Murderer of Irvine Woman Gets Life Without Parole

After just three hours of deliberation, an Orange County Superior Court jury Friday voted to give Robert L. Sellers life without parole instead of the death penalty for the slaying of a young Irvine woman seven years ago.

Sellers, who had no previous criminal record, was convicted last month of first-degree murder in the May 14, 1979 beating and strangulation death of Savannah Leigh Anderson, 22, in the one-bedroom Irvine apartment where she lived alone. Jurors also found that Sellers had raped her in the course of the murder, which meant Sellers must be sentenced to a minimum of life in prison without parole.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King, in asking for a death verdict, argued to the jury that “the crime itself is so horrible it cannot be mitigated.” King said after the jury’s verdict Friday that he was disappointed but that “I respect this jury, and I’m sure in their hearts these jurors felt they made the right decision.” King offered no evidence during the penalty phase of Sellers’ trial.

Sellers’ attorney, Jennifer L. Keller, argued that the death penalty should be reserved for “the worst kinds of killers,” like those who torture children or serial killers who execute store clerks during robberies to eliminate witnesses.

“The death penalty is reserved for people who really have no redeeming value as human beings,” Keller said. “That’s not who my client is.”

Keller acknowledged that Sellers had not shown any mercy for his victim. “But I’m asking you to be better than that, to be less vengeful than that,” Keller said.

Jurors later told the attorneys that they were influenced by Sellers’ lack of criminal background and the fact that he had led an exemplary life between the time of the killing and his arrest five years later.

In the five years after his arrest, Sellers was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps, married, held down a full-time job and started a family.

At the time of the killing, Sellers was stationed at Camp Pendleton but was moonlighting as a security guard at the apartment complex where Miss Anderson lived.

He was on duty there the night of May 13, 1979. At Sellers’ trial, Keller claimed that Sellers saw Anderson through a window about midnight as she talked to her mother on the telephone and waited for her to hang up before knocking on the door. Then, because he was in his security uniform, she let him in. When he made advances and she rebuffed him, Keller said, Sellers attacked Anderson and finally killed her.

Taped Confession

Prosecutor King, however, pointed to Sellers’ taped confession to police in 1984, in which he admitted he had slipped into her bedroom through a window and waited there for her to get off the telephone.

He also admitted that he returned to the apartment two hours later and raped her corpse. That admission was not contested at his trial.

Sellers and other security guards were routinely fingerprinted soon after the Anderson woman’s body was discovered. But an Irvine police fingerprint expert overlooked a match between Sellers’ fingerprints and a print left in blood at the victim’s apartment.

The Anderson case was reopened in 1984 when Irvine police were routinely asked to see if it might be connected to a serial killer investigation in Texas. A new fingerprint expert examined Sellers’ prints and discovered a match with the one in the apartment.

Throughout most of the trial, the victim’s mother, Maxine Anderson of Salt Lake City, stayed at a Santa Ana motel. She told prosecutor King after the verdict Friday that she was disappointed but thought the jurors had been conscientious.

Keller said Sellers and his family and friends were grateful for the verdict. Sellers, she said, turned to her after the verdict and asked her how she felt.

“I told him I was relieved for him, and he said, ‘You should feel good because you saved my life.’ He really is a very decent human being, and he did not deserve to die,” Keller said.