Jury Recommends Death Penalty in Rape, Strangling
A Long Beach man who raped and strangled a Los Alamitos woman during a robbery 12 years ago should be executed for his crime, an Orange County jury concluded Thursday after spending two days of deliberations.
Robert Mark Edwards, 36, exhaled deeply as the verdict was read. Some members of his family wept.
Edwards was arrested in 1993 and convicted for a similar crime involving a 67-year-old woman in Hawaii. That murder led Orange County prosecutors to press charges against him for the 1986 slaying of Marjorie E. Deeble, 55, a real estate agent whose daughter had dated the defendant.
In 1996, a jury convicted Edwards of murdering Deeble but deadlocked in favor of the death penalty. The Orange County district attorney’s office decided to retry the case.
Deputy Public Defender Tim Severin argued that Edwards had been remorseful and had tried to recover from a drug and alcohol addiction that, according to the defense, drove Edwards to commit the crimes.
Deeble and the victim in Hawaii, Muriel E. Delbe, were beaten, mutilated and strangled, and both had been sexually assaulted with cans of hairstyling mousse, prosecutors said.
Edwards was sentenced to six consecutive life terms for his conviction in Hawaii. Sentencing in the Deeble case is set for July 17.
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