Judge Imposes Death Penalty in Pacific Beach Slaying

Dean Phillip Carter, who was convicted in May of the strangulation murder of a Pacific Beach woman and of the sexual assault of a Morena woman, was sentenced Monday to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin.

Carter, who has already received three other death sentences as a result of a triple murder in Los Angeles, was found guilty of killing 24-year-old Janette Cullins, whose body was found on the floor of her bedroom closet on April 14, 1984.

Superior Court Judge Melinda J. Lasater upheld the findings of the jury in Carter’s trial, which recommended June 18 that he be executed.

“I think the death penalty is well warranted in this particular case,” the judge said.

The father of the murder victim, retired Marine Corps Maj. George Cullins Sr., also had urged Lasater to hand down the maximum penalty.

George Cullins, who became an advocate of victims’ rights after he was billed $65 to transport his daughter’s body to the coroner’s office, used his time at Carter’s sentencing hearing to call for reform in a judicial system where “the death penalty is just another term for a long period of incarceration.”

During Carter’s trial, prosecutors portrayed the 35-year-old as a one-man crime spree who left victims--including five murdered women--stretched from Oakland to San Diego during a three-week period in the spring of 1984.

The former television cameraman from Nome, Alaska, was convicted of first-degree murder and three allegations of special circumstances in San Diego.

Additionally, Carter was found guilty of rape, forcible oral copulation and residential robbery in the March 25, 1984, rape of the Morena-area woman. He was sentenced to serve 21 years, eight months in prison for these offenses.

He has also been sentenced to 54 years in prison for a sexual attack on a Ventura County woman that prosecutors said was part of the crime rampage.