Elgar Killer of 2 Receives Life in Prison : Crime: Larry Hansel, a laid-off employee who stalked and shot to death the executives, will not be eligible for parole.

Larry T. Hansel, the disgruntled worker who stalked and killed two executives after being laid off from the Elgar Corp. last year, was sentenced Monday to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Superior Court Judge Frederic Link ordered the 42-year-old electronics worker to serve a term of life in state prison without the possibility of parole.

Hansel pleaded guilty in May to murdering John Jones, 48, Elgar’s vice president, and Michael Krowitz, 46, the firm’s sales manager, on June 4, 1991, at the Mira Mesa company.

Hansel exploded two bombs to distract workers and then shot out the switchboard. Armed with two shotguns and bandoleers of shells, Hansel then searched the offices for company officials.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregg McClain argued that Hansel was searching for the people he believed were responsible for terminating him. Hansel also pleaded guilty to three counts of attempted murder, though Jones and Krowitz were the only two fired upon.

“I’m glad it’s over, and the people at Elgar are glad it’s over,” McClain said after the hearing. “It’s really apparent that this is something that really affected them, and now at least they can go about their business as best as they can.”

Hansel claimed he was insane at the time of the shootings because he was driven by a bizarre notion that he was saving the world from a communist plot and imminent nuclear annihilation.

In a sanity trial, defense attorneys argued that Hansel believed killing the company officials would save the world.

“In his mind, he set out to save the world, and he knew he was going to have to be a sacrificial lamb,” attorney Alex Loebig Jr. told the jury.

An essay titled “From the Heart” was retrieved by the company from Hansel’s toolbox when he was terminated three months before the shootings. The essay details a number of political concerns that made Hansel “anxious,” including “traitors in the Congress and news media,” bar codes as possibly leading to the collapse of the dollar, and how a Jesse Jackson presidential administration could lead to a white supremacist government.

Loebig also said Hansel had his Boy Scout troop bury food and chlorinated water in the desert when it camped there, anticipating nuclear war. He also carried a radiation monitor with him.

Hansel had been laid off three months before the shootings, and the killings sent a chill through a business community hit by recession and compelled to trim the labor force.

But jurors found Hansel sane after prosecutors portrayed him as a disturbed man who knew his actions were wrong and acted logically before, during and after the attack.

Hansel had confessed freely to the shootings and tipped police to another handgun as well as ammunition he had stashed at Elgar in case he needed it.

Testimony at Hansel’s preliminary hearing indicated that he rode calmly away from Elgar on a bicycle and turned himself in to Riverside County sheriff’s deputies two hours later.

One of the victim’s widows, Denise Jones, and several Elgar officials quietly attended the sentencing hearing, as they did the sanity trial.

“This guy really affected these people,” McClain said. “You could see it in their eyes, you could hear it in their voices.”

Loebig said Monday that the jury’s sanity verdict will be appealed.

In addition to the sentence of life in prison without parole, Hansel received three terms of life in prison for the attempted-murder charges.