Huntington Beach neighborhood where Deluca lived.

The 30-year-old mother of two had died of a cerebral hemorrhage from a blow to the back of her head, and she had been stabbed 19 times in the chest, face and back.

Haxton, who was living in Garden Grove at the time of her death, was the first postal carrier ever killed on duty in Orange County.

Police found Deluca’s bloody clothes and a baseball bat, sawed in two, at the bottom of a trash can at his home.