Death Sentence Upheld in Murders of Teen-Age Girls

The state Supreme Court on Monday upheld a death sentence given to Fred Berre Douglas, a Garden Grove man convicted of murdering two teen-age girls he took to the desert on the ruse of hiring them as models.

Douglas, 61, became the seventh Orange County man whose death sentence has been upheld by the state Supreme Court since capital punishment was reinstated in California 12 years ago.

He was sentenced to death five years ago this week for the Aug. 13, 1982, strangulation deaths of Margaret Kreuger, 16, and Beth Jones, 19, two Anaheim roommates whose bones were found eight months later in an isolated part of Anza Borrego State Park in southeastern San Diego County.

The primary witness against Douglas was Richard Hernandez, an employee at Douglas’ Garden Grove upholstery shop. Hernandez said he had gone to the desert with Douglas and the girls but was unaware of Douglas’ plans when he asked the girls to pose nude while he tied them up.

Hernandez said Douglas sexually assaulted the girls and then killed them. Also damaging to Douglas’ case was that he and Hernandez both fled to Canada immediately after the killings. It was nearly two years before they were caught--Douglas in North Las Vegas, Nev., and Hernandez in Mexico. Hernandez was granted immunity to testify against his former employer.

Since his arrest, Douglas has engaged in a prolific letter-writing campaign to prove his innocence. At his sentencing, he chided Superior Court Judge Ronald E. Owen, saying that the judge probably had not read his 290-page statement written from his cell at Orange County Jail. Owen answered: “Mr. Douglas, I read every word.”

Owen called Douglas a “sadistic and senseless killer” who took the teen-agers’ lives “to gratify some weird sexual fantasy.”

From his cell on San Quentin’s Death Row, Douglas has written to the Los Angeles Times several times, referring to his “railroad murder trial.”

Douglas referred to judges in the American court system as “money-sucking, parasitical leeches that don’t give a damn about a man’s complete innocence.”