Killer Carter Sentenced to Die : Crime: Relatives of victims say they want to witness his execution in San Quentin gas chamber.

Moments after listening to impassioned pleas by his victims’ relatives that they be allowed to watch him die, murderer-rapist Philip Dean Carter sat impassively in a Santa Monica courtroom Tuesday as he was formally sentenced to execution in the San Quentin gas chamber.

The pale, lanky defendant--convicted last summer in the 1984 murders of three young Westside women and awaiting trial for the murders of two other women in Oakland and San Diego--stared at a wall, his arms folded and his face expressionless, during the emotional, half-hour session before Superior Court Judge Robert W. Thomas.

First to speak was Sue Mills, mother of Jillette Leonora Mills, 25, a computer programmer who lived with another of Carter’s victims, Susan Knoll, 33, in an apartment in Culver City.

The 55-year-old mother bitterly recalled the testimony of some of Carter’s acquaintances, whom she remembered describing him as a loving father who cradled his infant sons in his arms.

“What was described as a loving father was the monster who murdered and raped my daughter,” she told the court. “He took the life from every girl who refused to give him the sex he wanted . . . .

“Mr. Carter must now be told he has no life,” Mills continued. “I want to be there for the execution; I want to watch the death of the man who took my daughter’s life.”

Jennifer Bollman, 32, Jillette Mills’ sister, noted that the legal proceedings against Carter have dragged on for more than five years.

“Dean Carter has had his day in court,” she told the judge, choking back tears. “Nothing has been spared in his defense. . . . He has destroyed the lives of his victims and their families and he must (have) death in the gas chamber.”

Bollman added that she, too, wished to be present when he dies.

“I want to see him . . . so he can see how my sister felt when he was choking her,” she said outside court after sentencing.

Third to speak was Susan Pender, 42, a sister of Susan Knoll.

“There can be no rehabilitation for a person like this,” she said. “We would all like to be there (at the execution).”

When the relatives had finished, Thomas listed the crimes for which Carter, 34, was convicted last July--the strangulation murders of Mills, Knoll and Bonnie Ann Guthrie, the rapes of Mills and Guthrie and the burglaries of the homes of all three.

Imposing prison terms totaling 32 years for the burglaries and rapes, Thomas stayed those sentences before telling Carter that--as recommended by the jury that convicted him of first-degree murder under special circumstances (the additional crimes of rape and burglary)--the court was imposing the death penalty.

Clapping and shouts of grim satisfaction rocked the gallery where the relatives sat. But Carter’s expression never changed.

Moments later, Thomas recessed the court. Without a glance at the bench, or at the people who had applauded his death sentence, Carter--manacled in leg irons--shuffled out of the courtroom escorted by two bailiffs.

Rowan Klein, the latest in a series of defense attorneys, expressed confidence that the verdicts will be overturned on appeal. Klein said he felt Carter’s other lawyers wrongly prevented him “from telling his side of the story “ during the trial.

Prosecutors say Carter, the adopted son of a police chief in Nome, Alaska, spent much of his youth in foster homes and juvenile facilities following strings of residential and commercial burglaries. By the time he was a young adult, he had served prison time in Alaska and Oregon.

Then, for a while, it appeared that Carter had reformed. Trained as a television cameraman while in prison, he held steady employment for several years with TV stations and independent producers in Alaska and Washington.

During that period, he married and fathered twin sons. But both the marriage and the jobs ended.

Carter eventually went to San Diego where, police say, on March 25, 1984, he raped a 45-year-old woman. During the next 18 days, prosecutors say, Carter raped a 22-year-old waitress in Ventura and murdered Tok-Chum Kim, 36, in Oakland; Mills and Knoll in Culver City; their friend, Guthrie, 24, in West Los Angeles; and finally, Janette Cullins, 24, in San Diego.

Five days later, an Arizona highway patrolman stopped Carter for driving erratically. Prosecutors say he was driving Mills’ stolen sports car. In the car, they said, were items belonging to all his murder and rape victims.

In November, 1984, Carter was convicted of the rape of the Ventura woman and sentenced to 54 years in state prison. He still faces trial in the Kim and Cullins murders and in the rape in San Diego.