Robert Edward Maury was convicted in Shasta County, California, in August 1989 of the first-degree murders of three women: Averill Weeden, who disappeared in 1985, and Belinda Jo Stark and Dawn Berryhill, who disappeared at the end of June 1987. All three were strangled. The same jury convicted him of raping a fourth woman, who survived, of assaulting Belinda Jo Stark with intent to commit rape, and of robbing Dawn Berryhill. On September 8, 1989, after a separate penalty trial in which he urged the jurors to choose death, the jury returned a death verdict.
The case turned on a telephone line. Shasta County ran a Secret Witness hotline that took tips from the public about crimes and paid rewards. After each of the killings, according to the evidence the courts accepted, Maury called the line with information that led investigators to the women's bodies. A California appeals court, in a 2024 decision, wrote that he was sometimes called the "Tipster Killer."
The Secret Witness program was a county hotline through which residents could report information about crimes, and it paid money for tips that helped. In its 2003 decision on Maury's appeal, as quoted by the Court of Appeal in 2024, the California Supreme Court held that the evidence allowed the jury to find that Maury was the caller, and that the calls showed knowledge of details only the killer or an eyewitness would have. The same court said the jury could reasonably infer that reward money was at least part of his motive for killing the women.
Averill Weeden was the first of the three women. She was Maury's roommate, the Court of Appeal noted, and she disappeared in 1985. Her body was later found in Redding. Her age has not been reported, little is known of her life beyond her connection to him, and it has not been made public when police first questioned Maury about her or why no charge followed in 1985.
A fourth woman was raped near Redding. The jury later found that Maury committed the rape. She survived.
At the end of June 1987, Belinda Jo Stark and Dawn Berryhill disappeared. Their bodies were later found near Redding. Both had been strangled. The Secret Witness line again received calls with information that led to the women, and the jury found that Maury had made those calls. The Supreme Court's 2003 decision, as summarized in the 2024 ruling, described the State's evidence as the Secret Witness calls, the similarities among the victims, and Maury's own incriminating conduct and statements.
He was charged in Shasta County Superior Court with three counts of first-degree murder carrying special circumstances, plus assault with intent to commit rape, robbery and forcible rape.
The trial in Shasta County lasted about five months; the trial judge later described the penalty phase as coming at "the very end of a five-month trial." Maury's lawyers maintained throughout that he was innocent, and the main defense theory was that the prosecution had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
The jury deliberated for a little more than one full day. On August 24, 1989, it found Maury guilty of the first-degree murders of Averill Weeden, Belinda Jo Stark and Dawn Berryhill, of assault with intent to commit rape against Stark, of the robbery of Berryhill, and of the forcible rape of the fourth woman. It found true two special circumstances: multiple murder, and murder in the course of a robbery. Those findings made him eligible for the death penalty.
In the days between the guilt verdicts and the penalty trial, Maury told the court in private hearings that he wanted to be sentenced to death.
On August 25, 1989, one of his lawyers told the judge, outside the prosecutors' presence, that Maury wanted to take the stand and ask the jury for a death sentence. Counsel called that "highly inappropriate" and said the defense would present mitigating evidence anyway.
On August 29, Maury spoke to the judge himself, again without the prosecutors present. He said he preferred death and had told his lawyers to get it accomplished. He said he would "sabotage" their mitigation case if they put one on, and that he did not want to testify. He asked to waive a jury for the penalty phase. He offered to stipulate to a death sentence if his seized property was returned, though his lawyer said that idea had not yet been raised with the district attorney. He objected to members of his family testifying, asked that his sister be kept off the stand and that his mother not testify, and wanted his father kept out of the courtroom.
On August 31, the day the penalty trial began, Maury asked to take over his own defense under Faretta v. California, the United States Supreme Court decision recognizing a right to self-representation. He did not ask to dismiss his lawyers; he wanted them to stay in the courtroom to protect his rights, and he said they were doing a good job. The trial judge denied the request as untimely under the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Burton, pointing to the late stage of a long trial and to the disruption a change would cause. The judge told Maury he would be allowed to tell the jury which penalty he thought it should impose. Maury's father was excluded from the courtroom.
After two defense witnesses had testified, Maury renewed his request. The judge again refused, explaining that his lawyers had a duty to try to save his life but that he remained free to tell the jury what he believed should happen.
The prosecution's penalty case was short. The district attorney's office gave a brief opening statement saying the evidence from the guilt phase justified a death sentence, and called no witnesses. The parties stipulated that Maury had two earlier felony convictions for receiving stolen property. In closing, the prosecutor relied on the crimes themselves, the special circumstances and the prior convictions, accepted that Maury had had a difficult childhood, and argued that it did not excuse premeditated murder.
The defense called three witnesses.
The first was a marriage and family therapist who worked for a Catholic social services agency in the region. She had known Maury since the summer of 1987, when he worked at a miniature golf business run by her parents. She testified that he had told her about a brother who talked about killing people, and that he had asked her about getting antipsychotic medication. Asked on cross-examination whether he might have been talking about himself, she said that was "possible." She also testified that her father had given Maury nicknames, including "Manson," which on redirect she said referred to his long hair and beard rather than to anything he had done. Maury objected to her testimony, saying it implied he was guilty.
The second was his sister. Maury was not in the courtroom while she testified. She described their father as a heavy daily drinker from the time she was in the fourth grade, "always mean and vulgar and drunk all the time." He verbally abused the boys in the family, beat them with a belt or a switch two or three times a week, and broke things in the house when he was drunk; the children, she said, were "really afraid of him." She described her brother as "always real nice" to her and protective of her from grade school through high school. He smoked marijuana regularly in high school, she said, but was never really in trouble at school and was not violent toward other students.
The third was a psychiatrist who had examined Maury in 1988. He found mild depressive symptoms, long and heavy marijuana use, and what he called "a non-severe type of borderline personality disorder." He found no psychotic symptoms and no sign of multiple personality disorder, and no history of serious violence.
Neither side questioned Maury. Instead he read a prepared statement to the jury. He told the jurors that he had had a "normal childhood" and that his family had "shaded the truth a little bit" to help him. He said the psychiatrist was wrong about depression; he had never been depressed and took medication only to help him sleep. He argued that a sentence of life without parole was "totally unrealistic" in light of their verdicts, and that if they believed he was guilty they should sentence him to death. In a second statement he argued that a life sentence would imply a lingering doubt about his guilt, and compared his case with another in which a defendant had been sentenced to death for a single murder: they could not, he said, give him life for three. He also praised his lawyers and said their closing arguments would do "a real good job" for him.
His lawyers argued in closing that he was innocent and "not the kind of person" who could have committed the crimes, pointing to the absence of any history of violence. They conceded the two aggravating factors, the crimes and the prior convictions, but argued that they did not call for death. They asked the jury to weigh his family background, his drug use, depression, his cooperation with police, and the therapist's account of him seeking help for a sick brother. The jury was instructed that it could consider any lingering doubt about his guilt.
On September 8, 1989, the jury returned a verdict of death, and the trial court imposed the sentence.
Because the sentence was death, the appeal went automatically to the California Supreme Court. In 2003, in People v. Maury, 30 Cal.4th 342, the court affirmed the convictions and the death judgment. It found the evidence of guilt sufficient and held that the jury could find that Maury made the Secret Witness calls. The United States Supreme Court denied review in 2004 (Maury v. California, 540 U.S. 1117).
Maury filed his first petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the California Supreme Court in 2004 and amended it in 2007. The court denied it in 2011.
In April 2012 he filed papers in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, without a lawyer, asking for counsel and a stay of execution. District Judge William B. Shubb's court appointed Michael Laurence and Kevin Bringuel of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center to represent him and denied the stay request as unnecessary, because no execution date had been set. His federal petition was filed in October 2012; the State answered in December 2013, and his reply followed in March 2017. One of his lawyers withdrew in 2015, his counsel changed twice more after 2017, and his present lawyers, from the office of the Federal Public Defender, were appointed in May 2019. In the state appeal decided in 2024 he was represented by Federal Public Defender Rene L. Valladares and Assistant Federal Public Defender Ellesse Henderson; the Attorney General's office, under Rob Bonta, argued for the State.
From October 2019 the federal court paused the case several times so that new counsel could investigate further claims. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his lawyers told the court that travel restrictions and the risk of infection had slowed their work, and that most of the witnesses lived in Shasta County. Magistrate Judge Deborah Barnes noted in November 2020 that infections in Shasta County had risen sharply and that the State had placed the county under its tightest restrictions on November 4, and she recommended that the stay continue through March 1, 2021, with the federal filing deadline paused from March 11, 2020, to that date. The stay expired on March 2, 2021. In May 2021 Maury asked to add new claims that he said earlier lawyers had failed to raise because of conflicts of interest. In September 2022 the magistrate judge recommended denying that request without prejudice, because the claims had not first been presented to the state courts.
In November 2016 California voters approved Proposition 66, which took effect in October 2017. It changed how death penalty habeas cases are handled, sending successive petitions to the trial court and allowing them to proceed only if the prisoner shows actual innocence or that he is ineligible for a death sentence, unless the claim rests on new law or new evidence.
In July 2021 Maury filed a second habeas petition in Shasta County Superior Court, raising 12 claims. In September 2021 the court dismissed it without asking the State to respond, finding the claims untimely and successive. Maury appealed. In November 2021 the Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, allowed an appeal on a single claim and refused the other 11.
That claim relied on McCoy v. Louisiana, a 2018 United States Supreme Court decision holding that a defendant has the right to insist that his lawyer not concede his guilt. Maury argued that by presenting mitigating evidence over his objection, his trial lawyers had taken over a decision that was his to make, and that the error required a new penalty trial without any showing of harm. He also argued that the judge's refusal to let him represent himself had forced him to keep lawyers with whom he had an irreconcilable conflict.
On October 2, 2024, the Court of Appeal affirmed (In re Maury, 105 Cal.App.5th 645). Justice Duarte wrote the opinion, with Acting Presiding Justice Hull and Justice Boulware Eurie concurring. The court found no McCoy violation: his lawyers had never conceded guilt, at either phase, and presenting mitigation was not an admission. His wish for a death verdict, the court said, was a separate goal from his stated aims of maintaining his innocence and protecting his family, and his own statement to the jury had made his preferred penalty "unmistakably clear." It held that any error would not be structural, that he had not shown prejudice, and that any error was in any event harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, given the strength of the evidence and the brevity of the challenged testimony. It found the self-representation claim barred as successive and without merit, and it declined a request made at oral argument to send the case back for more fact-finding.
The California Supreme Court denied review on January 15, 2025. On January 21, 2025, the federal district court found that the McCoy claim now appeared to have been presented to the state courts and sent the case back to the magistrate judge for further findings in light of the state decisions. The federal case was then still pending, more than 35 years after the death verdict.
The convictions rest on a jury verdict affirmed on direct appeal: three first-degree murders with special circumstances, assault with intent to commit rape, robbery and forcible rape. His lawyers maintained his innocence at both phases of the trial, and his own statement to the penalty jury framed his request for death around the jury's verdicts rather than any admission. The courts' account of the motive, that reward money from the Secret Witness line was at least part of the reason for the killings, is an inference the California Supreme Court said the jury was entitled to draw.
1985: Averill Weeden, Maury's roommate, disappears; her body is later found in Redding.
Summer 1987: Maury works at a miniature golf business run by the parents of a family therapist who later testifies for him.
End of June 1987: Belinda Jo Stark and Dawn Berryhill disappear; their bodies are later found near Redding.
1988: a psychiatrist examines him.
August 24, 1989: after a trial of about five months, the jury finds him guilty of three first-degree murders, assault with intent to commit rape, robbery and forcible rape, with special circumstances.
August 25 and 29, 1989: in private hearings he tells the court he wants a death sentence.
August 31, 1989: the penalty trial begins; his request to represent himself is denied, and later denied again.
September 8, 1989: the jury returns a death verdict.
2003: the California Supreme Court affirms (People v. Maury, 30 Cal.4th 342).
2004: the United States Supreme Court denies review; first state habeas petition filed.
2007: amended state habeas petition.
2011: first state habeas petition denied.
April 2012: federal habeas proceedings open in the Eastern District of California; counsel appointed.
October 2012: federal petition filed.
May 2019: current federal counsel appointed.
October 2019 to March 2021: federal case stayed for investigation.
July 2021: second state habeas petition filed in Shasta County; dismissed in September 2021.
September 2022: magistrate judge recommends denying leave to add unexhausted claims.
October 2, 2024: the Court of Appeal affirms denial of the second petition (In re Maury, 105 Cal.App.5th 645).
January 15, 2025: the California Supreme Court denies review.
January 21, 2025: the federal court remands the case to the magistrate judge; the federal petition remains pending.