U. S. Supreme Court Rejects Appeal in ’78 Child Slaying

The U. S. Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal for Theodore Frank, who was sentenced to death for the 1978 kidnaping, rape, torture and murder of a 2 1/2-year-old Camarillo girl.

By rejecting Frank’s appeal, the nation’s highest court upheld a November decision by the California Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that Frank should be executed for torturing and murdering Amy Sue Seitz, whose mutilated body was found in Topanga Canyon.

Monday’s rejection by the U. S. Supreme Court was the latest defeat in a volley of legal pleas that Frank has tried to avoid the gas chamber.

The state Supreme Court’s sentence cannot be appealed further. But Frank, 55, may keep his case in court by appealing to U. S. District Court another ruling made by the state high court, state Assistant Atty. Gen. Harley Mayfield said.

Meanwhile, Frank is on death row at San Quentin.

Evidence during his trial indicated that Amy Sue had been kidnaped from her baby-sitter’s residence, bound hand and foot, forced to drink beer and then raped, tortured and mutilated with locking pliers before she was strangled.

Frank killed the child just six weeks after he had been released from Atascadero State Hospital. He had a 20-year history of child molestation.

Frank was initially convicted and sentenced to death in 1980.

Five years later, the California Supreme Court overturned the death sentence for Frank in a controversial decision that was cited in the successful campaign to defeat Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird in November, 1986.

A retrial of the penalty phase of Frank’s case resulted in the second death penalty, which the U. S. Supreme Court let stand Monday.