Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Ex-Employee Guilty of 2 Murders at Firm : Courts: The jury will consider whether to recommend life in prison or the death penalty in the slayings at a Lancaster business.

A Superior Court jury convicted an Antelope Valley man of murder with special circumstances Monday in the shootings of his former boss and another employee during a robbery at a Lancaster car rental company in 1991.

Michael Joseph Williams, 23, was found guilty on two counts of murder and two special circumstance charges--committing multiple murders and committing a murder in the course of a robbery--said Deputy Dist. Atty. Stephen Cooley.

The trial’s penalty phase begins Nov. 22, in which the jury must decide whether to recommend that the judge sentence Williams to life in prison or condemn him to death, Cooley said.

During Williams’ first trial in April, 1993, a judge declared a mistrial after a jury deadlocked 8 to 4 in favor of acquittal.

Cooley said prosecutors had a better case this time because one of their witnesses, a prison inmate, testified that Williams had admitted committing the crimes.

“We had basically the same evidence as we had during the last trial, but we hadn’t introduced a conversation Williams had with another person in lockup,” Cooley said. “That may have been the difference for the jury.”

Williams’ attorney could not be reached Monday.

In 1991, Williams worked as a mechanic at a Jiffy Lube franchise located on the same property as the Ugly Duckling Rent-A-Car company at Avenue I and Fern Avenue in Lancaster.

Both businesses were owned by Mohammed Dahan, 36, of Quartz Hill.

After he was laid off later that year, prosecutors said Williams stole one of the rental company’s cars and a charge card.

He returned about three months later, in August, 1991, and shot Dahan and co-worker Ibrahim Alsehrewerdi execution-style during a robbery in the company’s office, Cooley said.