Paroled ‘Onion Field’ Killer Gets 6-Year Term in Drug Case
Paroled “Onion Field” killer Jimmy Lee Smith was sentenced in Los Angeles to six years in prison Monday on a drug charge.
Smith, 65, pleaded guilty April 1 to one count of obtaining codeine, a controlled substance, by fraud.
As part of the plea bargain agreement, Superior Court Commissioner Richard Price sentenced Smith to the six-year term.
Smith and Gregory Ulas Powell, 61, were convicted and sentenced to death for the March 1963 murder of Ian Campbell, a Los Angeles police officer shot to death in an onion field south of Bakersfield.
Campbell and his partner, Karl Hettinger, were abducted while patrolling in Hollywood, and were driven to the isolated spot.
The crime was detailed in former Los Angeles Police Officer Joseph Wambaugh’s book “The Onion Field,” which was made into a movie.
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