Killer of 2 at Plant Ruled Sane by Jury

A laid-off electronics worker was sane when he killed two top Elgar Corp. executives last year, a jury decided Friday.

Larry Thomas Hansel, 42, was not under a psychotic delusion that he was saving the world from imminent nuclear war, the Superior Court jury concluded at the end of a two-week sanity trial.

The verdict means that Hansel will receive a mandatory term of life in prison without possibility of parole when he is sentenced July 27.

Hansel pleaded guilty by reason of insanity last month to the June 4, 1991, shotgun slayings of John Jones, 48, Elgar’s vice president and general manager, and Michael Krowitz, 46, the firm’s regional sales manager.

After exploding a bomb and shooting out the company’s phone switchboard, Hansel methodically moved through the firm’s Mira Mesa offices seeking five executives who were on his hit list.

The widows of the two victims hugged each other throughout the short proceedings and cried out when the verdict was announced.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregg McClain had argued that Hansel understood the shooting was morally and legally wrong. Hansel behaved logically and turned himself in soon after the shooting rampage, he said.

“I think I’m relieved,” McClain said.

If Hansel had been found to be insane at the time of the killings, he would have been sent to a state mental hospital until he regained his sanity.

The average stay for someone convicted of first-degree murder and found to be insane is four years, said McClain.

Without relying on psychological evidence, the prosecution case rested on Hansel’s behavior before, during and after the attack. He was terminated from his technician’s job three months before the slayings, and McClain told the jury this was the spark that led to Hansel’s behavior.

Furthermore, if Hansel really believed he was saving the world from the Antichrist and world communism, he would have proclaimed freedom for a number of startled workers that he saw in the parking lot after the killings, McClain argued.

Hansel turned himself in to Riverside County authorities several hours after he killed the men, instead of calling the media or killing others who may have been associated with the devil or communism, McClain noted.

Defense attorney Alex Loebig Jr. said the decision will be appealed, based primarily on what he called an “erroneous” instruction to the jury by Superior Court Judge William T. Low. Loebig said Hansel should not have been judged by the community standard of knowing the difference between right and wrong, but should have been evaluated under the subjective criteria of an insane person.

During the trial, the defense called five mental health doctors. Two described him as a paranoid schizophrenic and three said he was in a “paranoid, delusionary, persecutory” state of psychosis.

“He’s so sick, he still believes the world is in danger of coming to an end,” Loebig said.