Transient Gets Life Without Parole for Rape-Murder of Senior

Calling it a “coldblooded and senseless killing,” a judge sentenced a transient to life in prison without parole Friday for the 1994 murder and sexual assault of a 71-year-old Santa Ana woman in the bedroom of her apartment in a high-security complex for senior citizens.

Relatives of the slain woman, Patricia Hamilton Powell, said they are pleased Michael Dean Owens will never be free to harm any other family.

“Grandmas are not supposed to die this way,” Tiffani Trujillo, one of the victim’s granddaughters, told Superior Court Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon.

Powell was the first woman in Orange County to join the U.S. Marines during World War II, according to court records. She worked in the Marine postal system at Camp Pendleton during the war and moved to Santa Ana in the mid-1970s.

The defendant’s attorney had sought a lesser sentence, saying the slaying was indeed a tragedy but that his client suffered a long history of mental illness, including psychiatric hospitalization before and after his arrest.

Deputy Public Defender James Appel said Owens had been living on the streets for about 10 years and had no history of violence.

The trial prosecutor described Owens as a “career substance abuser” who made deliberate choices as he beat the elderly woman to death during a rape and burglary.

“Your honor, it doesn’t get any worse than that,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel McNerney told the judge.

Powell’s battered body was found April 28, 1994, in her 10th-floor apartment in the Wycliffe Plaza senior citizen complex on North Flower Street.

A member of the building’s volunteer security staff reported seeing a man--later identified as Owens--in the victim’s apartment about 1:30 a.m. that day when her smoke detector went off. The guard said the woman’s door was open, and he found a nude Owens standing on a chair in the kitchen, trying to put a pair of sweat pants over the smoke alarm. The guard left after questioning Owens, who told him he had burned pizza and egg rolls in the oven.

Two days later, police arrested Owens after spotting him on a Santa Ana street. He had left numerous fingerprints in the victim’s apartment and was still wearing a blood-splattered shirt. He was also wearing a blood-spattered blanket over his shoulders that belonged to the victim.

Owens was able to enter the building because he often visited an elderly friend in the complex and told a relative he was trying to steal food from Powell when she started screaming, according to the sentencing report. He also told authorities other versions of his actions, including delusions that the devil was trying to control his mind.

A jury in January found him guilty of first-degree murder during a burglary and an attempted rape, findings that made him eligible for the life sentence without parole.

A probation officer preparing the sentencing report said Owens “presents one of the most pitiable backgrounds imaginable,” including his adopted father’s death in the Vietnam War, and his mother’s suicide when he was 17.

He had been hospitalized in a psychiatric unit briefly in 1993 after Los Angeles police officers found him standing in the middle of the street, screaming and yelling at cars and hitting his head, according to the sentencing report.

After his murder arrest, he was treated at a state psychiatric hospital until doctors determined he was mentally competent to stand trial. He was diagnosed with amphetamine-induced psychosis and mood disorders, among other problems.

“Unfortunately he chose drugs and alcohol as a means of escaping his pain and confusion, further damaging an already tenuous mental and emotional balance,” Deputy Probation Officer Laura L. Vorie wrote in the sentencing report.