Man Convicted of Helping to Kill Roommate

Nearly six years after he stabbed to death his former UCLA roommate and left the corpse in a Chatsworth railroad tunnel, a Van Nuys man was convicted of murder Friday, officials said.

After more than three days of deliberations, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury convicted Nathaniel Blalock of helping a second roommate kill 21-year-old Ronald Baker in a bungled kidnapping for ransom scheme, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors had declined to seek the death penalty, so Blalock, 27, will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Gibbons said.

The body of Baker, an astrophysics major who dabbled in the occult, was discovered in a tunnel in Chatsworth Park in June 1990. Initial speculation was that Baker’s fascination with the occult was related to his killing. But police got a break in 1993 when Duncan Martinez, Baker’s other roommate and the man who delivered the eulogy at Baker’s funeral, came forward and described how Baker died.

Baker was stabbed 18 times and nearly decapitated. Prosecutors charged both students with the murder. Blalock’s trial was delayed several times by changes in the prosecution team, which was once headed by Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark, the prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial.

Martinez’s trial is still pending.