Death of accused serial killer angers friend of victim
The death on Thursday of an accused serial killer awaiting trial on charges of murdering six people infuriated the friend of one of his alleged victims, who called him a “piece of slime.”
Itzcoatl “Izzy” Ocampo died after being found sick in his jail cell, authorities said. Ocampo, 25, was charged last year in a “serial thrill-kill” rampage in Orange County that left four homeless men and a woman and her son dead.
“All this guy did was take away from people,” said Ron Cady, a friend of Paulus “Dutch” Smit, a 57-year-old homeless man who was stabbed more than 60 times in December 2011 outside the Yorba Linda Library.
PHOTOS: Serial killer targets O.C. homeless
Cady, 52, wanted Ocampo to go to trial and said he was angry that the victims’ families would not get to see him brought to justice.
“Although I am a man of faith and believe there is ultimate justice, just the idea that he would have to go through and listen to every little detail of everything that was done and all the people that he affected, I think that is a form of punishment in itself and now he doesn’t have to go through that,” Cady said.
Cady, a truck driver, said Smit’s eldest daughter introduced him to her father several years ago when she brought him to Cady’s Garden Grove home for Thanksgiving dinner.
The men hit it off, he said, and had a lot in common. Cady said Smit gave him a new appreciation for the homeless and that they had shared Christmas dinner just days before Smit was killed.
Orange County prosecutors were seeking the death penalty against Ocampo, who was scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial hearing in January.
The Orange County district attorney’s office is investigating Ocampo’s death. An official cause of death is not likely for several weeks, a sheriff’s spokesman said.
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