Chelsea King -- Found Deceased 3/2/10 -- UPDATE: John Albert Gardner III admits he murdered Chelsea

Another Gardner incident with police revealed

By Kristina Davis, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Published May 5, 2010 at 12:27 p.m.
Updated May 5, 2010 at 4:27 p.m.

An Escondido police officer contacted John Albert Gardner III in April 2009 after a young woman complained that he’d been following her in a car all day, according to a search warrant affidavit unsealed Wednesday.

It is unclear what, if any, action was taken against him.

The information was among four search warrant affidavits unsealed by a judge in San Diego Superior Court Wednesday following a request by The San Diego Union-Tribune and other local media.

The search warrants, filed in March, were seeking cell phone records of calls Gardner made or received between Feb. 1, 2009, and Feb. 29, 2010. The result of the phone searches was unclear. Documents returned with the search warrants say, “No evidence recovered.”

The stalking incident is the latest to be disclosed in a string of similar reports possibly involving Gardner, a registered sex offender who pleaded guilty to raping and murdering Amber Dubois, 14, of Escondido, on Feb. 13, 2009, and Chelsea King, 17, of Poway, on Feb. 25. Gardner, 31, is set to be sentenced May 14 to life in prison without the chance of parole.

On April 2, 2009, a woman who looked to be about 20 years old flagged down an officer and pointed to a gray vehicle, saying it had been following her around all day for no reason, according to the affidavit.

The officer quickly contacted the driver as the vehicle tried to drive away, and the officer identified the man as Gardner.

The officer went back to talk to the woman but found she’d left without giving her name. The warrant does not mention what happened to Gardner or if he was investigated further. A police report was made on the incident, the warrant states.

Escondido police declined to comment on any aspect of their investigation into Amber or Gardner, saying it is still considered an ongoing investigation until next week’s sentencing.

Amber’s father, Moe Dubois, said Wednesday that he doesn’t blame the police officer but instead looks at the incident as another failure of the criminal justice system that needs to change.

“There were so many times when he could have been put back in prison,” Dubois said.

“It wouldn’t have mattered in Amber’s case. Could it have helped Chelsea? Who knows?”

The document also mentions that there have been other prior incidents involving Gardner and females, including one in Escondido in February 2010. The circumstances of that incident have not been made public.

Gardner lived in an apartment complex on Rock Springs Road in Escondido — about two miles from Escondido High School — from August 2008 to January 2010. There are reports he’d also spent some months as a transient in the area, living out of his truck. Gardner is required to register every year with local police, or every 30 days as a transient, due to his sex offender status for a 2000 molestation conviction.

Escondido police has said previously that officers had made contact with Gardner at least eight times since January 2008 as part of his offender status in the city. The contact involving the stalking report was never mentioned.

Amber disappeared while she walked to Escondido high the morning of Feb. 13, 2009. Gardner confessed to authorities that he raped and stabbed her to death that day and buried her in a remote hilltop north of Pala. Amber’s whereabouts were a mystery for more than a year until Gardner led investigators to her body after his arrest in Chelsea’s death.

Gardner told authorities that he snatched Chelsea as she jogged near Rancho Bernardo Community Park on Feb. 25 and raped her and strangled her. Her body was found in a grave on the shore of Lake Hodges five days later.

Numerous reports of Gardner possibly stalking other victims have also surfaced.

Gardner has pleaded guilty to assault with intent to rape in the attack of a jogger, Candice Moncayo, near Lake Hodges on Dec. 27.

In the days after Chelsea went missing, an 11-year-old girl told San Diego police that she was possibly being stalked by a man in a black car as she walked home from Bernardo Heights Middle School on Feb. 24. She identified the driver as Gardner.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office is also investigating a kidnapping attempt in October in Lake Elsinore, about four miles from Gardner’s grandmother’s house. The driver of a gold Pontiac reportedly pulled up to a girl as she was walking to a friend’s house, asked for directions, then pointed a gun at her and demanded she get in. She ran away. The composite sketch closely resembled Gardner, and he had a similar car at the time.

Riverside sheriff’s officials said Wednesday that no arrests have been made in that case, and it was unknown if Gardner has been named a suspect.

Staff writer J. Harry Jones contributed to this report.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/05/another-gardner-incident-police-revealed/

California law mandates chemical castration of certain offenders

Posted: May 06, 2010 10:21 PM EDT

The debate over chemical castration of sex offenders is back in the public eye following the murders of Amber Dubois and Chelsea King. In fact, California already has a law on the books that mandates chemical castration of certain offenders.

In 1996, Gov. Pete Wilson signed into law a bill that mandated chemical castration of repeat sex offenders in California. The law says, in part:

"Any person guilty of a second conviction of any (forcible sex) offense… where the victim has not attained 13 years of age, shall, upon parole, undergo (chemical castration)."

The term "chemical castration" is actually a misnomer, because the offender is not physically castrated. Instead, he receives monthly injections of the same hormone women take for birth control -- Depo-Provera -- which lowers testosterone levels and sex drive.

Psychiatrist Michael Lardon says it can be effective for some sex offenders.

"Sometimes we'll find individuals with very high testosterone levels and they don't know how to control their sex drive. That's the group that chemical castration is effective in decreasing recidivism and re-offense," Dr. Lardon said.

By law, the Department of Corrections is supposed to administer chemical castration of sex offenders. A spokesperson told News 8 she has no information showing the program is actually being implemented on a widespread basis. Doctor Lardon says that's a good thing.

"When we make some broad law that says everybody that has committed any level of pedophilia is automatically chemically castrated, we start to move into an era of Nazism," Dr. Lardon said.

The hormones can also have serious side effects, like bone loss or liver damage.

"If you look at 100 sexual offenders, it's only a very small percentage that chemical castration is really effective," Dr. Lardon said.

Chemical castration is not permanent. Once the injections stop, testosterone levels go back up, and the offender's sex drive returns.

http://www.cbs8.com/Global/story.asp?S=12443091

Judge Slams Other Judge Over Chelsea King, Amber DuBois Deaths

Judge DeAnn Salcido Says She 'Can No Longer Remain Silent'

By: LAUREN PEARLE
May 7, 2010



A San Diego judge accused her fellow judges today of mishandling criminal cases and said the murders of Chelsea King and Amber DuBois might have been prevented if their killer had been kept in prison for a prior sex offense.

Superior Court Judge DeAnn M. Salcido, during a news conference today, put particular blame on supervising judge Peter Deddeh who approved the sentence of convicted sex offender John Gardner, who has since pleaded guilty to raping and killing the two young women. She provided ABC News with a copy of her prepared comments.

Deddeh "put two young girls on a deadly collision course with a convicted child molester," Salcido said of the tragedies she believes might have been prevented by a tougher sentence.

In 2001, Deddeh signed off on a plea deal that gave Gardner a six year prison sentence for molesting and beating a 13-year-old neighbor he lured to his house. He was released after five years despite a probation report that called Gardner a predator and risk to society.

While on parole, he committed several crimes, including marijuana possession, and violated his parole by opening a MySpace account and living too close to a school. Those offenses could have sent him back to prison.

Shortly after his release, Gardner raped and killed King, 17, and DuBois, 14. He has confessed to both murders and is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

Salcido announced today that she is taking the unprecedented step of asking a California appellate court to force San Diego judges to "follow the law" and stop harassing her for trying to do so.

She accused Deddeh and other colleagues of rubber-stamping too lenient plea deals and failing to impose mandatory probation conditions such as protective orders, firearm prohibitions, and anger management counseling that are designed to protect public safety.

"This pattern of behavior by Judge Deddeh and others shows a reckless disregard for human life," Salcido said.

"I can no longer remain silent," the judge said in a press conference.

Salcido said that from her first days on the bench, she was told by seasoned judges to "go along to get along" and quickly dispose of sex abuse and domestic violence cases by accepting hurried plea deals and ignoring mandatory probation conditions for violent offenders.

"Chevy Justice" Versus "Cadillac Justice"

When she complained to Deddeh, he told her to just "dispense of 'Chevy justice' and let the other courtrooms dispense of 'Cadillac justice,'" she alleged in court filings. Deddeh explained that they need to get through numerous trials with limited resources and save money and time for "more important" cases, Salcido said.

But Salcido said that even with misdemeanor domestic violence cases, "everyone is entitled to the same justice or it is not justice. The administration cannot tolerate such distinctions."

In an email Salcido included in her legal papers, Deddeh allegedly wrote: "As we discussed the other day, our goal in D-3 is to expeditiously move defendants through the calendar and resolve their cases with the fewest # of court hearings possible….we need to do what we can to limit the # of times our staff has to touch a file." Salcido told ABC News that although her actions today might cost her her job, "public safety is the issue, not my career."

"I hope to increase judicial awareness and prevent judges from recklessly disregarding the laws as they have been," Salcido told ABC News.

Deddeh was not immediately available for comment.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/judge-blasts-judges-chelsea-king-amber-dubois-deaths/story?id=10578486

Signatures Sought for Chelsea's Law

By GENE CUBBISON
Updated 11:45 AM PDT, Fri, May 7, 2010



Governor Schwarzenegger is on board with it. Ditto for Assembly Speaker John Perez.

The Assembly's Public Safety Committee endorsed it last month on a 5-0 bipartisan vote.

And there's such popular momentum that behind it that Assembly Bill 1844, known as "Chelsea's Law", would seem a slam dunk to become part of the California Penal Code.

It targets violent sexual predators for longer prison terms -- including one-strike, life without parole for child molesters whose victims are under 14 -- and stricter parole conditions.

AB 1844 is named for 17-year-old Chelsea King, the Poway High cross-country runner and band musician who was raped and fatally strangled in late February by 31-year-old John Albert Gardner III, a paroled sex offender who's pleaded guilty to King's murder and that of 14-year-old Amber DuBois of Escondido last year.

Gardner faces a plea-bargained, no-parole life prison term when he's formally sentenced May 14th.

But backers of "Chelsea's Law" aren't presuming it'll get the Legislature's stamp of approval and the governor's signature -- at least in its present form.

They're now taking their case to the court of public opinion, because "pushback" is materializing as the bill heads for an Assembly Appropriations Committee later this month.

Concerns about its potential costs, along with criticism that it emphasizes punishment over treatment and rehabilitation, have been raised by groups such as the California Coaltion Against Sexual Assault, American Civil Liberties Union and California Public Defenders Association.

Their lobbyists are looking to shape the measure in ways that better suit their objectives.

So the bill's author, Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher (R-75th District), has just launched a petition campaign seeking at least 20,000 signatures in support of Chelsea's Law.

"The petition drive has just been amazing," Fletcher marveled in an interview Friday. "Our office has been overwhelmed with an outpouring of support. I've talked to people that are going to their doughnut shops, the malls, to circulate petitions."

Fletcher said he's open to suggested improvements in the bill.

"If there are refinements that we can make that are better and are consistent with the intent, we'd certainly look to go in that direction," he said. "But we are not going to water down this bill just to get a bill passed. It has to be real and it has to be substantive ...

"At the end of the day, if the Legislature is unresponsive, we'll do an initiative. But legislation is a better way to go. You get a better law that way."

Fletcher is teaming up with "Chelsea's Light" -- a nonprofit foundation created by King's parents, Brent and Kelly -- in sponsoring the petition drive.

The petition and its signatures will be submitted to upcoming Assembly and State Senate committee hearings as official testimony on behalf of AB 1844.

"This petition," the Kings said in a statement, "will enable Californians to gather our voices behind a singular initiative for children who don't have a voice of their own in our legislative process."

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/politics/Signatures-Sought-for-Chelseas-Law-93109674.html

Memorial Takes Shape at Site Where Chelsea Was Found

By ERIC S. PAGE and TONY SHIN
Updated 4:02 PM PDT, Fri, May 7, 2010



A slain Poway teenager is still being memorialized at a spot in Rancho Bernardo Community Park.

Chelsea King, 17, was murdered in the park after she went out for a run on Feb. 25. Her body was found a few days later, on March 2, by searchers in the park not far from the shore of Lake Hodges. At the time she was found, the area was largely overgrown, but as crime-scene investigators worked the site, the area where the shallow grave was located was denuded.

Since then, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mourners and curiousity-seekers have sought out the spot, some leaving crosses and flowers at the scene. On a recent night, many of the people walking by stopped and spent a few quiet moments before they moved on.

One woman who stopped by with her husband said Chelsea's killing has "torn this community into shreds." She said she had to go to the spot just to "let Chelsea know that she will always think about her."

John Gardner, who was arrested shortly after Chelsea's body was found, later confessed to the teen's murder and also to the killing of Escondido teenager Amber Dubois, 14, who was killed on Feb. 13, 2009. He is expected to be sentenced next week to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local-beat/Memorial-Takes-Shape-at-Site-Where-Chelsea-Was-Found-93157989.html

Gardner can’t count on an early demise

By Michael Stetz, UNION-TRIBUNE COLUMNIST
Sunday, May 9, 2010 at 12:04 a.m.

John Albert Gardner III thinks he’ll be dead within five years of going to the Big House.

Baloney.

Gardner raped and killed two teenage girls, Escondido’s Amber Dubois and Poway’s Chelsea King. He’s considered scum, not just by us, but by his soon-to-be neighbors at one of California’s fine incarceration spots.

But there’s a good chance he won’t be dispatched by anyone, regardless of what he said during a recent interview with Channel 8.

That’s when he made his big claim about his imminent death. Asked why he expects that, he replied, “You don’t know how prison works, do you?”

Gardner, 31, spent five years in state prison for molesting and beating a 13-year-old Rancho Bernardo girl in 2000, so he does know life behind bars. But is he overstating his likelihood of a sharp spoon to the spleen?

“In the old days, he wouldn’t last a month,” said Paul Sutton, a criminal justice professor at San Diego State University who has studied state prisons extensively.

But in today’s prison system, there are “sensitive-needs yards.” Inmates who are targets — such as child molesters and former gang members and convicted cops — are housed there.

“They can put him in places where he’ll be relatively safe,” Sutton said. “He’s going to be with people who hate his guts, but nobody’s going to mess with him, not in there.”

That’s because being locked up in a sensitive-needs yards is considered “soft time” and inmates think twice about jeopardizing that, Sutton said.

Since his arrest, Gardner has been in isolation in the San Diego County Jail downtown. He’s slated to be sentenced to life without parole on Friday, a deal brokered by his attorneys to avoid the death penalty.

Gardner, in the TV interview, said he had nothing to do with that legal move. He even said he would have been better off on death row because he’d be in a single cell.

Sutton scoffed at that. Prisoners on death row do hard time because they’re so isolated and constrained.

“There’s nothing nice about it,” he said. “He’s an idiot if he thinks they have it better.”

Molesters have been whacked by fellow inmates, no question, particularly if they are kept in the general population.

Shannon Lee Graling had his throat slashed by an inmate in a Sacramento prison in February 2008 as he was pushing a laundry cart through a yard. He was serving 400 years for sodomizing a 10-year-old boy, which was his second sex-offense conviction. He had survived 11 years in prison.

In May of 2008, Donald Jones, who was doing 20 years for sodomizing a child younger than 14, was stabbed to death by six fellow inmates at Salinas Valley State Prison. He had served 13 years.

The molesters aren’t just killed. In an Indiana prison, Anthony Stockelman, who sexually assaulted and then drowned 10-year-old Katie Collman, had the words “Katie’s Revenge” crudely tattooed on his forehead by another inmate four years ago.

So, yeah, maybe Gardner has something to fear. Or maybe not.

“They (inmate murders) don’t happen that often,” said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

California has a prison population of 166,000. In 2006, the last year for such statistics, 14 inmates were murdered. The year before, it was 17.

Like Sutton, Thornton noted that Gardner probably won’t be housed with the general population but in the sensitive-needs yard, given his notoriety and crimes.

Not every sex offender is housed in such yards, she added. Inmates who feel threatened or have come under attack can seek the protection. Famous and rich people are housed there, too.

Phil Spector, the music producer convicted of killing actress Lana Clarkson, is in such a yard. So is Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy in 1968.

And they’re still with us.

So is Craig Peyer, a former CHP officer who pulled over 20-year-old San Diego University student Cara Knott in 1986 and then beat and strangled her. He is serving 25 years to life.

Gardner could ask to be transferred to a prison out of state, Thornton said. Some notorious prisoners do that. The prison population in a different state might not be as aware of the crimes they’ve committed.

Gardner knows how the system works. When doing time originally, he was placed in the general population. But he told authorities he felt threatened and got moved to a different prison.

“He knows what to do,” Thornton said. “I think that’s a safe assumption.”

Forget what Gardner says. He won’t last five years? Oh please. He knows he may very well live to be an old man.

And if I’m wrong, well … good.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/09/gardner-cant-count-on-an-early-demise/

Backing up to the judge stepping forward and speaking her mind, more power to her. I hope the process will be changed and they stop hurrying these cases through the system with a plea deal for shorter prison sentences. The laws are there, use them. Making light of these monsters actions is a crime in itself.

Livestream of John Gardner sentencing.

Today
4PM Eastern/1PM Pacific

http://www.10news.com/video/15013365/index.html

J4A... thank you so much for posting the link to the sentencing. I watched and it broke my heart for these young girls and their families.

I particularly appreciated parts of Chelsea's father's comments during his victim impact statement. How hard that must have been for all of them. They are all very brave facing this evil monster.

When Candace Moncaya made her comment something to the effect of "how is your nose?", the look of rage on Gardner's face was frightening.... and it happened so quickly. Probably just a taste of what Amber, Chelsea, and even Candace, experienced..... Only moments before, he was crying during Amber's video tribute.

My heart is so heavy now.

John Gardner Sentenced To Life In Prison For Murders, Rapes
Gardner Pleaded Guilty To Killing Amber Dubois, Chelsea King

POSTED: 4:01 am PDT May 14, 2010
UPDATED: 2:40 pm PDT May 14, 2010



SAN DIEGO -- A sex offender convicted of killing two teenage girls in San Diego County has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

John Albert Gardner cried Friday as the girls' families took turns at the podium addressing him during his sentencing hearing in San Diego.

Gardner reached a plea deal last month that spared him a possible death penalty. He admitted raping and murdering 14-year-old Amber Dubois last year and 17-year-old Chelsea King in February.

He also pleaded guilty to attempting to rape a jogger near the spot where he attacked Chelsea.

Gardner's guilty plea last month to killing Dubois and King has sparked a far-reaching review of how California deals with sex predators, a campaign that advocates hope to take to Washington and other state capitols.

Calls to stiffen penalties for child sex offenders began almost the moment Gardner was arrested Feb. 28, three days after he attacked Chelsea on an afternoon run in San Diego, strangled her, and buried her in a shallow, lakeside grave.

Gardner served five years of a six-year prison sentence for beating and molesting a 13-year-old girl in San Diego in 2000. He faced a maximum of nearly 11 years in prison, but prosecutors called for six years.

A court-appointed psychiatrist urged the maximum sentence allowed by law. He said in court documents that Gardner was a "continued danger to underage girls" and "an extremely poor candidate" for treatment.

Maurice Dubois, Amber Dubois's father, says in a statement to be read Friday that psychiatrist Dr. Matthew Carroll "was the only one who saw Gardner for what he is, a dangerous predator interested in young girls."

In the statement, Dubois likens his daughter's killer to a mountain lion, whose instincts are to stalk and attack. If the zoo keeper frees the lion from captivity, he asks, who is responsible for the killings that come after?

Dubois heaps blame on the criminal justice system.

"It's obvious the legal system failed us here, with all of the missed opportunities that ultimately allowed this monster to stalk our streets and harm our loved ones," Dubois writes in his statement, released Thursday in San Diego Superior Court.

The case has put California's parole system under the microscope.

Gardner lived little more than a football field's length from a San Diego preschool for at least 16 months while on parole from 2005 to 2008. That violated a condition of parole that prohibited him from living within a half-mile of a school.

A corrections department official let him stay until his lease expired in 2006 but no one noticed he was still living there until a year later. The parole board could have sent him back to prison but kept him on parole, where he had six other less serious potential violations.

Amber Dubois Retrospective: