The Region - News from July 29, 1987

Donald P. DiMascio, who admitted killing a 27-year-old Anaheim man aboard an airplane, then tossing his body into the ocean beyond Santa Catalina Island in 1982, should be sentenced to life without parole, an Orange County Superior Court jury recommended. Jurors said it would be unfair to impose the death penalty on the 37-year-old El Monte man, when the plane’s pilot, Lawrence Cowell, who had masterminded the murder, was sentenced to only 25 years to life after a separate trial. Gary and Collene Campbell, parents of the victim, Scott Campbell, later both hugged DiMascio’s father, Philip, outside the Santa Ana courtroom. “Thank you for sparing my son,” Philip DiMascio told jurors. Gary Campbell said he believed death would have been proper. But he added: “We have a lot of empathy for the DiMascio family. We know what it’s like to lose a son.”