Countywide : Murderer Denied Parole for 5th Time
Mark J. Baker, serving life in prison for bludgeoning a friend to death on a Dana Point beach, was denied parole for the fifth time Monday.
In a strongly worded decision, the three-member parole board cited the “especially atrocious and cruel” nature of the 1978 murder. They also noted Baker’s long criminal record, earlier failures at probation, disciplinary problems in prison and failure to develop a marketable skill, said Phyllis Scott, spokeswoman for the California Board of Prison Terms.
The board found that Baker “continues to be unpredictable and a threat to others,” Scott said.
Baker was 21 when he was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to the murder of Karl Marcus Chancellor of Newport Beach. A year earlier, he had been acquitted of the murder of a Ft. Lauderdale doctor’s wife--a murder to which he had once offered to plead guilty.
Baker is now 33 and serving his sentence at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
His parole has been vigorously opposed by his victim’s parents and by the Orange County district attorney’s office and Sheriff’s Department.
But one of Baker’s former wives maintains that Baker has changed profoundly in prison and is no longer dangerous.
Baker will be granted another parole hearing in two years, Scott said.
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