Wilbur Lee Jennings

Victims

Convicted and sentenced to death in 1986 - a fifth killing linked by cold-case DNA in 2008

Years active

1981 - 1984

Location

Fresno County, California, USA

Method

Drowning or blows to the head

Status

Sentenced to death in California in 1986. A fifth killing was linked to him by cold-case DNA in 2008. 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.

Wilbur Lee Jennings, born in 1941, raped and killed four women in Fresno County, California, between 1981 and 1984: Karen Robinson, 21, Jacqueline Frazier, 26, Linda Johnson, 28, and Olga Cannon, 23. The victims were drowned or killed by blows to the head. He was sentenced to death in 1986 and his conviction was reviewed by the California Supreme Court in People v. Jennings. The Fresno press called him the Ditchbank Murderer, after where the bodies were left.

In May 2008 Fresno investigators announced that a twenty-five-year-old cold case had been closed against him on DNA evidence, which is the source of the plus sign on the recorded toll.

California has not carried out an execution since 2006 and has operated a formal moratorium since 2019, so the sentence stands unexecuted.