Mexican Homosexual Sicko Juan Corona rots in jail after mass killings on California fruit farms

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Enforce immigration laws and this shit won't happen!

Strange that a receipt for a slab of meat would turn out to be
the main clue in the worst case of butchery America had ever
seen.

In the spring of 1971, fruit farms around Yuba City, Calif., 40
miles north of Sacramento, brought forth a harvest of horror �
dead men, mutilated � some beyond recognition � and buried in
peach orchards.

Eventually, investigators would dig up 25 victims, most of them
white male vagrants or transient farm workers. They were known
as �fruit tramps,� wanderers who picked peaches for a few days
and then moved on.

The killings came to light on May 19, 1971, when peach grower
Goro Kagehiro went out to inspect his orchard and discovered
that someone had dug a large hole, about 6 feet long and 3 feet
deep, on his land.

When he went back the next day, the hole was filled in with
fresh dirt. Figuring someone had been using his property as a
garbage dump, Kagehiro called the sheriff.

After a few minutes of digging, they realized this was no case
of illegal trash disposal. They uncovered a dead man. He had
been knifed repeatedly in the chest, and the back of his head
had been split open by two powerful blows from what appeared to
be a meat cleaver or machete.

The deputy sheriff recognized the dead man as Kenneth Whitacre,
a vagrant he had questioned a few days earlier.

Three days later, a different farmer found another grave � then
one after another. Within two weeks, police searching local
peach orchards found 23 more bodies in varying stages of
decomposition, most from along the banks of the Feather River.

They also had a suspect, Juan Corona, 37, a farm-labor
contractor.

A couple of sheets of pink paper found in one of the graves �
receipts for spare ribs, tongue and other purchases from a local
meat market � put police on Corona�s trail.

Corona had a hair-trigger temper � everyone in the region knew
it � and a history of mental illness. He had crept across the
border from Mexico more than 20 years earlier, following his
brother Felix and half-brother Natividad north to find work.

In 1956, Natividad petitioned to have his brother
institutionalized for wild hallucinations that appeared to have
been sparked by a flood that had killed dozens in the county.

Doctors examined Corona, diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia, and
gave him three months of what was state-of-the-art psychiatric
care in those days: electroshock therapy.

After his release, Corona married, fathered four children and
established a business as a contractor, recruiting seasonal
fruit pickers. To all outward appearances, his was an ordinary
life.

Sutter County authorities sift through grave site where two
victims were found.

No one had seen Corona kill or bury anyone. The case was based
entirely on circumstantial evidence, starting with the meat
market receipts bearing Corona�s signature. Some of the missing
men had been spotted talking with Corona about a possible job.
Searches of Corona�s home turned up a machete, a meat cleaver, a
pistol, blood-spattered clothes and a notebook containing the
names of a few of the dead men. A �death ledger� was how it
became known in the press.

At his trial, which started on Sept. 11, 1972, Corona stood
accused of all 25 killings, the largest mass murder to that date
in U.S. history.

His lawyer, Richard Hawk, introduced the possibility that the
attacks were motivated by rage against homosexuals.

Because his client was �hopelessly heterosexual,� Hawk said, he
had no reason to kill.

But evidence that the killings were motivated by sex was slim.
Some of the men had been buried with their pants pulled down,
but experts could not agree on what, if anything, that meant.

There were significant weaknesses in the prosecution�s case,
including sloppy crime scene investigations and forensic lab
work. Still, on Jan. 18, 1973, the jury found Corona guilty. He
received 25 consecutive life sentences, because California had
suspended capital punishment a year earlier.

Corona was packed off to prison, where, in December 1973,
another inmate stabbed him more than 30 times with an X-Acto
knife and he lost his left eye. Meanwhile, within months of the
conviction, Hawk�s associate, Ed Cray, published a book based on
the trial, �Burden of Proof.�

Corona�s new defense team saw this as a conflict of interest,
because Hawk had sold the book before the trial.

In their appeal, the defense said that Hawk had not provided
competent legal counsel. The court granted a new trial, which
started in March 1982.

The defense suggested that Natividad, who had died of syphilis
and diabetes nine years earlier, was likely the real killer.

In addition to the circumstantial evidence presented in 1972,
the prosecution bolstered its case with a few vague confessions
Corona had offered in the intervening years.

For a second time, the jury found Corona guilty.

Corona has had seven parole hearings, the most recent in
December 2011. There, for the first time, he offered a
confession and a motive to the parole board. He said he had
killed the men because they were trespassing.

Now 79, demented and almost blind, the man known as the �Machete
Murderer� remains behind bars.

While he is too frail to pose much danger to society, he is
likely to stay there for the rest of his life.

As for his victims, most have been long forgotten. Fourteen of
the bodies were never claimed, and four of the men are still
known only as John Doe.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/justice-story/bad-seed-rots-life-
mass-killings-calif-fruit-farms-article-1.1271432

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