TORRANCE : DA to Seek Death for Couple’s Attacker

The district attorney’s office says it will seek the death penalty against an Oregon man convicted Tuesday of seven charges, including murder with special circumstances, for the May, 1993, home-invasion slaying of a man and the assault and shooting of his wife.

Randy Eugene Garcia--a 24-year-old Portland resident who had a history of burglary arrests at the time of the Torrance shootings--was convicted after a trial during which his court-appointed attorney called no witnesses.

He was found guilty of killing Joseph Finzel and assaulting Lynn Finzel, and was also convicted on burglary, robbery and related charges.

“The evidence was pretty overwhelming,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Sally Thomas said after the jury returned with the list of guilty verdicts. Thomas said the district attorney’s office would seek the death penalty in the case.

Garcia was wearing Joseph Finzel’s wedding ring when he was arrested. Lynn Finzel identified him as her attacker and her husband’s killer. And several of Garcia’s Oregon friends told police he’d confessed to the late-night rampage.

On the last day of the trial, Lynn Finzel took the stand to describe how Garcia entered their 180th Place home on May 8, 1993, through an unlocked door, beginning a terrifying ordeal that lasted more than two hours.

With her baby sleeping nearby, Finzel said, Garcia woke her up at about 11:15 p.m., tied her up and assaulted her. When Joseph Finzel arrived home, Garcia shot and killed him with one of the family’s guns, then shot Lynn Finzel twice.

For the next two hours, Finzel said, she played dead on the bullet-punctured water bed as Garcia ransacked the house.

The couple had been married less than a year, Thomas said.

Convicted of murder with special circumstances--in this case, the special circumstance being commission of other crimes--Garcia will face either the death penalty or life in prison without possibility of parole. The sentencing phase of the trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 3.