Killer Receives 16 Years to Life in Psychiatric Prison Facility

A mentally ill drifter who stabbed a 90-year-old Ventura woman to death in her home after walking away from the county hospital was sentenced Tuesday to spend 16 years to life in a psychiatric prison facility.

Kevin Jon Kolodziej received the sentence for the fatal stabbing of Velasta Johnson, whose widower said outside court, “I hope his soul will rest in hell.”

Superior Court Judge James McNally ordered Kolodziej to be sent to a prison psychiatric facility rather than state prison, where he said the 25-year-old drifter would be treated for his mental illness rather than brutalized by other convicts.

In August, McNally found Kolodziej guilty of second-degree murder, rejecting his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Before sentencing, Kolodziej’s attorneys asked McNally to reduce the conviction to involuntary manslaughter, arguing that there was no legal proof that he had any malice against Johnson.

However, McNally denied the motion, saying he had tried the case according to law, and gave Kolodziej the maximum sentence of 15 years to life provided by law--plus one year for using a knife.

Velasta Johnson’s family barely contained their rage at the preordained sentence, which could set Kolodziej free on parole as early as 2003.

Jackie Thetford, the victim’s daughter, vowed that she would attend every parole hearing to protest any plans to release Kolodziej, and assign her children to the duty after her death.

“This has been the worst nightmare of my life,” Thetford told McNally during the sentencing hearing, thanking him for reaching “a fair and just verdict.”

“At least Kevin had a fair trial,” Thetford said. “My mom didn’t. He was her judge, jury and executioner.”

Then she turned her attention to the defendant.

“You know, Kevin, we all have to die someday and stand before God,” Thetford said, her voice breaking and her eyes welling with tears. “We won’t all have two attorneys by our side to defend us. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

Her father, Clyde Johnson, told reporters after the sentencing, “he’s ruined the life of this family. I hope his soul will rest in hell. That’s where it belongs and you all know it.”

Kolodziej’s sentencing came after a long history of mental troubles that began at age 6, when he was prescribed stimulants for being “anxious and fearful of abandonment by his parents,” according to his probation report.

At age 15, he tried to kill himself with 30 to 40 diet pills, the report said. “At 22 he carried a knife and a long pole around his mother’s house, talked to himself and once nailed the door and windows shut.”

After walking away from psychiatric hospitals in Virginia and Honolulu, Kolodziej drifted to Ventura, where he stabbed himself nearly to death on Jan. 5.

While hospitalized for stab wounds to his face, neck and abdomen at Ventura County Medical Center, Kolodziej acted psychotic, attacked two nurses and eventually slipped free of his restraints and walked away on Jan. 17.

That day, he wandered through the surrounding neighborhood, eventually walking into Johnson’s home. There, he picked up a pie knife “for protection” and stabbed her once in the heart when she confronted him, the probation report said.

After sentencing, Clyde Johnson criticized the hospital for letting Kolodziej go, and Ventura police for not returning him there when they found him wandering the streets moments later in hospital pajamas, the restraints dangling from his body.

The family has sued Ventura city and county police and health agencies, alleging that their negligence contributed to the murder.

Saying Kolodziej would never readjust upon release, Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris scoffed at a letter that Kolodziej wrote to McNally asking for a light sentence.

The letter requested “something just below nine years, say maybe six or five because I honestly say here and now I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was doing with a knife in my hand or why I picked one up.”

“The court should not make a ruling which would tend to facilitate the defendant being released even a little bit earlier,” Kossoris said, arguing against the defense request to drop the one-year knife-use sentence, one which McNally did not grant.

Kolodziej probably will be locked up at Atascadero State Hospital or at California Medical Facility, a state Department of Mental Health prison at Vacaville, a prison official said Tuesday.

Kolodziej told authorities that he blacked out during the killing because of anti-psychotic drugs prescribed by the county medical center.

As recently as August, the probation officer reported, Kolodziej complained that he hallucinates “colors, eyeballs, and faces, and hear(s) voices whisper stuff that doesn’t make sense,” despite anti-psychotic drugs.

“He doesn’t need criminal rehabilitation, he needs psychiatric rehabilitation,” his mother, Gloria Kolodziej, said Tuesday.

“Kevin still does not remember anything about it,” she said. “He saw large numbers coming out of the ground that day.”