Taylor Is Sentenced to Death : Outcome Called ‘Very Appropriate’ for Gunman in Corvette Killing

Robert (T-Bone) Taylor, who began a lifetime of violence as an abused child committing petty theft, will die in California’s gas chamber for murdering a 60-year-old woman as she knelt at her bedside, a Superior Court judge said Thursday.

Judge Frank P. Briseno sentenced Taylor, 38, to death, the penalty recommended by a jury on Dec. 12, for fatally shooting Ryoko Hanano and seriously wounding her husband, Kazumi, then 62, in the couple’s Anaheim home.

Taylor’s accomplice, Norman James DeWitt, 34, of Cypress, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole, plus 11 years, for his role in the June, 1988, slaying.

DeWitt and Taylor, both recently released from state prison, and Taylor’s girlfriend, Nanette Scheid, 29, of Newport Beach, went to the Hanano home after reading the couple’s newspaper advertisement of a black Corvette for sale for $20,000.

After Scheid left the house, prosecutors said, DeWitt and Taylor handcuffed the couple together and forced them to kneel by their bed. The Hananos’ heads were then pushed between the mattress and the box spring to muffle the sound as Taylor shot each of them in the head with a .45-caliber pistol.

Ryoko Hanano, who was so frightened by the ordeal that she began chanting a Buddhist prayer, was killed instantly. Kazumi Hanano survived two bullet wounds, but is paralyzed from the neck down. Hanano, who founded his own landscaping business, is now, in his words, “a vegetable.”

The three then stole the car, but a fingerprint left at the scene and a call to a local Corvette dealer about a car that might be for sale led to Taylor’s arrest. Taylor, then staying in Sunset Beach, named DeWitt as his accomplice.

In January, 1991, Scheid was found guilty for her role in the robbery and killing, and a jury recommended a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. She has not yet been sentenced.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan Brown, who prosecuted the case in February, 1990, called the sentences for DeWitt and Taylor “very appropriate” and said he was glad the long case was over.

In his remarks to the court, Brown described Taylor’s crimes as a child in New York, his rape of a 14-year-old girl and his attack on a bound man with a machete.

Two of the Hananos’ four children addressed the court.

Russell Hanano, 35, who helps care for his father, said DeWitt and Taylor “have lived a life of crime. . . . They knew what they were doing.”

June Hanano-Yurkiewicz, referring to defense arguments that Taylor had been abused by his father and taunted because his parents are of different races, said, “You used your race and your abuse as an excuse, and it’s not.

“You chose to destroy my parents’ lives. You chose to destroy our lives. I’m glad you got the sentence you did. . . . My mother was begging for her life when you killed her. She was praying. My God, you would treat an animal better than you treated my mom. I think you’re both cowards.”

Taylor’s attorney, Michael A. Horan, acknowledged to the judge that “realistically, you’re not going to overturn what the jury has done, although I officially ask you to.” He added that if the judge intended to sentence Taylor to death, that he “do it with dignity. I ask you to do it without name-calling. I would ask you to do it as low-key as you possibly can.”

Apart from reading the formal death sentence, Briseno made no additional remarks.

There was extra security in and around the courtroom, including eight uniformed officers, one using a portable metal detector at the entrance, and at least one in plain clothes. Both DeWitt and Taylor were in handcuffs, shackled to their waists, and Taylor’s legs were shackled.

According to documents released this month, Taylor wrote two letters outlining a plot to shoot his way out of the Orange County Jail and kill his two original attorneys. The plot never got off the ground and the attorneys were replaced, but the replacement led to a year’s delay between the guilt and penalty phases of the trial.

Until yesterday, the last person sentenced to death by an Orange County judge was mass murderer Randy Kraft in 1989. A jury returned a death penalty verdict in October for child-killer Richard Lucio DeHoyos, but he has not yet been formally sentenced.

No Orange County judge has overturned a jury’s death verdict since the state’s death penalty law was enacted in 1978.

Including Walker, there are now 22 Orange County killers on Death Row.