Pharmacist’s Killer Gets Life Without Parole

A Venice man was sentenced Monday to life in prison without possibility of parole for the 1984 fatal shooting of a Northridge pharmacist in front of the victim’s 22-year-old daughter.

A San Fernando Superior Court jury deliberated less than three hours before deciding on the sentence for Jack Oscar Leo, 36. The same jury March 2 convicted Leo of first-degree murder and seven counts of robbery.

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Myron L. Jenkins, had sought the death penalty.

Leo was accused of firing the shotgun blast that killed Robert Charles Mallory, 62, during a robbery of the Plaza West Pharmacy on Feb. 27, 1984. An accomplice, Dawn Elayne Ayers, 29, was sentenced in January to 25 years to life in prison for her part in the killing.

Ayers testified at Leo’s trial that she and Mallory began struggling for her handgun during the robbery. Mallory stumbled, however, and Leo fired his sawed-off shotgun at the pharmacist, striking him once in the chest, Ayers said.

Mallory’s daughter, Laura Mallory, testified that her father died in her arms.

Leo said he was under the influence of heroin at the time of the shooting. His attorneys, Curt V. Leftwich and Harry W. Brainard, said outside the courtroom that the jury considered Leo’s long history of drug addiction in declining to sentence him to death.

“He was driven by drugs,” Leftwich said. “He was not your typical, homicidal killer. He is not that mean, vicious person.”

Juror Gary Wales of Reseda said that, although Leo had 10 previous felony convictions, the panel did not think there was enough violence in his background to warrant a death sentence.