Some of America’s most notorious killers have been spared the death penalty by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday halting the death penalty in his state, providing reprieve for 737 death row inmates.
“The intentional killing of another person is wrong and as governor, I will not oversee the execution of any individual,” the Democrat said Wednesday. “Our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure.”
Newsom’s executive order will not permanently abolish the death penalty in the Golden State. The moratorium on executions will last while Newsom remains governor of California, and his successor could reverse course. Abolishing the death penalty in California can only be done through the state legislature or voter initiative. The state has not executed anyone since 2006.
Here are 10 men who will benefit from Newsom’s move:
Lonnie David Franklin Jr., 66, known as “the Grim Sleeper,” was convicted in 2016 of killing nine women and one teenage girl between 1985 and 2007, but investigators believe he is the one behind at least 25 murders. He became known as the “Grim Sleeper” because of the span of time between 1988 and 2002 where it appeared he wasn’t involved in any murders. According to the Los Angeles Times, Franklin sought out women who were prostitutes or suffered from drug addiction. After murdering them, he left their naked bodies in garbage cans or would abandon them on the road.
Laura Moore, who wasn’t named in the criminal complaint against Franklin, claims she survived a gunshot from Franklin after he picked her up at a bus stop in 1984. Moore, 21 at the time, shared the story in court in 2016 and said Franklin approached her at the bus stop, warned that “bad guys will pick you up,” and offered to drive her. After pressuring her to buckle her seat belt, he reached for a gun under the seat and shot her a total of six times. She eventually escaped and returned to safety.
Rodney Alcala, 75, is known as the “the Dating Game Killer” for his 1978 appearance on “The Dating Game,” was convicted of killing seven women and girls. Five of the victims were in California, and two were in New York. He confessed to killing more women, and investigators suspect he could have been responsible for more than 100 murders, according to the Fresno Bee. Some of his victims’ jewelry was recovered in his Seattle storage locker. Alcala, 75, remains at California State Prison, Corcoran.
Cary Stayner, 57, was convicted for killing four women within the span of five months near Yosemite National Park in 1999. Stayner, a handyman at the Cedar Lodge, strangled Cedar Lodge guests Carole Sund, 42, and sexually assaulted and killed her 15-year-old daughter Juli. A family friend of the Sunds from Argentina, Silvina Pelosso, was also strangled by Stayner, according to authorities. “I took her to the bathroom, put her in the bathtub and strangled her,” Stayner said in an audio confession about one of the murders. He is held at San Quentin Prison. Shortly after their murders, he decapitated 26-year-old Joie Armstrong before escaping to a nudist colony. A female member of the colony recognized him and informed the FBI about his location. He was sentenced to death in 2002 and remains at San Quentin Prison.
Scott Peterson, 46, who was convicted in 2004 for murdering his wife Laci and his unborn son Conner, originally reported his wife was missing on Christmas Eve, 2002. Police examined almost 10,000 tips in the investigation and looked at sex offenders as potential suspects, but Peterson was ultimately arrested after California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced that Laci and Conner’s bodies were found days earlier in the San Francisco Bay Area shore in April 2003. Peterson was sentenced to death in 2005 and is currently held at San Quentin Prison.
Richard Allen Davis, 64, who confessed in December 1993 he kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Polly Klaas, is a death row inmate at San Quentin Prison. Davis, who had already committed a long list of crimes and was violating his parole at the time of the kidnapping, abducted Klaas at knife point from her mother’s home in Petaluma, Calif., during a sleepover. Davis then strangled Klaas to death, and led authorities to her body two months after the incident. California’s Supreme Court denied his attempt to overturn his convictions and death sentence in 2009.
Marcus Wesson, 72, was convicted in 2005 of murdering nine of his children, all of whom were fathered by him and were born to his wife, daughters, and nieces. All nine of the children were shot at their home in Fresno, Calif., in March 2004, although it’s not likely that Wesson was responsible for using the weapon. Wesson promoted murder-suicide pacts, and Fresno County prosecutor Lisa Gamoian accused him of orchestrating the tragedy. After police arrived at the scene, they found the women and children piled on top of each other in one of the bedrooms. The lot where the murders occurred was sold to the state of California in 2016 for the state’s high-speed rail project. Wesson, who was sentenced to death in 2005 and to 102 years in prison for sexually abusing minors, remains at San Quentin Prison.
Edward Wycoff, 50, received the death penalty in 2009 for killing his sister and brother-in-law, Paul and Julie Rogers, with a knife and wheelbarrow handle. Wycoff said the attack, which happened at the Rogers’ home, was motivated by the couple planning to “destroy” him by not inviting him to holiday events, among other “petty slights,” per Judge John Kennedy. The couple had several children, including a son named Eric who argued in court in 2009 that it would be “irresponsible” to sentence Wycoff to death because he and his parents were against the death penalty. Even so, the judge sentenced Wycoff to death as Wycoff laughed.
Darnell Williams, 28, shot an 8-year-old girl named Alaysha Carradine during a sleepover with friends in 2013 in an attempt to avenge the death of his friend. Williams, who was 22 at the time of the incident, sought out the two children of the suspected killer in his friend’s case, Anthony Medearis. Clad in a bulletproof vest, Williams approached the children’s grandmother’s house where they were having a sleepover with Carradine. He rang the doorbell with his gun ready, and shot all the children once the door opened. Each of the three children were injured, and Carradine did not survive her injuries. Eight weeks later, Williams went after Medearis at a dice game in Berkeley and shot him in the back. He was sentenced to death in 2016 and remains at San Quentin Prison.
Charles Ng, 58, whose prosecution cost $13 million, was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing six men, three women, and two infants at a cabin in the Sierra Nevada with an accomplice, Leonard Lake, in 1984 and 1985. Authorities recovered more than 40 pounds of burned human remains at the site of the cabin, according to the Los Angeles Times. Authorities said a videotape was recovered called “The M Ladies” in which Ng and Lake demanded the women submit to becoming sex slaves or face death. Ng remains at San Quentin Prison. His accomplice Lake killed himself in 1985.
Joseph Naso, 85, a former photographer, was involved with the deaths of four women during the 1970s and 1990s. He earned the nickname the “Alphabet Killer” because his four victims’ all had double initials. Prosecutors said all four of Naso’s victims were sexually assaulted by Naso, who then strangled them and discarded their bodies on rural roads. According to Marin County Superior Court Judge Andrew Sweet, the murders were “sexual in nature, planned and deliberate.” Naso was sentenced to death in 2013 for three of the murders and received a life sentence for one of the murders.
Joseph James DeAngelo, 73, is accused of being the “Golden State Killer” but has not yet been tried. He is charged with a spree of rapes and at least a dozen murders between 1976 and 1986. If convicted and sentenced to death, he will not be executed unless the moratorium is lifted.
Infamous convicted murderer Charles Manson originally received the death penalty in California for murdering two people and planning the murders of seven others. But due to a temporary bar on the death penalty in California in 1972, his sentence was commuted to life with the possibility of parole. He died in 2017.
Newsom’s executive order came after California voters voted on a ballot initiative in 2016 to expedite executions, rather than ending the death penalty. President Trump accused Newsom on Wednesday of “defying voters” and said that “friends and families of the always forgotten VICTIMS are not thrilled, and neither am I.”
Altogether, California’s 737 death row inmates comprise approximately 25 percent of the nation’s death row inmates.
“I do not believe that a civilized society can claim to be a leader in the world as long as its government continues to sanction the premeditated and discriminatory execution of its people,” Newsom said Tuesday.
