Judge Refuses to Block Extradition Warrant for Suspect in ’63 Slaying : Crime: The case had been revived when a computer made a fingerprint connection. Defense says it will appeal.

California moved a step closer Tuesday to getting custody of Vernon Robinson, a suspect in a 1963 Hollywood murder, after a ruling by a judge here.

Robinson was connected to the old murder case after his prints were pointed out by a new computerized fingerprint network during a random check of unsolved murders.

Hennepin County District Judge Gary Larson denied a defense bid to block an extradition warrant for Robinson, 45, who is sought in the beating death of drugstore waitress Thora Rose.

Robinson’s attorney, Robert Meier, said he will appeal the ruling, which is effective in 10 days.

The ruling underscored California’s claim that Robinson’s fingerprints were found at the scene of the Oct. 3, 1963, slaying.

Los Angeles Police Department fingerprint expert Donald Keir told the judge at a hearing last Wednesday that 36 prints taken from the murder scene matched Robinson’s. The prints were removed from louvered windows, doorjambs, walls and a bathroom door in Rose’s apartment.

Keir said he and three other print experts agree that the impressions match a fresh set of Robinson’s prints and a set from an arrest of the defendant in 1968. As a result of that arrest, Robinson served a three-year California prison term for assault and robbery.

Robinson contends that he was in Navy boot camp in San Diego in October, 1963, and nowhere near the murder scene. The judge said a Navy yeoman called by the defense “did not testify for certain” that the defendant was at a Navy base.

The judge said that in extradition cases the burden of proof is on the defense, not on the prosecution.

Meier contends that police have failed to connect the fingerprints to the murder. No prints were recovered from a murder weapon or the body, he said. The defense lawyer also said the state lacks jurisdiction because Robinson was on federal property, not technically within California, at the time of the slaying.

Robinson, wearing jail fatigues and brown plastic thongs, sounded confident when he testified at the hearing. The defendant again denied that he committed the murder or was in the vicinity of the slaying.

“No--you can’t leave the base during boot camp and I guess that’s the point I’ve been trying to make all along,” he said.

A defense witness testified that he remembers Robinson from boot camp. Ronald Smith, owner of a Minneapolis tree service, said his bunk was just a few feet from Robinson’s in Company 309.

When he was asked how he could be so sure, Smith replied: “Vernon Robinson, and one or two other guys, were the first black guys I ever met in my life.”

Smith said recruits were not allowed to leave the base and were subject to frequent bed checks at night.

Robinson has been jailed in Minnesota without bail since he was arrested in his high-rise apartment Dec. 27 on a fugitive warrant. Employed by American Building Maintenance Industries, the defendant had moved to Minneapolis less than a month before to take a custodial management position at Hamline University in St. Paul.

He had worked for the same company in California but was transferred when the firm lost some Los Angeles contracts.