Jury Convicts Minister of Two Murders

Henry Hayes, a Baptist minister, was found guilty Tuesday of killing his 7-year-old daughter and his wife in their South Los Angeles home four years ago.

He told police and relatives that home invaders had killed his family while he was at work, and said his wife’s wedding ring was missing.

According to testimony, Hayes had cheated on his wife, fathering a child with another woman, and didn’t want his wife to tell because it would ruin his chances of becoming a minister at a larger church.

On Aug. 27, according to testimony, he held a shotgun to the back of his wife’s neck and pulled the trigger. When his daughter cried out, he shot her in the chest.

The fact that Hayes pawned his wife’s gold and diamond ring for $150 almost three weeks later was the key to his conviction of capital murder.

Jurors will return to Superior Court Judge Lance Ito’s courtroom on Thursday to decide Hayes’ punishment.

“After four years, we feel a sense of justice,” said Denise Harris, sister of the victim, Vangela Hayes, and aunt of the couple’s child, Teanna. “We feel relief.”

It took police nearly five months to arrest Hayes, who had founded a small storefront church in Long Beach in 1999, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Grace.

“A big piece of evidence came late in the game: the ring,” Grace said.

When Hayes was arrested Jan. 11, 2000, a pawnshop ticket for a woman’s 14-karat gold diamond ring was found in his pocket.

According to prosecutors, he had pried the ring off his wife’s finger, careful not to disturb any of the other jewelry she was wearing, before fleeing their home after the slayings.

Defense attorneys argued that the pawned ring didn’t prove murder, and that it might have turned up somewhere in the house afterward.

The couple had married in 1991. Vangela Hayes’ “big draw to Henry Hayes were his strong religious beliefs and his desire to be a man of God,” Grace said.