A Grandfather’s Wait for Justice : 5 Years Later, He’s Angry Over Slayer’s 8-Year Sentence

Five years ago, Bernard Babcock’s grandson was robbed and beaten to death outside a Harbor City nightclub.

At least once a month after the killing, Babcock, now 73, called detectives in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division to check on the case.

Kenneth Guido was more than a grandson to Babcock. They lived together and were buddies, Babcock said.

“I didn’t want them to forget the case,” Babcock said recently. “I felt the more I called them, the more they wouldn’t forget the case.”

Five years has been a long time for Babcock to wait for justice, and he still is not satisfied.

Sentenced to 8 Years

True, on Nov. 30 in Long Beach Superior Court, James (Jamie) Rhymes of Lomita pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 8 years in state prison. But with credit for prison work and good behavior, he could be out in 4 years.

“An injustice has been done,” Babcock said. “He got 8 years for murdering my grandson. If this is justice, then my name is not Bernard Neil Babcock.”

The prosecutor and the chief investigator in the case said they, too, are disappointed that they did not have enough evidence to convict Rhymes of first-degree murder. But the 8-year sentence was the best they could hope for, they said, after the prosecution’s star witness recanted his testimony and after a new policy in the district attorney’s office prevented use of incriminating statements by three jailhouse informants.

Rhymes’ attorney declined to comment.

Babcock’s grandson was Kenneth Guido III, 22, a merchant seaman who served as a ship’s cook. He worked for the Bay Tankers Co. and spent much of his shore time at his grandfather’s home in Gardena.

When the tanker Stuyvesant docked in San Pedro about 8 p.m. on Dec. 9, 1983, Guido called his grandfather to say he would not be coming home that night. Guido told Babcock that he would stay near the harbor because the ship was sailing for Alaska at 7 the next morning.

The young seaman received $408 in cash and a paycheck for $1,400 when he left the ship, according to a police report and other records, which give this account:

Went to Nightclub

Guido made his way to Cheers, a since-defunct Harbor City nightclub. He bought a couple of drinks that he paid for from a thick wad of bills that he pulled from his pocket. A waitress warned him about exposing so much cash.

Jamie Rhymes, then 23, had been paroled from state prison two weeks before, after serving a year for severely injuring a man in an assault case.

He arrived at Cheers a short time after Guido and joined the merchant seaman at his table, witnesses said. The two men did not appear to know each other, and bouncers later said that Rhymes and Guido made an odd pair: the 5-foot-7, 135-pound Guido and the 6-foot, 200-pound Rhymes.

They left the bar together a few minutes later, bouncers told detectives. Bar employees told police that Rhymes returned to the bar 15 or 20 minutes later but Guido never came back. He was found after midnight, lying in a coma with severe head injuries in a parking lot near the bar. Guido died two days later.

Rhymes was arrested and charged with murder, but authorities said five months after the killing that they did not have enough evidence to proceed with a murder prosecution. Rhymes was set free.

Investigators said their case was weak because they only had witnesses who saw Guido and Rhymes leave the bar together. Apparently no one saw what happened once the two men got outside.

In the 2 1/2 years that followed, Detective Larry Kallestad said he tried to get more evidence against Rhymes, but it was not until November, 1987, that police got a break in the case. Scott Schaeffer, charged with two burglaries and auto theft, said he had seen Rhymes kicking and beating Guido not far from Cheers, Kallestad said.

With the new evidence, murder charges were refiled against Rhymes.

But at a preliminary hearing last April, Schaeffer denied seeing Rhymes the night of the murder. He said he had incriminated Rhymes only because he thought it might help him get leniency in his own case. Schaeffer said he also was under the influence of drugs when he made the incriminating statements to Kallestad.

But Kallestad and Deputy Dist. Atty. Fred Horn said in interviews that Schaeffer had reiterated his statements against Rhymes moments before the preliminary hearing began. Horn said that Schaeffer must have been intimidated into recanting, although Schaeffer denied it under oath.

Despite the loss of the star witness, Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Richard G. Berry ordered Rhymes to stand trial for murder.

In the seven months between the preliminary hearing and the time the trial was to begin last month, authorities said their case was strengthened again. Three prisoners from county jail came forward to say that Rhymes had told them he was the killer, Kallestad said. The veteran detective said he was suspicious about the credibility of two of the prisoners but considered the third to be believable.

Kallestad said the third informant told him that he had seen Rhymes in jail and asked, “Who did you kill?” and that Rhymes responded, “A merchant marine.”

But the informant would never get a chance to take the witness stand.

Before the trial was to begin in November, a controversy arose in the district attorney’s office over the credibility of jailhouse informants, and Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner severely restricted prosecutors’ ability to use them as witnesses. Under new guidelines, informants can no longer be called as prosecution witnesses unless their testimony is corroborated by tape recordings or written statements by suspects.

Plea Bargain Arranged

Since Kallestad had nothing to corroborate the informants’ statements against Rhymes, the new policy prevented the three men from testifying.

Horn said he believed that the only way to get a conviction in the killing was with a plea bargain. He eventually struck a deal with defense attorney Jack Stanley under which Rhymes pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, Horn said.

The conviction brought with it a maximum 6-year prison term, with an additional year for the use of an unspecified deadly weapon and an extra year because of Rhymes’ previous felony conviction, for a total sentence of 8 years.

Faced with the possibility, however remote, that he could be convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, Rhymes agreed to the plea bargain, Horn said.

“This was a very frustrating case,” Horn said. “That was a sentence I felt I could (accept), but it was a real difficult thing.”

Babcock said he wishes that his grandson had come home that night instead of visiting the bar. “I used to tell him which bars I didn’t want him to go into,” Babcock said. “Evidently, he got into one that I didn’t tell him about.”

Babcock is angry at what he considers legal technicalities that led to the plea bargain.

“If the plea is manslaughter, I’m not satisfied,” Babcock said. “I’m only satisfied with first-degree murder.”

Prosecutor Horn said the most damaging blow to the case was not the new informant policy, but Schaeffer’s backing away from his claim of being an eyewitness.

The informants “maybe would have given us a chance” for a murder conviction, Horn said, but “without them, I didn’t think we even had a chance. We’d be lucky to get the voluntary manslaughter conviction. . . . He had a good chance of walking on the thing.”