Itzcoatl Ocampo was charged in 2012 with six murders in north Orange County, California. Prosecutors said he stabbed a mother and her adult son in their Yorba Linda home in October 2011, and then, over about three weeks from December 20, 2011, stalked and killed four men who were living outdoors in Placentia, Anaheim and Yorba Linda. He was 23, a former Marine who had served in Iraq, and he lived with his family in Yorba Linda.
He was arrested on January 13, 2012, minutes after the fourth of those men, John Berry, a 64-year-old Vietnam veteran, was stabbed in Anaheim and bystanders gave chase. A grand jury indicted him on six counts of murder with special circumstances, and the Orange County district attorney announced that he would seek the death penalty. Ocampo pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers prepared an insanity defense. He never stood trial. In November 2013, months before the trial date, he was found ill in his jail cell and died the next day. None of the charges against him was decided in court.
Ocampo was born in March 1988, according to The Atavist Magazine, which published a long account of the case by the journalist León Krauze in 2017. His parents lived in the Mexico City area and moved north after he was born. The Mexican news agency Notimex, in a report printed by the Los Angeles newspaper La Opinión, said he was born in Mexico and came to California with his parents in 1990, when he was a year old. He had a younger brother and a younger sister.
The family settled in Yorba Linda, a suburb in the north of Orange County. Notimex reported that his parents worked in factories in Southern California and separated while he was in high school, and that the family home was lost to foreclosure. ABC7 in Los Angeles reported that the family lost its home in 2008. Krauze wrote that friends from middle school remembered a quiet boy in glasses, and that he hoped to go to college. ABC7 reported that he graduated from Esperanza High School in 2006. One of his school friends from those years was the younger son of Raquel Estrada, the woman he would later be charged with killing; the district attorney's office said the two had been friends since middle school and high school.
Ocampo enlisted in the Marine Corps in 2006, at 18, together with his closest friend from childhood, according to Krauze. He was sent to Iraq in March 2008 as a motor vehicle operator. Reports differ on the length of the tour: ABC7 described an eight-month deployment in 2008, while Krauze and Notimex described about six months. He did not see combat. Krauze reported that in May 2008, while in Iraq, Ocampo was reduced in rank from lance corporal to private first class through nonjudicial punishment, after he pointed a loaded rifle at another Marine; Ocampo later said he had been angry about his family's troubles at home.
After the tour he was stationed at Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego. His supervisor there told Krauze that he grew bitter and depressed. In June 2010 his childhood friend, a fellow Marine from Yorba Linda, was killed in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Ocampo's younger brother told ABC7 that Ocampo became depressed after the death. "He just wanted to be alone," the brother said. "He always looked at his picture of Claudio, and just crying, 'Why him.'" Krauze wrote that Ocampo told his family he felt he should have been there.
Ocampo left active duty in the summer of 2010. Krauze gave the date as July 2010; an Associated Press report printed by La Opinión said he was discharged in June 2010. OC Weekly later described him as an honorably discharged Marine. Krauze reported that in 2013, after his arrest, a Marine Corps board found him liable for a serious offense and the Marines discharged him "other than honorable," though no court had convicted him.
By the account of his relatives, Ocampo came back changed. His uncle told Notimex that he returned from Iraq ill and that over the following year he told relatives he heard voices and had visions. Krauze, who interviewed the family, reported nightmares, severe headaches, a facial twitch, talking to himself and a fear of hidden bombs. He wrote in a journal about guilt at having survived, about thoughts of suicide and about a wish to kill. His military file, Krauze reported, showed that he had been notified of a screening for post-traumatic stress and brain injury, and that he did not keep the appointment.
Notimex reported that after returning to California he lived with his mother, his younger sister and an uncle. His father, by then separated from the family, was homeless. ABC7 reported that the father was living out of a truck in Fullerton. Krauze, who interviewed the father at length, wrote that he had lost his job and his housing in the years before the killings.
Ocampo had no criminal record. Police said after his arrest that his history showed only a few traffic citations.
On the night of October 25, 2011, Raquel Estrada, 53, and her son Juan Herrera, 34, were stabbed to death in their home in Yorba Linda. The district attorney's office later charged Ocampo with both deaths. He lived about a mile away, according to the office.
Police arrested Raquel Estrada's other son, Ocampo's former school friend, and he was charged with killing his mother and brother and held without bail. OC Weekly later reported that he spent about four months in jail.
At the time, no one publicly connected the deaths in Yorba Linda with anything that came afterward.
At about 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday, December 20, 2011, James Patrick McGillivray, 53, was stabbed to death in Placentia. CBS Los Angeles reported that he had relatives in Placentia and had lived in the area for many years. Lt. Eric Point of the Placentia police said a nearby business's security camera had recorded the attack, and that the footage showed the killer waiting for McGillivray before he struck. "It was not typical of McGillivray to be involved in confrontations," Point said. Police described the attacker as a thin man between 18 and 25, about five and a half feet tall, dressed in black. Several reports gave the date of his death as December 21, and one CBS report gave his age as 50.
A week later Lloyd Middaugh, 42, known as Jimmy, was found stabbed to death in Anaheim. The Associated Press, in a report printed by La Opinión, and OC Weekly gave the date as December 27 or eight days after the Placentia killing; a CBS report on the police roadblock described the Anaheim death as December 28. Krauze wrote that Middaugh had called his mother on the night he died, upset that he had no bed for the night.
On Friday, December 30, Paulus Cornelius Smit, 57, known as Dutch, was found stabbed to death in Yorba Linda. Paramedics tried to revive him and he was pronounced dead at the scene, a Brea police sergeant told CBS Los Angeles. Krauze described Smit as a man who was quick to laugh, with a gap-toothed smile, who had spent Christmas with his eldest daughter. His daughters called him Papa.
The three deaths were in three cities, each policed by a different department; the Brea police patrolled Yorba Linda under contract. On January 3, 2012, CBS Los Angeles reported that investigators from Anaheim, Yorba Linda and Placentia were pooling their work to decide whether the stabbings were connected. "At this time we have not ruled out the possibility that there are one or more suspects," said Sgt. Bob Dunn of the Anaheim police. The Brea department was assembling a task force, and police said the FBI might join it. The Associated Press, in the report printed by La Opinión, said the multi-agency task force formed the day after Smit's death because of the similarities between the cases.
Police posted fliers where homeless people gathered and urged them not to sleep alone in dark or secluded places, to stay together and to watch their surroundings. Patrols across north Orange County were increased. CBS Los Angeles reported on January 10 that, that Tuesday night, detectives, officers and FBI agents had set up a roadblock in Placentia on the same night of the week as McGillivray's death, running from about two hours before the time of the attack to about two hours after, stopping drivers to ask what they might have seen. They handed out fliers about a white Toyota Corolla that had been parked nearby that night and could be connected to the killer. "He's an extremely dangerous individual," a detective told CBS Los Angeles. "We definitely think this is something that has the potential to continue and we want to prevent that from happening."
John Berry was 64, a Vietnam veteran who was a familiar and well-liked figure in the part of Anaheim where he lived outdoors. Krauze described him as an amateur astronomer and bird watcher who loved being outside. "He was just like the kindest person ever," a friend told CBS Los Angeles. "A homeless man that never asked for anything, never begged."
Berry was afraid. In the days before he died he spoke to police, his friends said, and he told them he believed he was being followed. A friend told ABC7 that Berry had said, "I think I came in contact with the serial killer last night," and that he had kept his bicycle between himself and the man as a "line of defense." The friend flagged down a city water department worker and urged him to call the police. Anaheim police said they had received a report that a homeless person was being followed, though they would not confirm that it came from Berry. A friend and his aunt offered Berry a spare bedroom; he turned it down. "I'm not scared of death," he told them, according to ABC7.
On the evening of Friday, January 13, 2012, Berry was stabbed in Anaheim. A man leaving a nearby store, a father identified by CBS Los Angeles only by his first name, saw the attack and shouted at the attacker to stop. The attacker ran. The father and another man chased him, the father calling 911 as he ran, until the man went into a nearby mobile home park; a resident shouted where he was, and police arrived within seconds. Berry was pronounced dead at the scene. Police credited the bystanders' detailed description with the arrest and said more people might have died without them. "I honestly didn't think I would do anything like this," the father told CBS Los Angeles. He said it was hard to feel like a hero after watching Berry die in front of him; he had given Berry money the week before.
The man arrested was Itzcoatl Ocampo. Police in Anaheim booked him for murder and questioned him into the early morning. On the Saturday night, friends held a candlelight vigil in Berry's honor.
At a news conference on the Saturday after the arrest, Anaheim police said they had connected Ocampo to all four killings. "We are extremely confident that we have the man who's responsible," said the Anaheim police chief, John Welter. Sgt. Bob Dunn said the public had been "very instrumental in providing leads and details" through the task force's hotline. Police searched the home Ocampo shared with his mother and siblings in Yorba Linda; the property owner told CBS Los Angeles that officers took clothing, shoes and a computer. He was held without bail, first at the Anaheim city jail and then at the Orange County jail in Santa Ana, where he was kept in isolation on a medical hold, according to CBS Los Angeles, and watched around the clock as a suicide risk, according to ABC7.
Krauze reported that Ocampo waived his right to remain silent and talked with Detective Daron Wyatt for about five hours. Asked whether what he had done was right or wrong, he answered, by Krauze's account, "Wrong, but it had to be done," and he said he had chosen people who were "available and vulnerable." Wyatt later testified before the grand jury. According to Notimex, the detective said Ocampo had felt a need to kill, had been frustrated that his deployment to Iraq brought no combat and left him driving trucks, and would have tried to kill 16 people had he not been caught. The Associated Press, in a report printed by La Opinión, said the grand jury transcript released in March 2012 recorded that Ocampo told investigators he planned to kill 16 people in imitation of Charles Whitman, the former Marine who shot people from the University of Texas tower in 1966, and that he had joined the Marines because he believed a true Marine needed to kill. ABC7 reported that court documents said he was disappointed to have spent his tour as a truck driver.
His family did not accept the accusation at first. "He's not a murderer. He's an innocent man. He's a hero to me, my role model," his younger brother told ABC7. An uncle said, "If police say my nephew is guilty, send the proof." His father told ABC7 that his son had warned him about a killer targeting homeless men three days before the arrest.
On Tuesday, January 17, 2012, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas charged Ocampo with four counts of murder, with the special circumstance of lying in wait, which made him eligible for the death penalty. Rackauckas said Ocampo had planned each attack and had enjoyed the attention the case received in the press, CBS Los Angeles reported, and police said they had evidence that he planned to kill again. At the arraignment the next day a judge granted the defense's request for more time. His lawyer, Randall Longwith, said the next month, "I can tell you right now, he's cracked, he's ill, he's fractured."
Prosecutors described the killing of the four men as a serial "thrill-kill" spree, according to CBS Los Angeles.
In early February, investigators told reporters that they believed Ocampo had been involved in the October killings in Yorba Linda, citing "significant evidence," the closeness of his home to the victims' and the similarities among the deaths, ABC7 reported. Anaheim police Lt. Julian Harvey, who led the task force, said there was an association between Ocampo and the son who had been charged, without saying what it was.
On February 3, 2012, the district attorney's office dismissed the charges against Raquel Estrada's surviving son and he was processed for release. The office said in a release that Ocampo had been linked to the Yorba Linda killings through DNA evidence found at the scene on January 31, 2012, and that it would file two more murder counts against him, for six in all, with special circumstances and a knife-use enhancement. CBS Los Angeles reported that Rackauckas described a significant DNA link between evidence from the Yorba Linda house and evidence collected at Ocampo's home. Rackauckas said his office no longer had enough evidence to hold the son in custody, but that he had not been conclusively ruled out as a suspect.
On February 16, 2012, an Orange County grand jury indicted Ocampo on six felony counts of murder with special circumstances, including lying in wait, and an enhancement for personal use of a knife, OC Weekly reported. On February 21 he pleaded not guilty in Santa Ana to all six counts. If convicted, he faced life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty.
In May 2012, Rackauckas announced that his office would seek the death penalty. The Associated Press report printed by La Opinión on May 22, 2012, listed the special circumstances as multiple murders and lying in wait and gave the trial date then set, September 10, 2012. The district attorney's office described the deaths of the four men as a series of killings done for pleasure, according to that report.
The trial did not begin in 2012. By April 2013 Michael Molfetta was speaking for the defense, with Longwith still on the team. That month OC Weekly reported that the defense had asked for more time to prepare an insanity defense, that the judge agreed there was a "vast amount" of material to review, and that the trial would probably not begin until May 2014. Ocampo remained in the Orange County jail without bail. No ruling on his competence to stand trial is on record.
Krauze reported that in jail Ocampo was prescribed antidepressants, which he sometimes refused, and that he was placed on suicide watch.
On the evening of Wednesday, November 27, 2013, deputies found Ocampo ill in his single-man cell at the Central Men's Jail in Santa Ana, the sheriff's department said. He was taken to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana at 6:35 p.m., Patch reported, and was pronounced dead in the intensive care unit at 1:38 p.m. on Thursday, November 28, Thanksgiving Day. He was 25.
The day he died, the prosecutor on the case, Suzi Aramesh Price, emailed the families of the six people he was accused of killing to tell them he was on life support. "It seems that Mr. Ocampo tried to kill himself by ingesting Ajax last night," she wrote, Patch reported. A second email told them he had died. Molfetta said his client had apparently collected the cleaning powder over time. Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Hallock said inmates received small amounts of cleaning products on request, usually enough for one cleaning, but he declined to say what had killed Ocampo. "To say a cleaning product was the cause of his death would be inappropriate," Hallock said. The sheriff's department did not call the death a suicide.
Because the county coroner is part of the sheriff's department, the autopsy was given to an outside pathologist. Patch reported on December 2, 2013, that the autopsy had been done and was inconclusive until toxicology tests were complete, which Hallock said could take a month or more. Krauze wrote that Ocampo had swallowed cleaning powder, that he was declared brain dead and that life support was withdrawn.
Ocampo's lawyers called for an independent inquiry. "If you spend three minutes with Ocampo, you are acutely aware of the fact that he has some mental issues," Molfetta said. He said jailers had "failed miserably" and added, "Whether it was murder or suicide it shouldn't have happened." Longwith said a normal inmate was supposed to be checked at least once an hour, and asked how Ocampo had obtained the product. Hallock said deputies checked prisoners every hour "if not more," but would not say whether that had happened in this case. The district attorney's office opened a full investigation of the death.
His parents told reporters that they had been kept at a distance at the hospital. His mother said that no one had told her she could see him. His father told OC Weekly that doctors had called the family to say their son was brain dead, that deputies kept them about 20 feet from his bed, and that they were let in only after investigators had finished. "They killed my son," he said. A spokeswoman for the district attorney disputed his account of who had refused the family access.
On June 25, 2015, the district attorney's office released its report on the custodial death. Krauze reported that it found no criminal culpability on the part of law enforcement.
The families of the six learned of his death shortly after it happened, through the prosecutor's emails. Lloyd Middaugh's mother told CBS Los Angeles that her family felt "a little injustice because there wasn't going to be a trial," but also relief. "This is over," she said. "We don't have to relive things again."
Raquel Estrada's surviving son, the man first charged with the Yorba Linda killings, sued over his jailing. In May 2014 a Pasadena lawyer filed a federal civil rights suit on his behalf in Los Angeles, and in April 2015 OC Weekly reported that the City of Brea had agreed to pay him $700,000 to settle the case, admitting no liability. A Brea police lieutenant said settling cost less than a trial. Brea's police chief had said the son was still considered a suspect, and the district attorney's office confirmed it; in December 2013 the office said Ocampo's death did not clear him.
Ocampo died an accused man. The case against him was set out in charging papers, a grand jury indictment, news conferences and, through the released grand jury transcript, a detective's account of what he said after his arrest. None of it was tested at a trial, and no court ruled on his guilt, his sanity or the insanity defense his lawyers were preparing.
Several points remained disputed or uncertain:
The link to the Yorba Linda deaths rested, as the district attorney's office described it, on DNA evidence found at the scene. Krauze wrote that Ocampo later admitted those two killings; the case never reached a jury.
The first man charged in the Yorba Linda deaths was released in February 2012, but prosecutors and Brea police continued to call him a suspect. In the civil case his lawyer argued that Ocampo alone was responsible and that the son had an alibi; the city settled without admitting liability.
Reports differ on details: McGillivray's date of death (December 20 or 21) and age (53 or 50), the date Middaugh was found (December 27 or 28), Berry's age (64 or 65), the length of Ocampo's Iraq tour (six or eight months), and his discharge date (June or July 2010). Two ABC7 reports said he had served in Afghanistan; other ABC7 reports and other outlets put his deployment in Iraq.
Ocampo's lawyers said he was seriously mentally ill, and his family described voices, visions and a sharp decline after the war. No court or official evaluation of his mental state was made public before his death.
Officials did not publicly give a cause of death in the days after he died. The prosecutor's email to the families and his lawyer's statements said he had swallowed a cleaning powder.
March 1988: Itzcoatl Ocampo is born in Mexico.
1990: his family moves to California, according to Notimex; they settle in Yorba Linda.
2006: graduates from Esperanza High School and enlists in the Marine Corps.
March 2008: deployed to Iraq as a motor vehicle operator; reduced in rank in May 2008, according to Krauze.
June 2010: his childhood friend, a fellow Marine, is killed in Afghanistan.
June or July 2010: leaves active duty.
October 25, 2011: Raquel Estrada, 53, and her son Juan Herrera, 34, are stabbed to death in Yorba Linda. Her other son is later arrested and charged with the killings.
December 20, 2011: James Patrick McGillivray, 53, is stabbed to death in Placentia.
December 27 or 28, 2011: Lloyd "Jimmy" Middaugh, 42, is found stabbed to death in Anaheim.
December 30, 2011: Paulus Cornelius "Dutch" Smit, 57, is found stabbed to death in Yorba Linda.
Late December 2011 to early January 2012: police in Anaheim, Brea and Placentia, with the FBI, form a multi-agency task force.
January 10, 2012: police hold a roadblock in Placentia seeking witnesses.
January 13, 2012: John Berry, 64, is stabbed to death in Anaheim; Ocampo is arrested nearby after bystanders chase the attacker.
January 17, 2012: charged with four counts of murder with special circumstances.
January 31, 2012: DNA evidence links Ocampo to the Yorba Linda scene, according to the district attorney's office.
February 3, 2012: charges against the Yorba Linda son are dismissed; the district attorney announces two more counts against Ocampo.
February 16, 2012: an Orange County grand jury indicts Ocampo on six counts of murder with special circumstances.
February 21, 2012: pleads not guilty.
March 2012: the grand jury transcript is released.
May 2012: the district attorney announces he will seek the death penalty.
April 2013: trial is postponed to May 2014 so the defense can prepare an insanity defense.
November 27, 2013: Ocampo is found ill in his cell at the Central Men's Jail, Santa Ana.
November 28, 2013: pronounced dead at Western Medical Center, Santa Ana, aged 25, before trial.
December 2, 2013: the autopsy is reported inconclusive pending toxicology.
April 2015: the City of Brea settles the civil rights suit of the son first charged in the Yorba Linda killings, for $700,000.
June 25, 2015: the district attorney's office releases its custodial death report.