San Diego
A Superior Court judge Thursday imposed the death penalty on a former probationary police officer and Baptist minister from Palo Alto whom a jury had recommended die in the gas chamber for a 1985 torture-murder of a liquor store clerk.
Citing the “vicious, cruel, cruel murder” of clerk Kenneth Muck, San Diego Superior Court Judge David Gill imposed the penalty upon Terry Bemore, 33, of Los Angeles, after rejecting his attorneys’ request for a life term without parole.
Bemore was convicted Aug. 7 of first-degree murder of Muck, 55, who was stabbed 37 times at Aztec Liquor Store on El Cajon Boulevard on Aug. 26, 1985.
The jury found a special-circumstances allegation that the murder was committed by torture.
Bemore’s co-defendant, Keith Cosby, 30, received a life sentence from the same judge for the same murder and a second homicide after a jury rejected the death penalty and recommended a life sentence.
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