Posted on 03/13/2008 7:59:41 AM PDT by SmithL
VACAVILLE -- Condemned killer William Bradford, a double murderer who implied to his jury he had other victims, has died of natural causes while awaiting execution in a California prison. He was 61.
Bradford died Monday of natural causes at a prison medical facility in Vacaville, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement Wednesday. It did not elaborate on the cause of death.
Bradford was sentenced to death in 1988 for the murders four years earlier of Shari Miller, 21, who he met in a bar, and Tracey Campbell, 15, a neighbor.
He was an amateur photographer who lured the young women by promising them jobs as models.
Miller's body was found in a West Los Angeles parking lot in July 1984, and Tracey's body was found the next month at a campsite in a high desert area north of Los Angeles.
In the penalty phase of his trial, Bradford agreed with prosecutors that he should be executed, saying, "Think of how many you don't even know about."
In 2006, Los Angeles County Sheriff's investigators reopened Bradford's file and made public dozens of pictures of women and girls photographed decades earlier by Bradford. The pictures had been languishing in an evidence room since being seized from his home in 1984 when he was arrested in the Miller and Campbell murders.
Sheriff's investigators were able to identify many of the women in the pictures. Authorities suspect at least one of those identified was a homicide victim linked to Bradford, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Wednesday.
The investigation into Bradford's possible involvement in other disappearances will continue, Whitmore said.
"We will not stop until we have identified all the women and what has happened to them or confirmed their whereabouts or that they are alive and well," Whitmore said.
A message left with Robert R. Ryan, an attorney who represented Bradford in the past, was not immediately returned late Wednesday.
Bradford had been on death row at San Quentin State Prison since May 1988. It initially appeared he wanted to die, telling jurors he deserved the death penalty and filing papers saying he would not challenge his execution. He changed his mind days before he was due to be killed by lethal injection in 1998 and appealed his sentence.
Bradford's ex-wife Cindy Horton told a newspaper in 2006 that Bradford had physically abused her.
"There's not a day that goes by that I don't look in my rearview mirror in my car or my bathroom mirror and expect to see him there to kill me," she told The Grand Rapids Press in Michigan.
Satan: “May I take your coat?”
You are bad ...
20 years on death row. Sad to say, this seems like the norm. This really needs to change
Justice delayed is justice denied.
“The death penalty is no deterrant” the leftists say. Well, no, it isn’t, if you’re just as likely to die of natural causes as you are from “the needle”.
Thank you, thank you.
I’ll be here all week,
Rush commented on that. He said we averaged 17,000 murders each year. If there were 17,000 executions each year, you bet the death penalty would be a deterrent. What do we average, 50?
Prayers for a misguided soul.
Table for one in the smoking section.
“Will that be smoking or non-smoking? Ha, just kidding, here in Hell it’s all smoking.”
The trial switched midstream to a murder trial because mayor Cermak expired over the course of a couple weeks.
Our murderers live in terror, 'til they die of age.
-Ambrose Bierce
I think he’s referring to murderers who haven’t yet been caught. But it is applicable to today’s murderers who have.
"There's not a day that goes by that I don't look in my rearview mirror in my car or my bathroom mirror and expect to see him there to kill me," she told The Grand Rapids Press in Michigan.
You can stop worrying now honey, he won't be coming for you or anybody else ever again.
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