Man Is Found Guilty of ’79 Killing

A man with child molestation convictions in four states spanning four decades was convicted Tuesday of the first-degree murder and molestation of a Costa Mesa boy whose disappearance remained a mystery for almost two decades.

James Lee Crummel’s sentencing hearing will begin Monday at Riverside County Superior Court.

The 60-year-old Crummel, who is serving a life sentence for molestation, faces the death penalty for killing 13-year-old James “Jamie” Trotter.

The boy was last seen in April 1979 when he said goodbye to his mother and headed to board a city bus.

The convicted sex offender gave Trotter alcohol before taking him to a remote, wooded area off Ortega Highway in the Santa Ana Mountains where he sexually assaulted and killed him, according to testimony.

In 1990, Crummel told authorities that he found human bones while hiking. The one-time cook was charged with Trotter’s slaying in 1997 after the remains were identified as those of the boy.

In closing statements, defense attorney Mary Ann Galante said that while she understood the dislike Crummel had generated with his previous crimes, it was preposterous to think that he would turn in his murder victim’s remains to authorities.

Crummel, who also had worked as a psychiatric assistant, was convicted in 1999 and is serving a life sentence for molesting an Orange County teen being treated by a psychiatrist friend.

Galante said lingering doubt in the Trotter case should keep the jury from handing down a death sentence.

Except for a jailhouse informant’s testimony that Crummel admitted to smothering Trotter, she said, “all they have on [Crummel] is a skull, his living in the area [of Trotter’s disappearance] and his bad past.”

Galante also said that the jury should take into account that Crummel has brain damage.

The Riverside County coroner first ruled the remains Crummel found were of a teenage girl, but then amended its finding in 1996 after matching Trotter’s dental records to them.

“We felt, with that shoebox of bones, that we had closed one chapter of the case, but that we had only begun the next chapter of how he got up there,” said Costa Mesa Police Detective Paul Cappuccilli after the verdict was read.

Crummel was charged with Trotter’s killing in June 1997, after investigators confirmed Crummel lived in Costa Mesa at the time of Trotter’s disappearance and that he had sex with boys in remote areas off Ortega Highway.