The State - News from June 27, 1989

Denying that he is “the cold-blooded, inhumane monster some people believe me to be,” John Galen Davenport was sentenced to death for the second time in the murder of a Tustin woman found impaled on a wooden stake. Davenport’s original sentence was reversed by the state Supreme Court under then-Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird. On March 27, 1980, Gayle Ann Lingle, 30, was stabbed repeatedly and impaled on a stake while she was still alive. Her nude body was found in a field in Irvine. “I cannot imagine a more horrible way for a person to die,” Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey said in pronouncing sentence on Davenport’s 34th birthday. Davenport’s girlfriend, Judy Dunn, said that in one way, it was the present he wanted most--”He’s anxious to get back to San Quentin and out of the Orange County Jail.”