‘Bludgeon’ Suspect Pleads Not Guilty to Six Slayings

A former Marine who once told a psychiatrist he had “always thought of raping women” pleaded not guilty Wednesday to six Orange County slayings in the late 1970s, including one in which another man was wrongfully imprisoned for 17 years.

Gerald Parker, 41, who investigators say has confessed to the slayings of the “Bludgeon Killer,” faces a possible death sentence if convicted of the series of attacks on young women who were raped and bashed in their homes.

During a brief arraignment Wednesday morning, Municipal Judge Donna Crandall in Santa Ana appointed a lawyer to represent Parker, who stood with his wrists handcuffed in front of him, wearing a gold jail jumpsuit.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Jacobs and Parker’s court-appointed private attorney, James Enright, declined to comment on the evidence in the case. Jacobs said prosecutors have yet to decide if they will seek a death penalty against Parker.

Parker faces charges of multiple murders, some with special circumstances, including allegations that the killings took place during a rape and during a burglary with the intent to commit rape. He was ordered back to court July 29 for a preliminary hearing.

Three people who said they knew Parker in recent years when he was homeless on the streets of Santa Ana attended Wednesday’s hearing out of curiosity.

“He had a temper, but he was also a peacemaker,” said James Brown, a 40-year-old Santa Ana man. “He’d try to stop violence.”

Brown, and his companions who asked to remain unidentified, said Parker never talked about his past, and that they were shocked when they heard him accused of being a serial killer.

“He didn’t seem like what they’ve accused him of being,” Brown said.

Parker, whose life has traced a loop between prison and homelessness since a 1980 conviction for raping a 13-year-old Tustin girl, was a loner who couldn’t relate to women, sniffed glue as a child and often drank three six-packs of beer in a day, according to investigators and court records from his rape conviction.

In the late 1970s, as the slayings he is now charged with added up in Costa Mesa, Tustin and Anaheim, Parker was a Marine staff sergeant, getting in trouble only once at the Tustin base for fighting with a superior, records show.

In 1973, at age 18, he had joined the Marine Corps and described himself as a shy man who spent his spare money on drugs and had infrequent contacts with women, according to a probation report at the time of his rape sentencing.

The young recruit went through training in San Diego and Camp Pendleton, then landed at a Naval base in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands chain in July 1973, where he spent a year as a barracks security guard.

He did stints in North Carolina and Mississippi before arriving in Orange County in September 1975.

As Parker’s private life spiraled downward, he managed to keep an acceptable reputation with superiors. According to court records, Parker’s commanding officer described him as a good worker with a “fairly clean” service record for assignments that included evacuating troops in Cambodia and Vietnam.

But Parker later admitted to injecting cocaine “five or six times a day” in 1975 and 1976, according to the probation report. By Feb. 18, 1980, he was in the hands of civilian authorities for raping the Tustin girl, and also was charged with robbing a 30-year-old Pasadena woman in her apartment complex garage and beating her with a pipe.

The Pasadena victim told police she acted as if she had fainted to avoid being hit again, when Parker started dragging her from her car. She said Parker hit her on the head another three or four times when she started screaming and chased her when she tried to run away. He was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and other charges.

Parker, 25 at the time, also confessed to raping the 13-year-old girl, whom he abducted on the day of her father’s funeral. He told two psychiatrists he had emotional problems around women, but denied ever having raped before, according to court records.

“Initially he denied any involvement in the [offense], then he stated he was too drunk at the time of the offense to remember anything,” Dr. Kaushal Sharma wrote in a 1980 report. “After that he changed his version and claimed ‘It was a sudden idea.’ His fourth explanation regarding the [offense] was, ‘I had always thought of raping women.’ ”

“I supposed I could not get along with women too good,” Parker told Dr. Seawright W. Anderson when asked why he’d never been married or had a girlfriend.

Parker was sentenced to six years in prison for the rape. Before sentencing, Sharma concluded that Parker was motivated by “antisocial and criminal tendencies” rather than mental illness, while Anderson said he believed the defendant had a personality disorder and should be treated at a mental hospital.

Parker, whose later criminal record includes another assault, burglary and bad check convictions, was in a Central California prison on a parole violation earlier this month when, authorities said, he was linked to the unsolved Orange County slayings through DNA evidence.

Authorities say they have DNA matches or other evidence linking Parker to the murders of Sandra Kay Fry, 17, of Anaheim; Kimberly Gaye Rawlins, 21, of Costa Mesa; Marolyn Kay Carleton, 31, of Costa Mesa; Debora Kennedy, 24, of Tustin; and Debra Lynn Senior, 17, of Costa Mesa. All were killed in 1978 or 1979.

He is also charged in the 1980 bludgeoning attack of 21-year-old Dianna Green and the murder of the full-term baby she was carrying. Kevin Lee Green of Tustin, who was convicted and imprisoned for 17 years in the attack on his now ex-wife, was freed from custody last week as a judge and prosecutors apologized for the mistake.

Police and U.S. Navy officials said they are investigating whether Parker may be responsible for more killings across the country.

Police said a DNA match also linked him to the 1979 rape and bludgeoning of a 24-year-old Costa Mesa optometrist who remains disfigured from the attack, but the three-year statute of limitations to prosecute the case has expired.