Convicted in Deaths of 3 Convenience Store Clerks : Medina Blames Voodoo, Witchcraft for Killings

Teofilo (Junior) Medina, convicted last month of killing three convenience store attendants during a three-week robbery spree in 1984, told jurors Thursday that voodoo, witchcraft and black magic in Lake Elsinore drove him to want to kill.

Testifying in the sanity phase of his trial, Medina said he was constantly on drugs during the period of the killings and had built up a hatred for people who were plaguing him with voodoo and witchcraft.

“I wanted to kill whoever was doing it, and I still want to kill these people,” Medina said. “I may have transferred that hatred to a gas station attendant--I don’t know.”

Medina, 43, was arrested Nov. 7, 1984, in Lake Elsinore, where he lived with a sister. He was suspected of being involved in four killings.

He was convicted of first-degree murder in three of the killings last month. The fourth was in Corona and will be raised by the prosecution in the penalty phase of Medina’s trial, if he is found sane.

Medina withdrew his insanity plea Monday but asked the judge to let him reinstate it Wednesday against the advice of his attorneys. Four doctors who examined him for the defense said he was legally sane at the time of the murders. Medina’s attorneys told him he could not win an insanity verdict.

When asked Thursday about committing each crime of which he had been convicted, Medina replied: “I don’t recall” or “I don’t know why I did it.”

He had been convicted of burglary, a barroom shooting and assault before being sent to prison in Arizona in 1975 on a rape conviction. He was paroled in August, 1979.

Medina told the jurors Thursday that he had learned at an early age that he was a “high priest” after a revelation in which he saw Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary.

Two events while in prison had a traumatic effect on him, he said. They were the death of his mother and a brother’s suicide. It was in Arizona, he said, that he first thought someone was working black magic on him.

But it wasn’t until he lived with his sister in Lake Elsinore, he said, that such dark threats, combined with grief over the two family deaths, drove him to want to kill.

Defense attorney James D. Stone, who spent the entire day questioning Medina, said later that he thought his client had been “extremely truthful.”

“I really don’t believe Junior understands why he does the things he does, and that’s what he’s trying to tell us,” Stone said.

Medina was convicted last month of killing Horacio H. Ariza, 20, at an Arco mini-market in Santa Ana; Douglas M. Metal, 21, at a Garden Grove drive-in dairy, and Victor M. Rea, 20, at a Gasco minimart in Santa Ana.

The Corona victim was Craig Martin, 18, who was murdered at an Arco mini-market.