Marine Guilty in Bludgeon Murder of His Pregnant Wife

After less than 7 hours of deliberations, a military jury Thursday found El Toro-based Marine Sgt. Joseph L. Thomas guilty of beating his pregnant 24-year-old wife to death with a tire iron.

Thomas, 28, was convicted of bludgeoning Melinda Jean Thomas to death last Dec. 10, then faking a traffic accident to hide the murder.

The jury--composed of four enlisted men and five officers--returned its verdict a day after the close of Thomas’ monthlong court-martial at the El Toro Marine Air Corps Station.

Conviction on the charge of premeditated murder carries a possible death penalty. Thomas is scheduled to be sentenced on Saturday.

The case against Thomas was built largely on the testimony of his admitted accomplice, Lance Cpl. Mitchael Nelson, 24, who was granted immunity.

Says He Watched Murder

Nelson testified that he watched Thomas beat his wife to death as she lay on their water bed in the couple’s apartment at the Tustin Marine Air Corps Station. He described how he helped Thomas clean up the blood-spattered bedroom, then load the body into the trunk of a rented car. He said he and Thomas then drove that car and the couple’s Suzuki Samurai to the mountainous Ortega Highway near the border of Riverside County.

Nelson said that he and Thomas strapped the body in the Suzuki with the seat belt, doused the car with gasoline and sent it hurtling into a ravine off the highway just past the Orange County line.

When the car failed to ignite, Nelson testified at a preliminary hearing that he climbed into the ravine and set it afire.

A hunter discovered the burning car and notified police.

Riverside County coroners first ruled Melinda Thomas’ death a suicide. The circumstances of the crash and a note in her handwriting saying she was despondent over her marriage all seemed to point to that finding.

A murder investigation was not begun until months afterward, when Thomas began contradicting himself in routine follow-up interviews with Naval Investigative Service agents.

In early April, Navy investigators raided Nelson’s Santa Ana apartment and charged him with murder. He quickly accepted immunity in return for testimony against his friend.

Thomas was charged with the murder April 5. About a week after that, Riverside County coroners changed the cause of death from suicide to homicide.

Throughout the court-martial, Thomas’ attorneys argued that the case against him was fatally flawed because Nelson, the star witness, was lying to cover up his own wrongdoing and the murder investigation was not launched until witnesses’ memories had already begun to fade.

The prosecution, led by Capt. Bradley N. Garber, called about 50 witnesses in an effort to bolster his case against Thomas.

And in his closing statements on Wednesday, Garber made a pointed effort to show Nelson’s complicity in the crime, despite the grant of immunity, calling his star witness “a piece of filth” for doing nothing as Thomas beat his wife to death.