The Region : Death Sentence Voted in Rape-Murder

Martin James Kipp, whose wife and stepson were arrested four months ago on suspicion of helping him plan an escape from the Orange County Jail, was given a death sentence by a jury in the 1983 rape and murder of a Huntington Beach woman. Kipp, 30, who took the sentence calmly, told the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Melvin L. Jensen, “You did a nice job, Mel.” The same jurors had convicted him less than two weeks ago of first-degree murder in the Dec. 30, 1983, murder of 19-year-old Antaya Yvette Howard, a former basketball player at Marina High School. If convicted in an upcoming trial for a 1983 murder in Long Beach, Kipp could become only the second man in California to be under death sentences from separate counties. Los Angeles County prosecutors in that case are seeking the death penalty for Kipp for the rape and murder of Tiffany Frizzell of Puget Sound, Wash., who was found dead in a Long Beach motel room Sept. 17, 1983.