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07-12-2013, 06:01 PM
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Super Glue, Homemade Electric Chair and a Torch..
THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, S072949 v. SPENCER RAWLINS BRASURE, Ventura County Defendant and Appellant. Super. Ct. No. CR424212A ...............Johnson twice heard a buzzing, crackling sound, followed by a moan or whimper. Guided into the red room by Davis, she smelled burning skin and saw Guest lying across a chair, his hands and feet tied together behind him and his mouth covered with duct tape. Defendant was standing in front of him, holding a wire or rod attached to a car battery, which was strapped to a large dolly. Defendant touched the wire or rod to Guest’s skin. Guest jerked and cried, and Johnson smelled his skin burn. Defendant told her to bend down and lookGuest in the eye. She saw there was a bump on his forehead, his nose was bloody, and he looked scared and hurt. There were 10 to 12 red spots on his body where he had been burned with the rod. Defendant laughingly asked Johnson if Guest looked like a bitch. Afraid, Johnson answered that he did, then went into a smaller side room to see Rodriguez. asked how long this had been going on, Rodriguez said a couple of hours. While talking to her, Johnson heard the buzzing sound several more times, followed by Guest moaning. She also heard the voices of defendant, Davis and Matt Ormsby. ..........................Defendant said that after taking Guest from the fast-food restaurant parking lot at gunpoint, they took him to Davis’s house and tied him up in the homemade “electric chair.” He offered Guest a hit of methamphetamine, then shoved the glass pipe into Guest’s mouth. Both he and Davis, defendant noted, burned Guest with a torch. They also used Krazy Glue to glue Guest’s eyes shut. Later, defendant recounted, they took him in a van to a spot near Gorman, dumped him on the ground — causing his eyes to pop open and show his expression of pain — and doused him with gasoline. Defendant complained to Davis that because “none of you guys had a lighter,” he had to use a flare from the van to set Guest alight. After providing this information to law enforcement officers, March received benefits in two of his own cases. Lago testified defendant told him he had made an electric chair, used it over the course of several days on a man, then taken the victim to “the desert” in Ventura County and set him on fire. Defendant was laughing and “getting kicks” out of this story as he told it. Rivera testified defendant told him he had used a car battery, transformer and jumper cables (which belonged to Rivera) to inflict pain on Guest (“the short dude with the Boston accent”), then taken the victim, whom defendant referred to as “white trash,” to the desert. Luna testified defendant told him he had made an electric chair and had electrocuted and killed a man who had gotten out of line. |
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#5
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07-22-2013, 01:27 PM
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Re: Super Glue, Homemade Electric Chair and a Torch..
Threatening witnesses and disobeying a court order The prosecution presented evidence that while in jail on murder charges defendant wrote several letters to his friend Noreen Donaldson. In one, defendant asked Donaldson to give a copy of a “rat list” to another person, continuing, “Ricardo Rivera, James Luna, Joey March, Richard Lago, Scott Crosby are main rats that need to be killed ASAP before my next court date, July 16, 1997.” In another, defendant said he hoped Donaldson was “helping me out with spreading the Joey March and Billy story and taking care of the rats.” In a third, he instructed her to “type a letter to Lago stating that we (Hells Angeles) [sic] have located his son Steve. He’d better not testify in court on our family friend Spencer . . . . We are watching and there is no escape.” Donaldson testified she received several letters apparently signed by defendant asking that Billy Davis, Richard Lago, Sandra Johnson, James Luna and Joey March be killed. She showed some of them to defendant’s brother, Chad Brasure. She also tried to hand deliver a letter from defendant to Nestor Largaespada, but Largaespada refused to accept it, having (he testified) heard on the street that there was a rat list and believing he was on it. Richard Lago testified he received telephonic threats against his life and that of his son if he testified. A small explosive device was also thrown into his driveway by people directed by Chad Brasure. Sandra Johnson testified that when she appeared in the same courtroom as defendant, she heard him tell another person that she, Johnson, was a “rat” who was trying to get him convicted of murder. In May 1997, a superior court judge, with defendant present incourt, ordered that he not be allowed to send letters from jail except to his attorneys. In September and October 1997, defendant nonetheless sent letters to Billy Davis and another person. Theft and arson of a plumbing company van Rangers at the Hungry Valley SVRA saw smoke and found a burning van on September 6, 1996, outside a campground (a different one than where Guest’s body was later found). Automobile and plumbing parts were scattered around, and defendant’s palm print was on the driver’s side mirror. |