Death penalty is upheld for Orange County serial killer
The California Supreme Court on Monday upheld the death penalty for Gerald Parker, known as the “Bedroom Basher” for terrorizing Orange County in the late 1970s in a string of home-invasion rapes and murders.
Parker was a staff sergeant based in Orange County for the U.S. Marine Corps in 1978 and 1979. During that time, five women in Anaheim, Costa Mesa and Tustin were raped and beaten to death in their apartments.
A sixth victim, D. Green, survived with brain damage, but her 9-month-old fetus, identified by the court as Chantal Green, was delivered stillborn.
Green’s husband, Kevin Lee Green, was wrongly convicted of the attack. He was imprisoned from 1980 to 1996, when DNA tests linked the victims to one another and to Parker.
Parker admitted during a police interrogation to burglarizing all six homes, but claimed he was intoxicated at the time and did not intend to kill the victims, identified by the court as: Sandra Fry, Kimberly Rawlins, Marolyn Carleton, Chantal Green, Debora Kennedy and Debra Senior.
An Orange County judge sentenced Parker to death in 1999.
Twitter: @mauradolan
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