Woman’s Murderer Gets Death Sentence

A former Van Nuys plumber was sentenced to death Monday for killing his ex-girlfriend by burning her alive after she broke up with him.

San Fernando Superior Court Judge Warren Greene, who ordered the death penalty, called Donald Lewis Brooks Jr.’s killing of Lisa Kerr “heinous” and “reprehensible in every respect.”

Brooks, 35, stalked and threatened Kerr, 32, when she tried to reconcile with her husband, according to testimony.

He tried to strangle the Van Nuys woman and then put her in the back of a car, setting it on fire on the side of a freeway in Arleta in March 1999.

A jury convicted Brooks last month of first-degree murder and recommended the death penalty.

In court on Monday, Kerr’s friends and family spoke tearfully about how much they missed her, and directed angry comments toward Brooks, who never faced them.

“I will never forgive him. I hope he suffers,” Kerr’s grandmother Helen Sorena said.

Brooks has a history of abusive behavior. He once pointed a gun at an ex-wife and on another occasion held her head down in the bathtub while she was pregnant, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Gordon.

Defense attorney Ed Murphy unsuccessfully appealed to Greene for mercy, arguing that Brooks killed in the heat of passion.

“He was madly in love with her; that’s why he killed her,” Murphy said.