Death Penalty Recommended for Rapist-Killer

Jurors on Tuesday recommended the death penalty for a former dog groomer once suspected of killing as many as 13 women but charged and convicted of murdering only one.

Kevin Bernard Haley, 23, described by police as a “one-man crime wave” and a “psychopathic rapist and killer,” showed no emotion as the verdict was announced in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Haley, of Los Angeles, was found guilty last month of strangling, raping, sodomizing, robbing and burglarizing Dolores Clement, 55, on Sept. 27, 1984, in her Wilshire District home.

Jurors also convicted him of special circumstance allegations, including murder during a sexual assault, which qualified him for a possible death sentence.

At the conclusion of the penalty phase of Haley’s trial, jurors recommended that he be put to death. The jury also could have recommended life in prison without possibility of parole.

Haley is to be formally sentenced Aug. 9 by Judge Judith Chirlin, who has the option of setting aside the death recommendation.

Jurors had deadlocked on charges that Haley sexually assaulted and murdered a second woman, Laverne Stolzy, 56, June 26, 1984, in her Wilshire District home.

The jury also deadlocked on charges that Haley attempted to rape a third woman, who was unable to testify at the trial because of health problems.

Mistrials were declared on the deadlocked charges.

Haley faces trial on charges of committing a third murder, that of Jodi Samuel, a 15-year-old girl who was fatally shot in May, 1984, while running to catch a bus to school.

Haley was considered a suspect in the killings of 10 other women, most of them elderly and living in the Wilshire District, but he was never charged with the slayings.

His older brother, Reginald Haley, 27, was previously convicted of a string of rapes, kidnapings and robberies and was sentenced to life in prison plus 16 years and eight months.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates said the brothers committed their crimes “to acquire money for a burning cocaine habit.”