13 on Death Row

Convicted killer Justin Merriman is set to become the 13th man sent to California’s death row from Ventura County since 1978, when California reinstated capital punishment. Here is a look at the other men and their crimes:

* Kenneth McKinzie was convicted in 1999 for strangling 73-year-old Ruth Avril during a botched robbery at her Oxnard apartment building Dec. 21, 1995.

* Spencer Rawlin Brasure was convicted in 1998 for torturing Redondo Beach resident Anthony Guest, 26, by electrocution and burning him alive on Sept. 7, 1996, at a campground in northern Ventura County.

* Michael Raymond Johnson was convicted in 1997 for fatally shooting Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Peter Aguirre on July 17, 1996, during a domestic disturbance call in Meiners Oaks.

* Mark Scott Thornton became California’s youngest death row inmate in 1995 when he was sentenced at age 20 for the murder of Westlake nurse Kellie O’Sullivan. She was fatally shot in the Santa Monica Mountains after Thornton abducted her during a carjacking Sept. 14, 1993.

* Christopher Sattiewhite was convicted in 1994 for shooting Oxnard mother Genoveva Gonzales, whose body was found in a drainage ditch Jan. 26, 1992. Gonzales was raped by a second man, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.

* Gregory Scott Smith, a Canoga Park day-care aide, pleaded guilty in 1992 to the kidnap-murder of 8-year-old Paul Bailly of Northridge. The child was sexually assaulted and set on fire near Simi Valley.

* Larry David Davis was sentenced to death in 1990 for the rape and murder of Dawn Michelle Holman, 20. Davis kidnapped her outside an Oxnard grocery store Aug. 28, 1988. She was found strangled.

* Tracy Cain was sentenced in 1988 for bludgeoning his neighbors, William and Modena Galloway, during a robbery at their Oxnard home, where William Galloway, 63, was known to keep large amounts of cash.

* Curtis Fauber was sentenced in 1988 for killing businessman Tom Urell, 52, who had been selling Fauber and a friend drugs. The pair broke into Urell’s Oxnard Shores home and Fauber hit him on the head with an ax.

* Theodore Francis Frank was sentenced to death for the 1978 murder of 2 1/2-year-old Amy Sue Seitz. She was kidnapped from the frontyard of her baby-sitter’s Camarillo home, raped, tortured and mutilated with locking pliers before being strangled. Her body was dumped in a drainage ditch in Topanga Canyon, and Frank was arrested 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.

* Robert Cruz McClain was sentenced to death in 1981 for raping and fatally shooting a young hitchhiker, Joni Kelley, and dumping her body in a trash can near Santa Paula. The crimes occurred in November 1979. A federal court judge overturned McClain’s death sentence in 1998. He is now serving life in prison.

* Alejandro Gilbert Ruiz 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.