Jury Calls for Death Penalty at Retrial in Murder of Girl, 12

Thomas Francis Edwards, who has been described alternately as a desperate man plagued by demons and a gun-crazed killer, should die for the shotgun murder of a 12-year-old girl in the Cleveland National Forest, a jury concluded Thursday.

For the second time in 16 months, an Orange County Superior Court jury

agreed that the 43-year-old man should die in the gas chamber for killing Vanessa Iberri in 1981 with a single shot between the eyes and wounding her best friend, Kelly Cartier, also 12, with another blast to the head.

“Three tries and we finally got the right verdict, the death penalty,” said Vanessa’s father, Joseph Iberri, 42. “It’s been five years of my life. The things I’ve gone through for five years only God knows.”

Edwards was convicted in March, 1983, of first-degree murder in Vanessa’s death and of attempted murder for injuring Kelly. Although jurors at his first trial found him guilty of the charges, they could not agree on whether to give him the death penalty, which led to a second penalty trial with a new jury.

Presented No Defense

At the second trial, Edwards refused to let any attorneys represent him and presented no defense of his own. That jury gave him the death penalty in June, 1985. Before sentencing, however, Edwards asked Orange County Superior Court Judge James F. Judge to reinstate attorneys from the public defender’s office to his case.

The judge complied, and Deputy Public Defender Michael P. Giannini won Edwards a new penalty trial--his third--which started Sept. 18 in Judge’s courtroom. After two weeks of trial and three days of deliberation, the jury decided Thursday that Edwards should die for his crimes.

Kelly and Vanessa were shot Sept. 19, 1981, two weeks after they had started seventh grade at Lake Elsinore Junior High School in their home town. The girls were on a two-night camping trip with Vanessa’s mother and boyfriend at Blue Jay Campground, five miles northwest of the Ortega Highway.

They arrived on a Friday night in 1981 and headed out the next day to look for the perfect picnic spot. Instead of a site, they found Edwards, a gun expert who was driving his red-and-white pickup truck down the trail in the opposite direction.

Moments later, Edwards turned the camper around, passed the pair, stopped the truck and called out “Hey girls,” then shot them both in the head.

During closing statements last Monday, Giannini said that Edwards was distraught over the failure of his four-year marriage and that the crimes were an “absolute aberration” in the life of a man who had been subjected to “more stress than he could handle.”

“We all do strange things when we reach a breaking point,” he said. “For any of us, who knows where the breaking point is?”

But Deputy Dist. Atty. John D. Conley painted Edwards as a deliberate killer: “He pursued them. He stalked them. He followed them for a long, long time.”

Deputy D.A. ‘Satisfied’

On Thursday, Conley said he was “satisfied” with the jury’s verdict of death. The panel refused to discuss its decision with reporters, but Conley said the group was swayed by the enormity of the crime.

“A lot of the evidence on the defendant’s background was left out, but the jury saw enough of him to see the kind of person he really is,” Conley said. “He’s not a real decent guy who just flew off the handle for a few seconds. They seem to be saying that they heard some good things about him but nothing good enough to outweigh what he did.”

To Conley, the three-day deliberation period was not a long one considering the decision the jurors had to make: “It’s an awesome kind of decision,” Conley said. “Each has to come to grips with their own feelings, their own morals and the law.”

Deputy Public Defender Richard L. Schwartzberg, Giannini’s co-counsel in the case, called the jurors’ decision “wrong.” Giannini refused to comment.

“I think that it’s an impossible thing for the jury not to be influenced by the shooting of two kids for no reason, and that was John Conley’s theme through the whole thing,” Schwartzberg said after the verdict was read. “It’s wrong, but 12 people didn’t listen. . . .

“This Edwards is a person who has deep-seated emotional problems, who for reasons no one knows, shot two kids in a forest,” Schwartzberg said. “If he shot two adults, we wouldn’t be here today. He would have been convicted a long time ago and sentenced to life in prison. . . . We never contested that he should spend the rest of his life in prison.”

Formal Sentencing Date

On Nov. 17, Edwards will return to Superior Court for formal sentencing, at which time the judge may either uphold or overturn the death-penalty verdict. However, court records show that no Orange County jury’s death-penalty verdict has been overturned since 1978, when capital sentences were reinstated.

Upon sentencing, death-penalty cases are automatically appealed to the California Supreme Court.

To Joseph Iberri, death is the only fitting punishment for Edwards, who killed Iberri’s only daughter and darkened the past five years of his life.

“You can’t even realize the things I’ve been through,” Iberri said after the verdict was read. “People ask you, ‘Do you have a daughter?’ and then the story comes out, and they don’t know what to say.

“I don’t think mercy should be cast on his (Edwards’) soul,” Iberri said. “He hasn’t been through half of what I’ve been through.”

Iberri said Thursday that he would spend the evening “getting a couple of drinks and relaxing.” Then he paused and said quietly, “She’d be 17 1/2. . . . She knows.”