The Region - News from Dec. 12, 1986

An 18-year-old girl pleaded guilty to first-degree murder because of a biblical passage she read in her jail cell. Sherron Davis told her lawyer she had opened the Bible to John 1:4-5, where she read: “In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not,” and interpreted it as a divine injunction to admit guilt in the Nov. 30, 1985, slaying near Redlands of 15-year-old Wendy Ann Deremiah. “I explained that she was looking at 25 years to life and she said she fully understood that,” defense attorney Grover Porter said outside court. “She felt this was the proper thing to do under the circumstances.” San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Ben T. Kayashima set sentencing for Jan. 9.