Barry Scott Holstone, thirty, and his sister Patreace Holstone, thirty-two, were killed at Todd Givens’s home in Tulare County, California. Givens shot Barry repeatedly and, the state’s summary of the case says, stabbed him with a sickle when the bullets ran out. The bodies were put into Patreace’s car, driven to an olive orchard a short distance away and burned, which the prosecution said was done to stop them being identified.
Givens was a validated member of the Nazi Low Riders, a Californian prison gang linked to the Aryan Brotherhood. Prosecutors argued the killings were ordered because Barry Holstone was believed to have stolen from Givens, and that the gang wanted him dead. Givens argued that he had acted alone. His wife, Lacey Givens, was also convicted in connection with the killings; accounts of her part differ, one describing her as having helped dispose of the bodies and the state’s own case summary saying she shot Patreace Holstone. While he awaited trial, three knives were found in his cell in the Tulare County jail.
He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and of arson, and sentenced to death in 2004.
In July 2020, on San Quentin’s death row, a correctional officer collecting food trays after breakfast was attacked through the food port of Givens’s cell. The corrections department said Givens tried to cut the officer’s neck with a weapon made from two razor blades and a sharpened piece of broken nail clippers, and that the officer was cut on the hand as he grabbed it, needing five stitches. Givens was moved to the Adjustment Center while it was investigated. Over his years inside he received two further life sentences, for manufacturing or possessing a deadly weapon as a prisoner and for assault.
California has not executed anybody since 2006 and has had a formal moratorium since 2019, and the state has been moving condemned prisoners off San Quentin’s death row into other institutions. By October 2025 Givens was at Salinas Valley State Prison. On the morning of the twenty-third, staff watching the recreation yard saw him and two other life-sentenced prisoners, Robert England and Ray Waldron, attacking a fourth man with improvised weapons. The man was Todd S. Morgan, fifty-seven, who had been in prison since 2002 serving a life sentence under California’s three-strikes law for burglary, robbery, weapons and drug offences. Staff tried to revive him and he was pronounced dead at four minutes past ten. Three improvised weapons were recovered and the three men were moved to restricted housing.
That death is recorded here as attributed and not as a conviction. It was under investigation when this entry was written and no charge against any of the three had been reported.
One point on the dates. Two reports from 2025 place the Holstone killings in 1997. Every detailed account of the case, including the state’s own summary, gives April 1, 2001, and a 2001 date fits a 2004 conviction. 2001 is used here.