Ex-Marine Convicted of 6 ‘Bedroom Basher’ Murders

A former Marine staff sergeant was convicted Tuesday of fatally bludgeoning five Orange County women and killing the fetus of a sixth victim, whose husband served more than 16 years in prison for the attack.

A jury took just over two hours to find Gerald Parker guilty of six counts of first-degree murder, including the death of the fetus. Parker, 43, could face the death penalty when sentenced Nov. 2.

Five of the victims, between 17 and 31 years old, were killed in the so-called Bedroom Basher assaults in 1978 and 1979. The sixth woman, Dianna D’Aiello, who was nine months pregnant, survived the attack but her baby was stillborn.

Kevin Green, her husband at the time, was found guilty of the crime. He was released from prison in 1996 after DNA samples taken from Parker, who had been convicted of rape, were matched with traces from five unsolved crimes and the Green case. Green now lives in Missouri.

Outside Orange County Superior Court on Tuesday, family members of the victims said they were glad to see the conviction after nearly two decades. But some were still guarded.

“We got our verdicts, so we are halfway there,” said Newport Beach resident Jackie Bissonnette, whose sister Debra Lynn Senior, 17, was murdered 19 years ago today in her Costa Mesa apartment.

The other victims were Sandra Kay Fry, 17, of Anaheim; Kimberly Gaye Rawlins, 21, and Marolyn Kay Carleton, 31, both of Costa Mesa; and Debora Kennedy, 24, of Tustin.

The defense did not contest the overwhelming amount of physical evidence, including fingerprints and DNA matches, that eventually pointed to Parker as the killer.

Parker’s lawyers, David Zimmerman and James Enright, instead focused their case on his state of mind at the time of the crimes.

They argued that Parker, an admitted alcoholic and drug user, was heavily inebriated when he killed the victims and thus should have been convicted of second-degree murder. First-degree murder requires premeditation, which Zimmerman said Parker lacked.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Jacobs dismissed that claim as a “far cry” from the facts. “When he struck these six women over their heads, he knew exactly what he was doing,” Jacobs said. “When he removed their clothes and his, he knew what he was doing.”