Jury Rejects Death Sentence for Murderer : Juror Says Keeler’s Tough Early Life Was a Factor

An Arizona man convicted of murdering his 72-year-old step-grandmother in La Habra was sentenced to life without parole on Monday by a jury deliberating a possible death sentence.

Charles Wayne Keeler, 28, appeared emotionless in the Santa Ana courtroom when the decision to spare his life was announced by Superior Court Judge Lloyd E. Blandpied Jr.’s clerk.

But Keeler’s mother, Barbara Winterburg, said afterward, “It’s no relief to know you’re going to spend the rest of your life behind bars.”

Jurors later said they decided against a death verdict based on Keeler’s difficult upbringing, and because they knew so little about what happened the day he went to see his step-grandmother, Lois Bacon, on Jan. 29, 1986.

Bacon was found stabbed and strangled to death in her apartment the next day by a daughter. Keeler was arrested a month later in Reno while driving the elderly woman’s car. He has also admitted forging her signature on a check for $600.

Keeler, who has maintained his innocence, was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery by the same jurors who delivered Monday’s verdict. He will be formally sentenced on Aug. 28.

“We don’t doubt that he killed her, or that he robbed her,” said jury foreman Paul Wyllie of Orange. “But we don’t think he went to her apartment with those intentions. Something must have happened after he got there.”

Vernon Norman of Santa Ana said he and fellow jurors were greatly influenced by testimony about Keeler’s early life--his father committed suicide when he was three years old, and he lived for several years in foster homes. Norman said that such experience might have played a part in Keeler’s killing Bacon, who had refused to have anything to do with him after his conviction for robbery in the state of Washington.

“He may have asked her for money, and when she turned him down, that may have been the culmination of all his earlier frustrations in life,” Norman said.

Death sentences in Orange County are rarely sought in cases when defendants are accused of murder in the deaths of relatives. The last such case in Orange County was more than three years ago, and the jurors in that case did not return a death verdict.

But prosecutors sought the death penalty because Bacon’s murder was so brutal and because Keeler had a lengthy criminal record, dating back to the age of 14, when he assaulted a guard at a juvenile detention facility.

Some jurors conceded they may have voted for a death verdict if Bacon had not been related to Keeler, with that relationship becoming a possible factor in the murder.

Bacon is the natural grandmother of Keeler’s stepbrother, Mitchell Booth, who lived with the La Habra woman.

Jury foreman Wyllie said that most jurors leaned toward a non-death verdict from the beginning of deliberations on the penalty phase.

Ronald P. Kreber, Keeler’s attorney, appeared in high spirits after the decision. Kreber said that he was pleased but that he could not detect any reaction from his client.

Kreber had argued to the jurors that the death penalty in California should be reserved for such murderers as Charles Manson or the “Onion Field” killers. Otherwise, he argued, the court system would be “clogged” with death penalty cases.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jill W. Roberts, trying to mark her disappointment, stopped to thank each of the jurors. She later said, “It was an appropriate case for our office to seek a death verdict. The jurors were diligent and conscientious.”

Keeler’s mother said later: “While I suppose this is better than death, this case should never have gotten this far. Chuck is non-violent. He would never have hurt his grandmother.”

When Keeler was arrested in Reno, he told La Habra investigators: “If people think I would do in my own grandmother they have got to be all the way crazy.”

Keeler was seen in the La Habra area selling kitchen equipment a short time before the woman’s death. He was also identified by a neighbor as the man seen leaving Bacon’s apartment the night she was killed.

He admitted seeing her at that time and said he had borrowed her car. But he denied killing her.

However, he lied to investigators at first about forging the check, and told several lies about his activities during the few days before her death.