1 Man’s Faith in Another’s Trial

Kevin Lee Green spent more than 16 years in prison for crimes he didn’t commit--the brutal beating and rape of his pregnant wife and the killing of their unborn girl nearly 20 years ago.

But on Monday, he finally got the opportunity to see the man authorities say is the real attacker and the one responsible for their unborn baby’s death.

Green was in Santa Ana Superior Court while Gerald Parker went on trial on charges of raping and bludgeoning to death five Orange County women in 1978 and 1979 and the killing of Green’s unborn daughter.

Although Parker has pleaded not guilty to the charges, his lawyers said they will not contest the facts in the case on the chance that Parker may be convicted of a lesser crime. He faces a possible death sentence.

“Finally, they know that he’s done this,” Green said.

Green, who was in Orange County to film a documentary about his ordeal for a Dutch television station, showed a remarkable lack of bitterness for a man who spent almost half of his life wrongfully incarcerated.

He said that even though the system failed him, people shouldn’t lose faith in justice.

Green, 40, said he lectures at colleges and to law enforcement investigators about his experience so that similar mistakes will not be made.

“I am going along with other things in my life,” said Green, who has divorced his wife.

Inside the courtroom, Parker, 43, accused of being the “bludgeon killer,” sat motionless, staring straight ahead as attorneys presented their statements.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Jacobs laid out in a straightforward and chilling manner the charges against Parker.

According to Jacobs, Parker, a former staff sergeant at Marine Corps bases in Tustin and El Toro, was a sexual predator who roamed the streets of Orange County drunk and high on drugs looking for open windows or unlocked doors to women’s apartments. Once he found them, he would enter armed with a blunt object, strike his victims in the head and rape them.

The string of rapes went unsolved for 17 years, until advancement in DNA testing linked the cases.

Authorities suspected Parker, who had spent his life between prison and homelessness since a separate rape conviction in 1980. They interviewed him and drew blood samples that matched the DNA from semen samples collected at the crime scenes, Jacobs said. Finger and palm prints also matched Parker’s. DNA testing cleared Green in his case, and he was freed in June 1996.

Jacobs recounted in his opening statement that in one instance, the victim’s 9-year-old son approached Parker right outside the woman’s bedroom and said: “What’s wrong with my mother? What have you done to my mother?” Parker moved the boy aside and left the house and the boy dialed 911, but the woman, Marolyn Kay Carleton, 31, of Costa Mesa, later died, Jacobs said.

As Jacobs described the circumstances of each crime, victims’ relatives in the courtroom began to weep.

Sandra Kennedy, whose aunt, Debora Kennedy, 24, of Tustin, was killed in October 1979, said she once confronted Parker, who was indicted by a grand jury last year.

“Who hurt you so bad that you think you can do this to other human beings?” Kennedy said she asked him.

She saw a single tear from his eyes, she said. “His eyes were blank.”

Kennedy, embracing her uncle, Debora’s husband, just outside the courtroom, said that as a devout Christian she forgives Parker. But “we will never forget,” she said while wiping her tears.

Parker is also accused of raping and killing Sandra Kay Fry, 17, of Anaheim; Kimberly Gaye Rawlins, 21, and Debra Lynn Senior, 17, both of Costa Mesa.

“The evidence in this case is horrific,” Parker’s attorney James Enright said. “We are not contesting the fact that Mr. Parker committed these crimes.”

What Enright, and his co-counsel David A. Zimmerman, hope to argue is that Parker was under diminished capacity when he committed the crimes. The law of diminished capacity is no longer part of California’s criminal code, but it was in effect when Parker allegedly committed his crimes. According to the law, mitigating circumstances, such as being under the influence of drugs, could be grounds for the jury to convict the defendant on lesser charges, in this case, second-degree murder or manslaughter.

“Was this the act of a sober, rational man?” Enright asked jurors.

But Green called the strategy weak.

“I don’t buy it,” he said.