New post finally
I did not abandon this blog as I have others. Work just became a little hectic so I was only really able to read not write. Hopefully the chaos will slow down and I will be able to post regularly again.
Joseph Naso (Also a suspect in the Alphabet Murders) will be allowed to represent himself in court. He has refused to hire an attorney claiming he wants to save his small fortune of almost $1 million. He also has a few other reasons.
Promising not to “play games with myself” and professing he wants to save his small fortune of nearly $1 million, serial-murder suspect Joseph Naso made one last bid to act as his own defense attorney Friday – and won.
Judge Andrew Sweet of Marin County Superior Court once again advised the 77-year-old prisoner against refusing to hire a lawyer, listened to a rambling, 15-minute explanation, then sighed and said the words Naso had sought for days:
“All right.”
Naso, arrested last month on suspicion of killing four Northern California women between 1977 and 1994, allowed himself a slight smile as he sat handcuffed in a pink jail jumpsuit, shoulders hunched. The investigators, prosecutors, public defenders and judge remained stone-faced.
Naso next asked for a 10-day delay for entering a plea to the murder charges, and to get an immediate look at the “discovery,” or evidence, accumulated against him so far. The judge granted both requests.
Naso said one of his main complaints about working with lawyers is that the Marin County jail where he is housed is so restrictive, allowing conversations only through windows with intercoms, that the atmosphere is “intimidating and restrictive.” That would compromise his ability to speak privately to an attorney, he said.
Besides, he added, “there are issues in this case that I feel I must address personally.” He said he was “not at liberty to reveal” all of his concerns “without revealing some of my defense.”
A lesser but still important factor, Naso said, is that he wants to save money. Prosecutors say Naso, a former traveling photographer living in a Reno trailer before his arrest, has assets of about $1 million.
“I’m choosing not to spend my money foolishly,” he said.
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I am all for it since representing themselves always works so well for serial killers. Just ask Ted Bundy, oh wait, you can’t.
Crime Library has an article on representing yourself here.
Also in California DNA is linking more murders to the Original Night Stalker aka The East Side Rapist.
1981 murder victims Cheri Domingo and Gregory Sanchez
DNA Links Goleta Double Murder to Possible Serial Killer
Progress Made in Decades-Old Homicide Case; Suspect Still Unidentified
Saturday, May 7, 2011
by CHRIS MEAGHER (CONTACT)
Santa Barbara Sheriff’s investigators, using DNA evidence, have tied a decades-old double homicide in Goleta to a suspected serial killer whose identity has never been determined.Cheri Domingo and Gregory Sanchez were housesitting at a home on Toltec Way in Goleta when they were murdered on July 26, 1981. The murders came on the heels of another double homicide in Goleta, and a string of other crimes that spooked the community. While there was speculation the killings of Domingo and Sanchez were tied to a string of murders in the late 1970s by the East Area Rapist — who some estimate to be responsible for several homicides, dozens of rapes, and burglaries, but has never been identified — there was no confirmation until this Thursday.
Cold case investigators, tasked with going over reports and evidence from old cases, took a lot of information that was screened by criminologists, and samples with potentially useful DNA were extracted. What officials called “low amounts of degraded DNA,” including a component of semen, were found on one of the pieces of evidence related to the murders of Domingo and Sachez. According to reports, the two were both shot and brutally bludgeoned.
The sample was transferred to a lab in Richmond, California, and eventually submitted into the state’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which matched the DNA to four other case evidence profiles — that of the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker. “With recent advancements in DNA profiling methods, it was important for us to push forward and reevaluate evidence in this case before it deteriorated and became useless,” Sheriff Bill Brown said in a statement Thursday morning. “As this investigation shows, we never close a murder case unless a suspect is identified and brought to justice.”
The last known crime committed by the killer was in 1986 in Orange County, and detectives have never determined the identity of the man thought to be responsible. They are optimistic that physical evidence may connect the killer to the other Goleta double homicide, that of Dr. Robert Offerman and 35-year-old Alexandria Manning on December 30, 1979.
Real Life Monsters 