Anaheim Man Gets Life Without Parole : Brian Hefner Sentenced in 1982 Robbery-Murder Near Irvine Lake

A videotaped confession and a bullet-riddled eyewitness who lived to testify to a murder resulted Friday in a sentence of life in prison without parole, plus 11 years, for a 23-year-old Anaheim man.

“In almost 18 years on the bench, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more brutal, cold-blooded, premeditated plan to take victims out and kill them,” Orange County Superior Court Judge James K. Turner said in imposing sentence on Brian Lyle Hefner.

“Mr. Hefner is young, but Mr. Hefner got himself deliberately involved,” Turner said. “He knew what was going on.”

Hefner and John Visciotti, 29, were convicted of the Nov. 8, 1982, killing of Timothy Dykstra, 22, of Westminster and the attempted murder of Michael Wolbert, 21, on Santiago Canyon Road near Irvine Lake.

Visciotti, who had served a prison sentence for assault with a deadly weapon, has been sentenced to death. The prosecution did not seek the death penalty for Hefner because of his age and lack of a criminal record.

First Trial Overturned

Hefner was convicted and received the same sentence after his first trial in 1983. That sentence was overturned on appeal.

Prosecutors said adding the 11 years to a life-without-parole sentence was unusual but was an attempt to prevent any chance of a parole or pardon. Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald, who imposed the first sentence, said Hefner was a “cold, calculating, brutal” murderer, and he criticized the prosecution for not seeking a death sentence.

After Hefner’s first trial, the state Supreme Court ruled in a different case that the prosecution must prove a killing is intentional before a judge can impose a sentence of death or life in prison without parole.

An appeals court let Hefner’s conviction stand but overturned the sentence because of the Supreme Court ruling. Rather than accept a life sentence that would have left Hefner eligible for parole, the prosecution decided to retry the case.

A second jury found Hefner guilty of first-degree murder, attempted murder and robbery. Turner ordered that Hefner serve the 11 years first and then the remainder of his term.

Worked in Garden Grove

Hefner, Visciotti and the victims worked for a Garden Grove company that distributed portable burglar alarms. According to trial testimony, when Hefner and Visciotti were fired they decided to rob two co-workers.

Hefner provided a .22-caliber pistol, and he and Visciotti, his roommate at an Anaheim motel, told Dykstra and Wolbert that they had met four young women earlier and needed the two victims to come along as dates for a party.

Wolbert testified that he and Dykstra were wary, insisted on taking their own car rather than Visciotti’s to the rendezvous and hid their cash under the dashboard.

On Santiago Canyon Road, Hefner passed the gun to Visciotti, who got out of the car, told the victims it was a robbery and ordered them out of the automobile.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Goethals said Wolbert and Dykstra told the robbers where to find the money they had hidden and then begged Visciotti not to shoot, saying he could take the car and money and they wouldn’t report the thefts.

But Hefner urged Visciotti to “shoot them,” according to testimony, and Visciotti killed Dykstra with one bullet through the chest. He fired four bullets into Wolbert, hitting him in the chest, abdomen and left eye, and drove away, leaving both men for dead.

Hailed Motorists

Goethals said that after Wolbert heard the car leave, he managed to struggle to his feet and began trying to flag down motorists who whizzed past him as he staggered along the road. Two people finally stopped, and an off-duty firefighter with a citizens’ band radio in his car radioed for paramedics.

The next morning an Anaheim SWAT team surrounded the motel where Visciotti and Hefner were staying and arrested the two without incident as they entered the lobby.

Early in the investigation, both Visciotti and Hefner confessed on videotape and reenacted the crime for police. Goethals said the case was one of the strongest he has had because of the taped confessions and Wolbert’s testimony at the trials.