Apartment Manager’s Killer Given Death Sentence

Mark Alan Bradford was sentenced Tuesday to die in the gas chamber for raping, strangling and stabbing to death the manager of his Panorama City apartment building in 1988.

“The circumstances of this crime are appalling,” Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Michael J. Farrell said before sentencing Bradford, convicted in May of murdering Lynea Kokes, 28, on April 18, 1988.

In condemning Bradford, 27, Farrell rejected a last-minute plea for leniency from Deputy Public Defender Dennis G. Cohen, who argued that Bradford’s attack on Kokes was a “one-time horrible, horrible abnormality.” Cohen said the death penalty should be reserved for offenders with long criminal histories and “We don’t have that here with Mark Bradford.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carole Anne Chizever applauded the judge’s decision. “It was appropriate,” she said outside the courtroom. “This is the kind of case that cries out for the death penalty.”

Bradford’s sentence will be appealed automatically to the California Supreme Court.

“Don’t lose heart,” Farrell told Bradford before bailiffs led Bradford away. “Use the time you have left to prove to yourself and to the Lord the person you can be.”

Jurors who recommended the death penalty said they were influenced by Bradford’s apparent lack of remorse in court and during a taped confession to police. On Tuesday, Bradford submitted a letter to Farrell apologizing for the attack.

“I sit up days and nights wondering why this had to happen,” wrote Bradford, a convalescent home cook. “I would give anything for it to be me dead than Mrs. Kokes. Things would be better off. . . . I am deeply sorry for my actions for what has happened.”

Bradford confessed to Los Angeles police that he choked, raped and sodomized Kokes after helping her move into the apartment in the 9500 block of Van Nuys Boulevard. He said he went home and showered before deciding to come back and kill Kokes with a kitchen knife to prevent her from reporting the crime.

Kokes was moving in with her husband and infant son to become the new on-site manager as part of an effort by the apartment building’s new owners to evict drug dealers and prostitutes from the complex and encourage young families to move in, officials said.

Kokes’ husband, Alex, came home and found his wife dead hours after the killing. Bradford was arrested at his apartment later that night after his roommate found a broken knife in Bradford’s laundry and called the police.