New U.S. Statute Bans Parole : Prosecutors Set to Throw Away Key on Sex Criminal

Five times Warren James Bland has been released from prison. Fives times he has been rearrested for terrorizing women and children in a series of sexual assaults in Southern California.

He last walked out of prison three years ago, but was soon back behind bars, charged with the torture-murder of a 7-year-old South Pasadena girl and held as a prime suspect in the slayings of a 14-year-old Placentia girl and an 81-year-old San Diego woman.

Now, after crimes that have spanned the last three decades, the government is saying “enough.”

The 53-year-old Bland was convicted this spring under the Armed Career Criminal Act, a relatively new federal statute that targets incorrigible offenders and removes them from society. Next month, if prosecutors are successful, Bland will become the first person in California and the fourth nationwide to receive the federal government’s harshest punishment under the act.

The government is asking that Bland spend the rest of his life in prison, with no chance of parole.

“He’s got gray hair,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Larry Burns in San Diego, describing the Jekyll-and-Hyde demeanor of Bland, who adapts well to prison life but repeatedly has attacked women and children. “He’s got a Cherub-like face. He wears glasses. He looks like somebody’s grandfather or uncle. He doesn’t look menacing at all. He looks like any other John Doe you’d pass on the street.”

Bland has spent 23 of the last 28 years in prison. During those few years out, he has repeatedly been unable to resist the urge to hurt others.

“I think he belongs in prison,” said Jack Osborn of Placentia, whose only daughter was murdered at the age of 14 in a case in which Bland was a prime suspect, but never formally charged.

Bland declined a request to be interviewed inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center here.

His attorney, Judy Clarke, also declined to discuss the case. In legal papers filed with the court, she contended that the case is “selective and vindictive prosecution.”

“It is inconceivable that Mr. Bland is the first such individual in the Southern District of California whose prior record meets the elements for a prosecution under the Armed Career Criminal statute,” she said in the court papers.

Under the act, adopted by Congress in 1986, a defendant faces from 15 years to life in prison, with the maximum sentence including the proviso that “such person shall not be eligible for parole.”

The aim of the law is to remove from society those hard-core, repeat offenders who spend a lifetime committing crimes and reap the benefits of a judicial system that opens the door again and again.

Criminals Described

In testimony before a House subcommittee on crime, Assistant Atty. Gen. Stephen Trott described the kind of people the law was designed to put away.

“These are people who have demonstrated by virtue of their definition that locking them up and letting them go doesn’t do any good,” Trott said. “They go on again, you lock them up, you let them go, it doesn’t do any good, they are back for a third time.

“At that juncture, we should say, ‘That’s it, time out, it is all over. We as responsible people will never give you the opportunity to do this again.’ ”

Burns, the federal prosecutor who is requesting the sentence for Bland, cited the three other cases in the country that have drawn the harshest penalty of life sentence with no parole. He said none of the other cases involved such a high degree of violence.

Others Convicted

Another 300 defendants convicted under the statute have received more than 4,500 years in prison.

But Burns contends that the past cases appear relatively minor when placed next to Bland’s criminal record.

“By any measure,” he said, “Warren Bland is a worse criminal.”

Bland grew up in Culver City, the second of two children of a maintenance man and a cleaning woman. He would have completed high school but dropped out weeks before graduation.

He once told a probation officer that his father, Carl O’Dell Bland, beat him “excessively as a youngster,” and then was closer to him as a teen-ager and young adult.

About his mother, Hava K. Bland, and his string of problems with the law, Bland told a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge:

“It was nothing more than really rebellion and against what I call a mother image. I was a very confused young man, very aggressive, and I had no pattern of life whatsoever to really base myself on.”

Tossed Out of Marines

Bland grew to manhood, six feet and 190 pounds with blond hair and blue eyes. He joined the Marine Corps, but was tossed out for bad conduct after going AWOL. He worked as a painter and a machinist. He married three times, his last wife leaving him to move to Las Vegas.

He first answered for doing harm to others in 1958 when he was convicted of felony assault in Los Angeles for stabbing a man in the stomach. The man was drunk and talking to Bland’s wife, and Bland took offense.

He was given no prison time, and instead was granted five years’ probation, a break that for Bland would keep repeating itself in the years to come.

“I don’t think the interest of justice, or society’s interest, would be served by sending you to jail on this case,” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Leroy Dawson told the defendant. “So you have a chance to stay out of jail.”

Sent to State Hospital

That chance was short-lived. In 1960, he was convicted of rape and kidnaping in a series of sexual assaults on women in Los Angeles County.

Bland was sent to a state hospital, where he was examined and psychoanalyzed and deemed a “sexual psychopath.” The hospital warned that if Bland “was released to society, he would be assaultive and/or homicidal toward women.”

But Bland assured a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge in 1966 that if released, “I don’t feel I would have any further trouble.” A 1967 probation report recommended he be given another chance, “in view of the defendant’s complete change and attitude toward his problem.”

After seven years of treatment, he was back on the streets of Los Angeles.

Another Series of Attacks

Less than a year later, another series of sexual attacks occurred. A schoolteacher was raped at knifepoint. A 31-year-old woman was awakened when a man’s gloved hand reached through her bedroom window and covered her mouth. She was dragged out the window, into the back yard and was raped.

Bland was once again before the bar of justice for the two crimes. He was convicted of rape, kidnaping and burglary. At his sentencing, a probation report was filed that said: “The defendant is clearly a dangerous individual who warrants segregation from society for the longest time that is possible under existing laws.”

He served seven years. He was paroled. And he struck again.

The victim was an 11-year-old girl and her mother, who were accosted while walking down the street of a Los Angeles suburb. Both were molested; the girl was tortured.

Served Three Years

Bland pleaded guilty to kidnaping and assault with intent to commit rape. He was sentenced to an indeterminate term in state prison. He served three years, then was paroled back into the community.

The crimes continued, and Bland was back in jail within eight months, this time convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old Torrance boy. The boy had been tortured with wire, clothespins, pliers and vice grips. Bland pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years.

A 1981 California Department of Corrections summary on Bland noted his problems while free, as opposed to his congenial attitude while in prison.

‘Locked in Mortal Combat’

“While in free society, Bland is always locked in mortal combat with his id , and the id invariably emerges victorious,” the summary said. “While incarcerated, he no longer has to contend and he leaves the supervision of the id to others.”

Bland accumulated good-time and work-time credits in prison, which reduced the length of the sentence. After serving less than five of the nine years, he was paroled in January, 1986. And now the crimes in which he would be implicated got worse than ever.

Phoebe Ho, 7, of South Pasadena disappeared while walking to school in December, 1986. Her body was later found in a Riverside County ditch. Wendy Osborn, 14, of Placentia in Orange County was found dead in the Chino Hills in February, 1987. Both girls had been sexually assaulted and apparently tortured with pliers or some other kind of clamp.

Potential Suspect

Bland’s probation officer, John Blum, listed Bland as a potential suspect because he “has an extensive sex-crimes background, which includes the molestation of children.”

A statewide manhunt was organized. Bland was found in San Diego, using an alias of James Sterling and working at a McDonald’s restaurant in Pacific Beach. He was cornered by a San Diego police officer and was shot in the buttocks when he attempted to flee.

Prosecutors in Riverside say they will seek the death penalty if Bland is convicted of Phoebe Ho’s murder. Police in San Diego, meanwhile, consider him the prime suspect in the murder of 81-year-old Ruth M. Ost, found nude and strangled with her hands bound. However, no charges have been filed in that or the Osborn case.

‘Extra Insurance’

Even if Bland gets life with no parole in San Diego, Brian McCarville, a deputy Riverside County prosecutor, said he will still try Bland on the Phoebe Ho murder.

“It’s an extra insurance policy to keep him in prison,” McCarville said.

Burns, the federal prosecutor in San Diego, won an indictment against Bland under the Armed Career Criminal Act. That was last September, when it became obvious that the Riverside County case was moving slowly and that Bland might not be tried for years for the Phoebe Ho murder.

A federal jury in San Diego last March weighed the evidence of whether Bland was indeed a career criminal. Burns said the jury deliberated 30 minutes and found Bland guilty.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving scheduled Aug. 9 as the day to announce whether the prison door will slam for good on Bland.

In his sentencing memorandum asking the judge to order Bland to prison for the rest of his life, Burns noted that the U.S. Probation Department concurred in that recommendation. The prosecutor wrote that “Bland has been like a plague on our free society for too long.”