VENTURA : Death Penalty for Kolodziej Weighed

A Ventura County prosecutor said Monday that new information has made him consider pursuing the death penalty against Kevin Kolodziej, the mentally ill man who is accused of stabbing 90-year-old Velasta Johnson to death in Ventura on Jan. 17.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris had told Kolodziej’s attorney and Johnson’s daughter that he would not pursue the death penalty, but he reconsidered after receiving new evidence from a jailhouse informant.

Kossoris declined to discuss the evidence or identify the informant.

But Deputy Public Defender Steve Lipson said the informant told prosecutors that he overheard Kolodziej say on the telephone that he enjoyed the killing and that he was faking his mental illness.

Lipson said the informant, John Ruetcke, is well known to district attorney’s investigators as “a professional con man” who was arrested after running up $20,000 in bills at an Oxnard hospital by posing as pop singer Christopher Cross. One detective has described Ruetcke as “a pathological liar,” Lipson said.

Lipson said other witnesses have confirmed that Ruetcke overheard Kolodziej talking on the telephone to his mother and his girlfriend.

But he said Ruetcke’s information about Kolodziej’s statements should not be trusted enough to form the basis to pursue the death penalty against Kolodziej.