McKinzie to Follow 11 County Men Who Have Been Sent to Death Row

Convicted killer Kenneth McKinzie is the 12th man sent to death row from Ventura County since 1978, when California reinstated capital punishment. Here is a look at the other men and their crimes:

11. Spencer Rawlin Brasure. He was convicted in August 1998 for torturing a Redondo Beach man on Sept. 7, 1996, by tying him to a makeshift electric chair. Brasure later burned Anthony Guest, 26, alive and left his body at a park near Gorman. Brasure was a resident of Hawthorne with a history of drug use.

10. Michael Raymond Johnson. He was convicted in 1997 for fatally shooting Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Peter Aguirre on July 17, 1996. The deputy was responding to a domestic disturbance call at the Meiners Oaks home of Johnson’s estranged wife when Johnson shot him at point-blank range. Prosecutors portrayed Johnson as cold-blooded, but the defense argued that he was mentally ill. His conviction is being appealed on allegations of prosecutor misconduct and has been sent directly to the California Supreme Court.

9. Mark Scott Thornton. He became California’s youngest death row inmate at age 20 when sentenced in May 1995. Thornton abducted and fatally shot Westlake nurse Kellie O’Sullivan during a carjacking on Sept. 14, 1993. O’Sullivan was on the way to pick up her son from school when Thornton confronted her outside a pet store. He forced her to drive with him to an isolated area in the Santa Monica Mountains, where he shot her.

8. Christopher Sattiewhite. He was convicted in 1994 for the kidnap-murder of Genoveva Gonzales, an Oxnard mother of four whose body was found in a drainage ditch Jan. 26, 1992. Gonzales was raped by a second man, Frederick L. Jackson, then Sattiewhite shot her three times in the head. Jackson also was convicted of murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

7. Gregory Scott Smith. He pleaded guilty in April 1992 to the kidnap-murder of a Northridge boy, 8-year-old Paul Bailly. At Smith’s penalty trial, defense lawyers argued that the Canoga Park day-care aide had the mind of a child and should not be executed. Prosecutors described Smith as a vindictive predator who took sexual pleasure in killing the boy and setting his body on fire.

6. Larry David Davis. He was sentenced to death in 1990 for the rape and murder of 20-year-old beauty queen Dawn Michelle Holman. Davis kidnapped her from outside an Oxnard grocery store Aug. 28, 1988. It was later determined that Holman tried to escape by jumping from a moving car, and running onto the San Buenaventura Golf Course, where Davis caught her. She was found strangled.

5. Tracy Cain. He was sentenced in 1988 for fatally bludgeoning his neighbors, William and Modena Galloway. Cain ran out of money while having a cocaine party and broke into their Oxnard home, where 63-year-old William Galloway was known to keep large sums of cash. Cain beat the couple to death with a rocking chair and took their money.

4. Curtis Fauber. He was sentenced in 1988 for killing businessman Tom Urell, 52, who had been selling Fauber and a friend, Brian Buckley, drugs. The pair broke into Urell’s Oxnard Shores home, found him asleep and tied him up. Using an ax he found in the house, Fauber fatally hit Urell in the head. Buckley pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

3. Theodore Francis Frank. He was given the death penalty for what has been described as one of Ventura County’s most horrific crimes: the 1978 murder of 2 1/2-year-old Amy Sue Seitz. The girl was kidnapped from the frontyard of her baby-sitter’s Camarillo home, bound hand and foot, raped, tortured and mutilated with locking pliers before being strangled. Her body was dumped in a drainage ditch in Topanga Canyon. Frank was arrested several months later after molesting an 8-year-old girl in Panorama City. He admitted to assaulting 100 to 150 children over a 20-year period. He was sentenced to death in Orange County, where the penalty phase of his trial was moved because of heavy publicity.

2. Robert Cruz McClain. He was sentenced to death in 1981 for the murder of 20-year-old hitchhiker Joni Kelley, whose body was dumped in a trash can near Santa Paula. McClain and his 18-year-old nephew, Theodore Willis, raped and shot Kelley. They later drove to Solano County, where they raped and killed a 31-year-old woman. Willis received life in prison. A federal court judge overturned McClain’s death sentence and he is now serving a life prison term.

1. Alejandro Gilbert Ruiz. He was convicted in 1980 for murdering his third wife, Tanya Staats, and later killing his fifth wife, Pauline Wachs, and her teenage son. Staats disappeared in 1974. Ruiz told police that his wife had left him. Three years later, Wachs and her son were found buried in a shallow grave in the backyard of their Piru home. Both had been shot in the head. Ruiz was convicted of first-degree murder in their deaths. He was convicted of second-degree murder for killing Staats, although her body was never found.