Killer Now Plans to Fight Execution

Condemned killer Bill Bradford, who had volunteered for execution Aug. 18, now wants to fight for his life so he can reconcile with his family, his lawyer said Thursday.

Recent visits from friends and relatives that ended his death row solitude played a major role in Bradford’s change of heart, according to attorney Jack Leavitt. Prison officials say that Bradford had not had a visitor for nine years before his execution date was set in late June.

In papers to be filed today in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Leavitt said Bradford, 52, had sought death “to end a lingering torment.” But news reports of his planned execution brought about an “unexpected” development--a series of reunions in San Quentin state prison’s visiting room with long-lost friends and family members, the documents say.

“Bradford and I recognize the popularly held view that death row inmates commonly manipulate legal procedures to exploit every possible twist and turn of events. But we assure this court that each of Bradford’s moves has been deeply felt and sincere, despite his recent change of position,” Leavitt wrote.

The lawyer said he mailed a notice of appeal, as well as requests for a stay of execution and appointment of legal counsel, on Thursday to the federal court in Los Angeles.

“I’m relieved,” said Bradford’s brother, Richard, who visited him at San Quentin on Saturday. “It’s really emotional. I won’t let it all set in at once. I don’t know how to handle it. There’s no rule books for a situation like this.”

It was Bradford’s second flip-flop in as many weeks, and followed an intense struggle between Leavitt, who says he has represented Bradford free of charge for more than a year, and capital punishment foes intent on winning Bradford’s confidence and a delay in his execution.

Volunteers long have been part of the capital punishment scene. After the death penalty was reinstated in the late 1970s, four of the first five men executed were volunteers.

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But few would-be volunteers make it to the death chamber the first time out. Most change their minds or find their executions stalled by legal action.

Bradford last month signed appeal papers after becoming upset at plans to move him from his cell. When the move was postponed, he took back the appeal and said he wished to be executed.

Bradford was convicted and sentenced to die in 1988 for the strangulation murders of Shari Miller, a 21-year-old barmaid, and his 15-year-old neighbor, Tracey Campbell. He lured both women to a remote campsite in the desert near Lancaster by promising to photograph them and help them build modeling portfolios.

Both slayings occurred during the first two weeks of July 1984. They were linked by photographs of Miller, then known to investigators as Jane Doe No. 60, standing in front of a distinctive, seal-shaped rock formation. The location of tattoos on her calf and abdomen corresponded to missing patches of flesh on a woman’s body found wrapped in a quilt and dumped in a parking lot in West Los Angeles.

Los Angeles police and sheriff’s detectives located the rock formation, and found Campbell’s remains there. Her face was covered with a print blouse witnesses said Miller had worn.

Police and prosecutors suspect Bradford is a serial killer responsible for at least a half-dozen other slayings dating back to the mid-1970s.

News reports about Bradford’s plans to die by lethal injection, court papers said, “produced an unexpected result”--the reappearance of people whom Bradford had not seen since his 1984 arrest. “Family and friends whom he had not seen for nearly 15 years--and in some cases, blood relatives he had never known--learned about his death row existence,” the papers say. “They wrote to him, talked to him by telephone and visited him, providing a supportive setting.”

According to Leavitt, Bradford decided against pursuing his death sentence after meeting with his daughter, who appeared distraught over the pending execution.

In an interview with The Times on Monday, Bradford said he was prepared to die because years of waiting for his sentence to be carried out had made life intolerable.

“I’m not bluffing. I have no choice in this matter,” he said. “It’s a hell of a decision to make. You have to argue with loved ones and friends.”

During the interview, he offered no words of remorse. He did not volunteer that he was innocent, but when asked, denied committing any murders. And he was adamant that he intended to die on Aug. 18.

Later on Monday, Bradford’s 23-year-old daughter visited him. She was trembling as she stood in a waiting room.

In e-mail messages to a Times reporter, she said Bradford had been writing to her, preparing her for his death for a long time.

“It is bizarre to know this visit is not only going to be a hello, but also a goodbye,” she wrote. “I often ask myself if this is going to be the one loss in my life that will crack me, or will it make me stronger?”

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But there is another side to the tragedy. Derrill Campbell, Tracey’s brother, said his life has been deeply affected by her murder and by their mother’s death shortly afterward. He believes their mother died of a broken heart.

“It really messed up my life a lot, too,” he said. “They were the two most important people in my life.”

“Me and [Tracey] were very close. We were like best friends. We were more than brother and sister. We did everything together.”

He said he became involved in scrapes with the law, and at one point seriously considered suicide. Now that he has straightened out his life--he has a wife and new baby--Campbell said he was looking forward to the execution as a way of putting the past behind him.

“I was hoping this would close things out,” he said. “I wish it would have happened. Oh well, I guess it will happen in another five or seven years.”