SANTA ANA – The Yorba Linda man who was indicted last week in what prosecutors have called thrill killings of six people during a three-month span pleaded not guilty Tuesday at his Orange County arraignment to multiple capital murder charges.
Itzcoatl “Izzy” Ocampo, 23, a Marine Iraq war veteran, is charged with the unprovoked stabbing deaths of four homeless men in north Orange County in December and January and the stabbing deaths of a Yorba Linda woman and her adult son in a puzzling Oct. 25, 2011, attack that was initially blamed on the woman’s youngest son.
His trial was assigned to Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno, Orange’s County’s longest-serving judge. Prosecuting and defense attorneys agreed to a pre-trial hearing on March 9 before Briseno picks a date for trial and resolves preliminary legal issues.
Defense attorney Randall Longwith told reporters after the brief hearing Tuesday that Ocampo is mentally ill.
“I can tell you right now, he’s cracked, he’s ill, he’s fractured. … he doesn’t understand where he is or what his situation is,” Longwith said.
Longwith said Ocampo has not been the same since he did a seven-and-a-half month tour of duty in Iraq as a Marine, where he worked with a medical battalion transporting wounded, dismembered and deceased soldiers and Iraq citizens.
“He went through a lot,” Longwith said. “You can’t not see horrors when you’re in a war zone. It affects some people more than others.”
Relatives of two of the homeless men stabbed to death during the killing spree listened quietly to the proceedings in court Tuesday. Brad Olsen, the brother-in-law of Lloyd “Jimmy” Middaugh, who was killed as he slept near the Sana Ana River trail in Anaheim on Dec. 28, said “it’s a weird feeling to see the man who murdered my brother-in-law in court. It was just surreal that this was the last person that my brother-in-law ever saw on this earth.”
Marie Middaugh, Lloyd’s mother, said she thought it was a disservice to all the brave men and women who have served this country in the Iraq war for Ocampo’s attorney to claim his client is mentally insane because of his time in Iraq.
I agree with this. What he is trying to pull is insulting to so many on different levels.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “My son was doing nothing but sleeping when he was stabbed to death.”
She said she plans to attend every minute of Ocampo’s trial, to stand up for her son and see that justice is done. “My son once told me that if anything happened to him he knew that I would fight for him,” she said. “I’ll be there for him.”
Ocampo is also charged with special circumstances of committing multiple murders and committing murders by lying in wait, allegations which could lead to a minimum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if he is convicted.
The District Attorney’s Office could also decide at a later date to seek the death penalty against Ocampo, who was arrested on Jan. 13 as he ran from an Anaheim parking lot where a fourth homeless victim was hacked to death within a 25-day period.
He was running away, he knew what he did was wrong. IMO proves he is not legally insane.
Ocampo was initially charged with those four slayings, which began on Dec. 20 in Yorba Linda, when James McGillivray, 53, stabbed to death shortly after 8 p.m. on Dec. 20, 2011, behind a commercial complex at 140 N. Bradford Ave., in Placentia.
But after his arrest, detectives with the Orange County homeless serial killer task force expanded an earlier investigation into the October stabbing deaths of Raquel Estrada, 53, and her oldest son Juan Herrera, 35, in their Yorba Linda home because of similarities in their deaths and the homeless killing spree.
Eder Herrera, 24, Raquel Estrada’s youngest son, was originally arrested and charged in those two slayings. Detectives were surprised to learn that Ocampo was a friend of Eder Herrera, lived about a mile away from the double homicide, and had been inside the Estrada/Herrera home prior to the slayings.
When detectives also learned that Estrada’s and Juan Herrera’s DNA were found on an item of clothing seized in Ocampo’s home after his arrest in the homeless men slayings, he was charged with the mother and son slayings as well, while charges were dropped against Eder Herrera.
Last week, the Orange County grand jury indicted Ocampo for all six slayings in a legal maneuver that speeds the case to trial because it eliminates the need for a preliminary hearing to test the evidence. Now, instead of the evidence being vetted by a magistrate to determine if there is sufficient cause to proceed, the case was quickly assigned to a trial judge.
It also prevents Longwith from being able to cross-examine witnesses during a preliminary hearing, which would have been called to order in a courtroom open to the public. Grand jury proceedings are held in secret session.
Specifically, Ocampo is charged with the murders of:
- James McGillivray, 53, stabbed to death shortly after 8 p.m. on Dec. 20, 2011, behind a commercial complex at 140 N. Bradford Ave., in Placentia. The killer kneeled on the victim’s chest and stabbed him more than 40 times in the head, neck, and chest in an attack that was captured on grainy surveillance videos. The attacker, however, was unidentifiable because a sweatshirt hood covered his face.
- Lloyd “Jimmy” Middaugh, 42, who was taking shelter on the Santa Ana River Trail under the 91 overpass in Anaheim on Dec. 28 when he was stabbed more than 50 times in the head and torso. His body was discovered the following morning.
- Paulus “Dutch” Smit, 57, was stabbed more than 60 times in an alcove of the Yorba Linda Public Library shortly after 3:45 p.m. on Dec. 30. His body was discovered about an hour and 15 minutes later.
- John Barry, 64, was stabbed to death outside a trash enclosure at a Carl’s Jr. restaurant on La Palma Avenue in Anaheim by a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Several witnesses saw the attack and chased after the assailant. Ocampo was arrested about a quarter mile away after he ran from the crime scene shedding clothes and, police say, the knife. At the time of his arrest, Ocampo had blood on his hands and face, police said.
- Raquel Estrada, 53, stabbed to death in the kitchen of her home on Trix Circle in Yorba Linda on Oct. 25. She had been stabbed nearly 40 times.
- Juan Herrera, 35, whose bloodied body was found near his mother’s inside the home they shared in Yorba Linda. He had been stabbed more than 60 times, and may have tried to flee from his house during the attack. Detectives theorize that the killer dragged his body back inside the house.
The OC Register has excellent updated coverage on this.
I hope that no one buys this insanity defense.
Death penalty sought against ex-Marine in murders in O.C.
Real Life Monsters 