Man Sentenced in Slaying; Case Led to Reform Effort

A judge sentenced Lawrence Raymond Cowell to 25 years to life in prison Friday for the airplane murder of a young Anaheim man, ending nearly eight years of trials and court hearings that spurred the victim’s family to become leaders in a statewide court reform movement.

Cowell, 41, formerly of Anaheim, had been convicted of first-degree murder in the April 17, 1982, death of Scott Campbell, whose body has never been found. A co-defendant, Donald P. DiMascio, 42, was convicted on the same charges at a separate trial.

Both men confessed to undercover police agents in separate meetings in 1983 that they had killed Campbell and dropped his body from a small private airplane flying 2,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, more than a mile past Santa Catalina Island.

“It’s been seven years, nine months and nine days. That’s a long time to go through a funeral every day,” said Collene Campbell, the victim’s mother.

Frustration with the court system led Campbell and her husband, Gary, of San Juan Capistrano, to become leading backers of an initiative measure that would make state courts operate more like the federal system, where the time between arrest and trial is usually much shorter. The measure will be on the statewide ballot in June.

Collene Campbell’s brother was racing entrepreneur Mickey Thompson, who along with his wife, Trudi, was shot to death in front of their home in Bradbury on March 16, 1988. Their murders are still under investigation.

The Campbells had been close friends with Eugene and Laverne Cowell, the defendant’s parents.

Before sentencing on Friday, Orange County Superior Court Judge Ragnar Engebretson said, “I feel badly for both families. . . . I would hope that someplace along the line, the rift between you would disappear, because there is a saying in my church, ‘You don’t love the sin, you love the sinner.’ ”

According to their confessions, Cowell was the pilot, and the actual killer was DiMascio, who said he broke Campbell’s neck and dropped his lifeless body out a door of the plane. But prosecutors contended it was Cowell who hired DiMascio.

Cowell was convinced that Campbell would be carrying a large amount of either money or drugs. In fact, Campbell was on his way to Fargo, N.D., to sell a pound of cocaine, according to trial testimony.