Man gets death penalty in 1988 murder of pregnant woman
A man who raped and murdered a pregnant woman in her Costa Mesa home a quarter of a century ago was sentenced to death Friday.
Jason Michael Balcom strangled and stabbed 22-year-old Malinda Gibbons in the chest on July 18, 1988.
Her husband, Kent Gibbons, found his wife dead in their apartment, bound and gagged with his neckties. Police said she had been sexually assaulted.
At the time of the crime, Balcom, then 18, was living with his mother and aunt in a Costa Mesa motel less than a mile away from the apartment. He had been released from juvenile hall just weeks before the murder.
Investigators cracked the cold case more than a decade later when DNA evidence linked Balcom, now 43, to the crime.
Balcom’s DNA was entered into a nationwide database in 2004 after he was convicted of rape in Michigan, where he and his mother moved after the murder.
He was serving a 50-year prison term when Orange County prosecutors extradited him to stand trial.
In 2012, an Orange County jury convicted Balcom of first-degree murder with sentencing enhancements for murder during commission of sodomy, rape, robbery and burglary. But jurors deadlocked on whether to recommend the death penalty.
A second jury recommended the death penalty last year, a decision that was affirmed in Superior Court on Friday.
Twitter: @jeremiahdobruck
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