Victims of Earlier Rampage to Testify in Murder Trial

Just three weeks before Billy Ray Waldon began a murderous crime rampage in San Diego County in 1985, the former Navy electronics expert shot and attempted to rob four people in Oklahoma, wounding three and killing one, a county prosecutor alleged Friday.

In his opening argument during the penalty phase of Waldon’s trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Carpenter asked the jury to consider Waldon’s previous crimes of violence in Oklahoma as they decide how to punish Waldon for the three San Diego County murders and 21 other crimes of which they convicted him earlier this week.

Carpenter said that in testimony from people whom Waldon allegedly wounded, as well as from ballistics experts and Tulsa police, the jurors would hear “factors that will convince you that the death penalty is the only punishment for Billy Ray Waldon.” The jury must choose between the death penalty and life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Carpenter’s opening statement focused in large part on three separate Oklahoma incidents in November, 1985, in which each victim was shot. Carpenter said ballistics experts will testify that the .25-caliber shells recovered from those crimes were fired from the gun used in the San Diego County incidents of which Waldon has been convicted.

Waldon, 39, who has represented himself in court without professional legal assistance, continues to maintain his innocence.

He has never been tried for the Oklahoma offenses that Carpenter accused him of Friday, and there were no suspects until after Waldon was apprehended here, Carpenter said. Oklahoma officials filed criminal charges against Waldon after California authorities informed them of the similar crimes.

Waldon was convicted in San Diego in connection with a mid-1980s killing, rape and robbery rampage, which prosecutors said arose out of his effort to commit crimes to display what he believed to be his superior intelligence.