JUSTICE DELAYED / DNA EVIDENCE FREES ONE MAN, POINTS TO ANOTHER IN 1979 CASE : Heating the Cold Trail of the ‘Bludgeon Killer’

Three months after the last serial slaying by the so-called “Bludgeon Killer” and in the same area he stalked, a man in a military uniform snatched a 13-year-old Tustin girl from a curbside, tied her up and raped her.

Soon after, El Toro Marine Staff Sgt. Gerald Parker admitted to that crime and was eventually sent to prison for the attack. Meanwhile, the early-1980s manhunt for the Bludgeon Killer continued in other directions.

Now, authorities say, the true killer was already in custody. Parker, 41, was charged Friday with six murders, including one for which another Marine was imprisoned for 17 years in a miscarriage of justice.

Police and Navy officials said they are investigating whether Parker might be responsible for even more killings across the country. He spent 7 1/2 years in the Marine Corps, including stints at bases in North Carolina, Alaska and Mississippi.

Police sources said Friday that Parker, an inmate at California State Prison Corcoran, confessed to some of the murders attributed to the Bludgeon Killer after being confronted with DNA evidence.

A confession also closed the case of the Feb. 15, 1980, rape of the Tustin teen who was abducted from a sidewalk, court records show. Traced through the van he drove during the crime, Parker had a terse reply when told they were bringing the victim to identify him: “I’m guilty, I did it,” according to the records.

The girl had been on the way home from her father’s funeral when a man wearing a uniform with stripes on the sleeves slapped her, pulled her into a van and gagged her with a strip of a towel, court records show. The attacker threatened to kill her if she ever spoke about the rape, the girl told police.

Sheriff’s deputies questioned Parker about the crime after his van was seen and matched to the girl’s description of the attacker’s vehicle.

Parker was sentenced to six years in prison for that kidnapping and rape conviction. Also, his biological codes were entered into a statewide database tracking sexual offenders, a routine procedure. A new DNA procedure used this year produced a “hit” with that data on Parker when investigators reexamined the Bludgeon Killer crime spree.

The Marine has a lengthy criminal career. In 1980, he was also convicted of a Los Angeles County robbery and a charge of causing great bodily injury, charges that added six more years to his earlier sentence for the Tustin rape, records show. An Orange County robbery case against him at the same time was dropped, according to those records.

Parker was paroled in April 1984 and was immediately taken into custody by Kern County jail officials to face trial on a pending charge of assaulting a fellow prisoner. He was sentenced in July 1984 to six more years in prison, but was paroled in November 1987.

In 1993, Parker was arrested and charged with a burglary in Orange County, records indicate. Parker was sent back to prison for two years and four months.

Back on the streets again, Parker and three other men were cited by Orange police in January of this year on suspicion of trespassing at a site in the Main Street commercial district. Within months, he was back in prison on a parole violation. It was there where investigators found Parker after reopening the Bludgeon Killer case.

Investigators on Friday detailed the unlikely and circuitous route that led them to Parker and closed a long-cold case.

Tustin Det. Tom Tarpley had attended a class on investigative techniques in April 1995 and learned about the state Department of Justice database that could match DNA samples on unsolved cases against a bank of convicts.

In February, Tarpley submitted evidence from the October 1979 rape and murder of 24-year-old Debora Kennedy to the crime lab. Meanwhile, Costa Mesa Det. Bill Redmond was doing something similar, poring over his city’s cluster of murders and rapes committed by the so-called Bludgeon Killer in 1978 and 1979.

Two recent Costa Mesa rapes had prompted Redmond to dig into his files to see if the men convicted in those cases might also be responsible for the older murders, he said.

Those men didn’t match, but Gerald Parker, a man unknown to Costa Mesa police, popped up as a positive hit in the state database. On June 7, as Redmond relaxed at home on his day off, he got the call telling him of that news and rushed to the office for begin a spate of 19-hour days that ended only Friday, with the case filed.

Costa Mesa Chief David L. Snowden said he remembers the moment “vividly.”

“I was sitting here in my office, and the sheriff called me and said, ‘We’ve got a match on your case. I’m sending my staff to your office momentarily.’ When they got here it was kind of quiet. We were all pretty proud that we’d finally be able to solve a case of this magnitude.”

For the next week, Redmond and Det. Lynda Giesler, who investigated the original murders, did nothing but explore Parker’s criminal history. Giesler had been brought out of retirement to work on the slaying of 23-year-old Newport Beach student Denise Huber, and Snowden immediately brought her on board.

“I wanted her on it,” he said. “She is the best. I’ve been in law enforcement 30 years, I’ve never met a better interrogator than Lynda Giesler.”

On June 14, Giesler, Redmond and Tarpley drove together to the Avenal State Prison in the Central Valley, a lower-security prison in Kings County where Parker was serving a sentence for parole violation and awaiting a July 6 release. He has since been moved to the more secure high-security facility at Corcoran.

Parker at first refused to talk to Redmond and Giesler, but opened up to Tarpley. Then all three went in and interviewed him again. The ordeal lasted three hours or so, said Redmond, and investigators came away pleased.

“I think Tom was very instrumental in making sure this all came out the way it did,” Lt. Frank Semelsberger said. “He’s a very key player.”

Redmond said Parker “was calm about everything.”

Times staff writer Rene Lynch and correspondent Enrique Lavin contributed to this report.