TRASH BAG MURDERER GETS LIFE: DESERET NEWS, DECEMBER 22, 1977
The Deseret News gave it two paragraphs in its News Capsules column on December 22, 1977, and the first of them carried an explanation from the man himself. The killings, Patrick Kearney had said, helped vent his frustrations and gave him feelings of power. For more than two years the bodies of young men and boys had been turning up in trash bags along the roads of Southern California. The day before, in a Riverside courtroom, the engineer from Redondo Beach had pleaded guilty to three of them.
The three were Albert Rivera, 21, of Los Angeles; Arturo Marquez, 24, of Oxnard; and John LaMay, 17, of El Segundo. Rivera had been found in a heavy-duty trash bag near Highway 74, east of San Juan Capistrano, on April 13, 1975, the case that officially began the series. Kearney had fired his lawyers and represented himself. He waived a probation report and asked to be sentenced at once, and Superior Court Judge John Hews gave him life, with parole possible after seven years under the law of the time.
It was LaMay who undid him. On March 13, 1977, the boy told a neighbor he was going to Redondo Beach to meet a man named Dave he knew from a gym. Dave was Kearney's partner, D.H., who was not home; Kearney invited the boy in to wait and shot him. Green fibers on the tape that sealed the bags matched the carpet in the house, and a hair recovered with his remains matched Kearney. Kearney and D.H. fled to El Paso, then walked into the Riverside County sheriff's office on July 1 and pointed at their own wanted poster. D.H. was released without charge.
This is a wire brief, not a court record, and the motive it reports is the wire's paraphrase rather than his words. Its closing figure of as many as 28 deaths matches the number of killings he had signed confessions to by July 15, 1977; he later admitted 35. The court record is narrower. Kearney was convicted of 21 first-degree murders: these three, and eighteen more to which he pleaded guilty in Los Angeles on February 21, 1978. The rest were never charged. Arturo Marquez's full name was Arturo Ramos Marquez. Kearney has never been released.
The brief ran on page 10A of the Deseret News for December 22, 1977, as Associated Press copy with no byline. Utah Digital Newspapers, the University of Utah library collection that holds the scan, rates this issue No Copyright, United States. It appeared before 1978, when an American publication still needed a notice to keep its copyright, and none was found on the issue or on this story. The citation and the library's rating sit under the scan.
The whole brief is here, transcribed word for word, and every word could be read. The one slip is kept as printed: "Arturo Marquez 24," with no comma after the name. The headline is set in the paper's lower-case style. The story does not continue anywhere else in the issue.
Transcription
Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.
Trash bag murderer gets life
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — Patrick Wayne Kearney, sentenced to life imprisonment after pleading guilty to three "trash bag murders," said the killings helped vent his frustrations and gave him feelings of power.
Kearney was sentenced for the first-degree murders of Albert Rivera, 21, of Los Angeles; Arturo Marquez 24, of Oxnard, and John LaMay, 17, of El Segundo. Superior Court Judge John Hews imposed the life term after Kearney requested immediate sentencing. Authorities have said Kearney may be linked to as many as 28 slayings.
Notes: Kept as printed: "Arturo Marquez 24," with no comma after the name. This is a short brief in the paper's "News Capsules" column. It is the only report of the case found in range on a public-domain page; it records the sentence and his stated motive. No words were illegible.