CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / SANTA ANA
A man convicted of raping and murdering an elderly Seal Beach woman during a 1980 burglary was sentenced to death Tuesday, authorities said.
After new DNA evidence surfaced in the cold case, a jury last June found Benjamin Wayne Watta, 63, formerly of Long Beach, guilty of one felony count of murder during the commission of rape and burglary. Jurors then voted for the death penalty.
Two days before Christmas in 1980, Watta raped, strangled and suffocated Simone Sharpe, 70, as she housesat for a neighbor, prosecutors said. Sharpe had been entering the home through an unlocked garage door to feed cats and collect mail. According to prosecutors, her son looked for her in the neighbor’s home the next night, where he discovered his mother’s body wedged against a bedroom wall.
The crime went unsolved for more than two decades until 2001, when an Orange County district attorney’s task force linked Watta’s DNA to the 1980 rape kit. Watta was extradited to Orange County from Florida, where he was in custody for shooting and attempting to kill his then-girlfriend.
Convicted Texas serial killer Henry Lee Lucas had confessed in 1986 to killing Sharpe. Lucas confessed to hundreds of unsolved murders, later recanting many of the confessions.
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