Man Guilty of Murdering Fullerton Couple : Trial: Jury deliberates just three hours and will decide next whether Richard Boyer should die for the 1982 killings committed during alleged drug hallucination.

An El Monte man Wednesday was convicted of robbing and killing a Fullerton couple in 1982. A jury will decide next month whether Richard Delmer Boyer should die for a crime he said he committed while experiencing a drug-induced hallucination.

Boyer, 34, was convicted on all counts stemming from the attack on Francis and Eileen Harbitz: two of first-degree murder, two of robbery and four of using a deadly weapon.

Francis Harbitz, 67, and his wife, Eileen, 68, were found stabbed many times in their home on Dec. 7, 1982. Their wallets and $50 were missing.

Boyer, who was friendly with the Harbitzes’ son, has been tried three times for their murders. The first trial, in 1984, ended in a hung jury. Boyer was convicted and sentenced to death that same year, but in 1989 the state Supreme Court reversed the conviction, ruling that Boyer’s confession to Fullerton police had been coerced.

Boyer’s attorney, James G. Merwin, argued that Boyer had been under the influence of cocaine and PCP when he went to the Harbitz home.

While there, he said, Boyer blacked out and believed himself to be under attack from a character in the horror movie “Halloween II.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles J. Middleton said he is pleased but not surprised by the verdict and the speed with which it was reached. The jury deliberated just three hours.

Middleton said he was “very confident with the evidence we presented.” This included Boyer’s bloodstained knife and slacks and Eileen Harbitz’s empty wallet, which was recovered from a storm drain.

Middleton said he plans to introduce evidence during the penalty phase that Boyer committed a third murder in Fullerton.

Police said Boyer had been a suspect in the killing of John Houston Compton, 75, in 1980, but he was never charged with that crime.

Merwin said he will oppose any testimony regarding the Compton killing, saying Boyer “did not do it. . . . He had nothing to do with it.”

Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin voiced some doubt about the Compton material, while reserving judgment on its admissibility. McCartin said he wondered whether the evidence would be “a minus rather than a plus” for the prosecution.

The same jury that returned the guilty verdicts will hear the penalty phase, which is scheduled for July 15.