John Sapp

Victims

3 convictions - 1 further killing attributed to him at the penalty phase, which he denied and was never charged with

Years active

1975 - 1986

Location

Contra Costa County/Butte County, California, USA

Method

Shooting

Status

Convicted in Contra Costa County in 1991 of the first-degree murders of Robert Weber, Elizabeth Duarte and John Abono, with firearm use found on each and multiple-murder and financial-gain special circumstances on two. Sentenced to death on June 21, 1991 for the Weber and Duarte murders; the California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in full on July 31, 2003. Remains under sentence of death in California, where executions have been under moratorium since 2019 and the San Quentin condemned unit was closed in 2024. Prosecutors also put before the jury evidence that he had killed his mother, Geraldine Sapp, who disappeared from the Butte County home they shared in June 1985, and that he had attempted to kill two other people. He denied killing her and no fourth murder count was ever brought.

John Sapp, born in 1949, had spent most of two decades in state and county institutions by the age of 32. He shot four people in Contra Costa and Butte counties, California, between 1975 and 1986: John Abono, 22, who had come to buy marijuana, his former girlfriend Elizabeth Duarte, 24, Robert Weber, 35, a cocaine dealer, and his own mother, Geraldine Sapp, 67.

He became a suspect after Duarte disappeared in 1981 but was not arrested until April 1986. He was sentenced to death on June 21, 1991.

The killings span eleven years and have no single pattern: two were drug-related, one was a former partner and one was his mother. California's moratorium has been in force since 2019 and the sentence stands unexecuted.