Man Convicted of Murdering Ex-Girlfriend

A jury convicted a 29-year-old bodybuilder of first-degree murder Friday in the shooting death of his ex-girlfriend as she talked on the phone to her new boyfriend.

After more than two days of deliberations, Superior Court jurors convicted James Allen Booker of killing Maria DelMar Alcocer, 26, who had obtained a restraining order against him months before the shooting. The laborer and bodybuilder could face a maximum sentence of 30 years to life in state prison when sentenced Feb. 9 before Superior Court Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon.

Alcocer was shot five times on Oct. 9, 1994, as she talked on the phone in her Orange apartment. She had just put her two children to bed in another room after spending the day at Disneyland celebrating her daughter’s 7th birthday.

Relatives of Alcocer cried and thanked jurors and the prosecutor. Her sister now has custody of Alcocer’s two daughters, who are not related to Booker.

Booker testified that he went to the apartment in the 3800 block of Garden Grove Boulevard with the intention of shooting himself, not Alcocer. He said he blacked out and could not remember the shooting.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood argued that Booker couldn’t accept that Alcocer had a new boyfriend and knew what he was doing.

“He could just not leave the situation like that,” Kirkwood said.

Police and prosecutors said Booker had taken a gun from a friend without permission that day and entered Alcocer’s apartment about 11 p.m. Neighbors called to report gunfire, and witnesses said they recognized Booker running away.

The couple had lived together on and off for about four years before their breakup in August 1994, police said.

Booker then went to Detroit but, intent on reconciliation, traveled cross-country by bus to see Alcocer--over her objections--in the days before the shooting, police said at the time.

Booker had been arrested in Orange in 1993 on suspicion of abusing Alcocer and had been charged a year earlier with attacking her father with a fireplace shovel during an argument.

He was arrested on a warrant at his grandparents’ home in West Virginia about three months after the shooting.