The Region - News from Jan. 6, 1987

A 58-year-old downtown Los Angeles businessman convicted of hiring hit men to have his partner killed was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. David Burton was accused of arranging the March, 1983, killing of Donald Serra, 43, to keep him from telling authorities that the partners had faked a $225,000 burglary of their Georgia Thread Co. in order to collect on an insurance policy. Milton J. Benjamin and James B. Goodrum, the men Burton hired to carry out the killing, previously pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree murder, respectively.