Death Penalty Cases in County

Ventura County death penalty cases since 1978, when capital punishment was reinstated in California:

* Diana Haun, 36, was found guilty of first-degree murder for kidnapping and fatally stabbing Sherri Dally, wife of her boyfriend, Michael Dally.

Haun was found guilty of luring Sherri Dally into a car, handcuffing her, hacking and stabbing her and then dumping her body into a remote ravine north of Ventura.

Although prosecutors had sought the death penalty, on Monday a jury recommended a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

*

Daniel Allan Tuffree, 50, was sentenced in March to 54 years in prison for the fatal shooting of Simi Valley Police Officer Michael Clark, 28.

Tuffree, an emotionally troubled man, shot and killed Clark, Simi Valley’s first officer to die in the line of duty, after the officer came to his home Aug. 4, 1995, to check on his well-being.

Defense attorneys argued that Tuffree had shot at Clark only after Clark initiated a gunfight.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty against the former Van Nuys High School teacher, but the trial ended in a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a verdict. Prosecutors settled for a second-degree murder conviction after the second trial.

*

Mark Scott Thornton, then 20, was sentenced to death in 1995 for the abduction and murder of Westlake nurse Kellie O’Sullivan.

Thornton abducted O’Sullivan, 33, from outside a Thousand Oaks shopping plaza on the afternoon of Sept. 14, 1993. He drove her up winding roads into the Santa Monica Mountains, where he shot her once in the chest and twice in the back.

Stealing O’Sullivan’s new Ford Explorer, Thornton drove to Simi Valley and had the name of his ex-girlfriend tattooed on his shoulder. He then kidnapped the girl and held her captive before his arrest five days later at a casino in Nevada.

Thornton, who lived in Thousand Oaks, when sentenced to death became the youngest person on California’s death row.

*

Christopher Sattiewhite, then 24, kidnapped and murdered Genoveva Gonzales, an Oxnard mother of four. Gonzales’ body was found in a drainage ditch along Arnold Road in Oxnard on Jan. 26, 1992.

The 30-year-old woman had been kidnapped by Sattiewhite and a second man, Frederick L. Jackson. Jackson raped her twice and then Sattiewhite shot her three times in the head.

Like Sattiewhite, Jackson was convicted of first-degree murder. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty against both Oxnard men, but in 1995 Jackson received life in prison without parole, though in 1994 Sattiewhite had been sentenced to death.

*

Gregory Scott Smith, then 23, was found guilty in April 1992 of kidnapping, raping and murdering an 8-year-old Northridge boy--Paul Bailly--and setting his body on fire near Simi Valley.

As recommended by the jury, the day-care aide from Canoga Park was sentenced to death in 1992. Smith never contested the charges against him, pleading guilty without a trial. At his penalty hearing, his lawyers contended that Smith had the mind of a child and called the defendant a “defective human being” who should not be executed. Prosecutors described Smith as a vindictive predator who took sexual pleasure in killing Paul. They contend that he purposely put extra gasoline on the boy’s face and groin to obliterate those parts of his body.

*

Larry David Davis, then 32, was sentenced to die in 1990 after being convicted of raping and murdering a local beauty contestant.

Dawn Michelle Holman, 20, had placed third in a Miss Ventura County pageant prior to her death. Davis kidnapped her from outside a grocery store on Channel Islands Boulevard at Victoria Avenue near Oxnard at 3 a.m. on Aug. 28, 1988.

Investigators later determined that, as Davis drove, Holman tried to escape from the moving vehicle. She apparently lacerated one of her lungs and cracked several of her ribs during her attempted escape.

She ran 160 feet onto the San Buenaventura Golf Course, where Davis caught her. She was found half-naked and strangled.

*

Tracy Cain, then 29, was arrested in 1986 for fatally bludgeoning his next-door neighbors, William and Modena Galloway. Cain ran out of money while having a cocaine party one night and broke into the victims’ house, where 63-year-old William Galloway was known to keep large sums of cash. Cain, a physically powerful man, kicked in the door leading into the couple’s house, grabbed a rocking chair and fatally beat William Galloway, who had gotten out of bed to search for the source of noises that had awakened him.

Cain then bludgeoned Modena Galloway, 55, with the same chair and left the couple’s house with their money. He was sentenced to death in 1988.

*

Curtis Fauber, then 31, was sentenced to death in May 1988 in a murder that revolved around drugs and money.

Fauber and a friend, Brian Buckley, robbed Tom Urell, 52, a business executive who had been selling them drugs, according to court testimony.

The assailants broke into the victim’s Oxnard Shores home, found Urell asleep in bed and tied him with duct tape. Using an ax he had found while ransacking the home, Fauber hit Urell in the back of the head with the blunt end of the weapon once or twice, prosecutors said.

*

Theodore Francis Frank, then 57, was given the death penalty for what has been described as one of the most horrific crimes in Ventura County history: the murder of 2 1/2-year-old Amy Sue Seitz in 1978.

The girl was kidnapped from the frontyard of her baby sitter’s house in Camarillo, bound hand and foot, forced to drink beer and then raped, tortured and mutilated with locking pliers before being strangled.

*

Robert Cruz McClain, then 52, was sentenced to death in 1981 for raping and fatally shooting a young hitchhiker, then dumping her body in a trash can at a park near Santa Paula. McClain, recently released from prison after serving time for sexually assaulting two 11-year-old girls, was with his nephew when they raped and fatally shot 20-year-old Joni Donnell Kelley. The men, along with a third man who testified against them, then drove to Solano County, where McClain and nephew Theodore Willis, then 18, kidnapped and killed a 31-year-old woman. They raped and strangled her and slit her throat.

*

Alejandro Gilbert Ruiz, then 54, was the first person in Ventura County to receive the death sentence after it was reinstated in California in 1978.

He was convicted in 1980 of murdering his third wife and later killing his fifth wife and her teen-age son.

Ruiz married Tanya Staats in 1972. Staats was developmentally disabled from a childhood car accident. Ruiz would leave her for weeks at a time and, when he returned, the two would get into fights, according to testimony.

Staats disappeared in 1974, and Ruiz told police that his wife had left him and that he did not know where she could be found. Three years later, Ruiz’s fifth wife and her 14-year-old son were found dead.

The bodies of Pauline Wachs and her son, Tony Mitchell, were found in a shallow grave in the backyard of their home in Piru, both shot through the backs of their heads. Also in the grave was a small figurine, which investigators described as a voodoo doll, with a pin stuck through it.