Boyfriend Guilty of 1995 Murders of Woman, Child

A 24-year-old man who witnesses described as despondent over an impending breakup with his girlfriend was found guilty Wednesday of beating and strangling the woman and then killing their 13-month-old boy by driving off a cliff.

Danny Eugene Stewart, 24, faces life in prison without parole when he is sentenced May 3 for first-degree murder in the 1995 deaths of Megan Whalley and Nicholas Stewart.

The verdict, reached by jurors after about five days of deliberations, left relatives of the victims gratified and emotional, the prosecutor said.

“It’s just been a horrible trauma for them,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Elizabeth Henderson said. “It’s hard to imagine how you might react. It’s not only your daughter, but your only grandchild.”

Witnesses testified Stewart was angry at his 19-year-old girlfriend, a community college student with hopes of becoming a teacher, because she was trying to break up with him. Stewart had also threatened to kill her the night before the slayings while playing melancholy songs at an Orange bar, according to testimony.

“It was the classic domestic violent situation,” Henderson said. “He was reaching the point of frustration and she was reaching the point of saying, ‘This guy is trouble.’ ”

Stewart did not deny committing the killings but contended during the 2 1/2-week trial that he never planned to kill them and acted in the heat of a rage. His defense also included testimony that he was abused and abandoned as a child and suffers from a borderline personality disorder.

The prosecutor told jurors Stewart had waited until his girlfriend’s mother and brother left their Orange home on the morning of Jan. 10, 1995, before going inside and killing her and taking the baby.

Whalley had anticipated problems as well, according to testimony. Her last diary entry about a fight they had the night before her death ended with these words: “I know he’ll be an [expletive] tomorrow.”

The woman’s mother came home from work and found the battered body in the house they shared. She also discovered the baby and the family car were missing.

The next day, California Highway Patrol officers and Riverside County sheriff’s deputies found the body of Nicholas Stewart, still in his red-footed pajamas, about 150 feet the floor of a ravine off Ortega Highway where the car driven by Stewart landed.

A passing motorist found an injured Danny Stewart on the roadway above the crash.

Stewart had been wearing a seat belt when he drove the car off the 300-foot cliff, according to testimony. The baby, who was not strapped into a car seat, was thrown from the car and died of massive head injuries, according to coroner’s testimony.

Stewart told police in a taped interview that he drove the boy off the cliff so they could be together in death and that he wanted to take his son from the child’s mother because he believed the woman was trying to do the same thing to him, the prosecutor said.

Stewart’s attorney, Don Rubright, a deputy public defender, urged the Superior Court jurors to return with a lesser verdict of second-degree murder or manslaughter, contending Stewart was afraid he would lose access to his child and went “nuts.”

Jury deliberations had reached a snag Tuesday, when Judge Nancy Wieben Stock replaced one juror for failing to deliberate. Jurors told the judge and attorneys that things had reached the point where the dismissed juror was sitting away from others on the panel and doing crossword puzzles.