2nd Execution Date Set for Sun Valley Man

An execution date, the second in six years, was set Thursday for a Sun Valley landlord who shot and killed two tenants in a rental dispute nine years ago.

Earl Preston Jones, 56, was sentenced in Van Nuys Superior Court to die in the gas chamber on Jan. 28, although a spokeswoman for Los Angeles County prosecutors said there was little chance the date would be kept.

The victims, Patricia Khan, 31, and Charles Rambert, 28, were asleep on June 5, 1982, when Jones entered the Sun Valley house and shot them at point-blank range with a 12-gauge shotgun, police said.

Authorities said the dispute developed when Jones reneged on an agreement to lower the rent in exchange for carpentry work that Rambert had done on the house.

A jury convicted Jones of two counts of first-degree murder in 1983 and recommended the death penalty.

Judge Richard G. Kolostian, who imposed the death penalty Thursday, also did so in 1985, but the case has been on appeal since.

In June, the state Supreme Court upheld the death sentence.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, predicted that Jones’ new execution date “will merely set off a new round of appeals, probably in federal court this time.”

According to the state Department of Corrections, there are 311 prisoners under death sentence in California, but none has been executed since 1967.