Waldon Is Suspect in More Crimes : Courts: Prosecutor, urging the death penalty, alleges that the convicted murderer also went on a crime rampage in Oklahoma.

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 upcoming testimony from Waldon’s alleged Oklahoma victims, 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 possibility of parole.

Waldon, 39, who has chosen to represent himself in court without professional legal assistance, did not give an opening statement Friday, reserving the right to do so after Carpenter completes his case. In numerous objections, however, he continued to maintain his innocence.

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

On the evening of Nov. 15, according to testimony, Cynthia Bellinger was getting out of her car in front of her parents’ Tulsa home when an armed man in a ski mask approached her and demanded that she give up her purse.

“I froze,” the woman testified Friday, recalling how the man, whom she did not identify, ran up to her, held a gun to her left temple and yanked her purse away. The man then shot her in the head, but the bullet only grazed her skull. A spent .25-caliber shell casing was recovered at the scene, Carpenter said.

Two nights later, Annabelle Richman was in a courtyard outside her home when she was shot four times and robbed of her “Gucci-type” purse, Carpenter said. Four .25-caliber shell casings were found at the scene, and one was taken from Richman’s body after she died.

On Nov. 23, Tammy Tvedt was dropping a friend, Frank Hensley, off at his home in the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow when a man in a ski mask with a small handgun ordered them to give him their wallets. Tvedt and Hensley, who had just spent the day at a religious conference, began to pray, Carpenter said.

Carpenter said the attacker told them, “I don’t want to hear that. Give me your wallets!” He then shot Hensley in the face at point blank range and shot Tvedt in the neck, Carpenter said. Both victims survived--Hensley was not even seriously injured, Carpenter said, and doctors decided to leave the bullet that struck him lodged in his nasal cavity.

A few months later, in July, 1986, Hensley was eating dinner and spat out the bullet, Carpenter said, prompting laughter and grimaces from the jury.

“I can see your faces,” he said, noting their reaction. “It’s a miracle.”

Most remarkable, Carpenter said, was that the bullet Hensley spat out, like all the others logged into evidence, was fired from the same gun used to kill a Del Mar woman Dec. 7, 1985, and to kill one San Diego man and wound another on Dec. 20.

Waldon has never been tried for the Oklahoma offenses Carpenter accused him of Friday because, Carpenter said, and there were no suspects until after Waldon was apprehended here. Oklahoma officials did, however, file criminal charges against Waldon after they were informed by California authorities of the similar crime series.

“They’re in line” to prosecute Waldon, Carpenter said.

Carpenter recalled that Waldon’s sister had testified that Waldon arrived in California on Nov. 25, saying he had driven straight through from Oklahoma. Carpenter speculated that, after the attack on Tvedt and Hensley on Nov. 23, Waldon headed west.

“He committed those crimes, realized his time in Tulsa was over with and headed for California,” Carpenter said, adding that his investigator has recently driven the trip himself, just to make sure it could be done in two days.

“He made it in 23 hours, driving the speed limit,” Carpenter said.

Waldon, who calls himself Nvwtohiyada Idehesdi Sequoyah, opted not to cross-examine Carpenter’s first five witnesses Friday, but made frequent objections, provoking Judge David M. Gill’s ire.

“I think you’re stalling,” Gill told Waldon outside the hearing of the jury. “I don’t think I’m obliged to do much to bail you out of your own foolishness (and) stupidity.”

When Waldon complained that he didn’t know how to spell the name of one of Carpenter’s witnesses, Gill reprimanded him again, reminding him that the woman had already spelled her name in open court.

“You sit there, and you don’t take a damn note and then ask us to do all your work for you,” Gill said, making no effort to hide his exasperation. “Why don’t you start listening for a while and pay attention?”