CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : Justices Uphold Death Sentence
The state Supreme Court unanimously upheld the death sentence of a man who robbed and strangled four elderly Oakland residents over nine months, later killed a cellmate and admitted to a sixth homicide. After the first four killings were printed in a newspaper list of unsolved Oakland murders, David Edwin Mason’s family gave police a tape recording labeled “Epitaph” in which Mason confessed to numerous crimes, mentioned the killings and predicted he would die in a shoot-out with police, the court said. He was arrested without incident 10 days later.
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