A 53-year-old serial killer was found guilty on Wednesday of murdering five women across Southern California in the late ’80s and early ’90s, officials said.
Andrew Urdiales’ conviction in the deaths of women from Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties raises his total number of victims to eight, after he was found guilty in the early 2000s of murdering three women in Illinois.
Prosecutors in Orange County will pursue the death penalty, the district attorney’s office said.
Urdiales, a former Marine, hated women and went on a killing rampage that began in Mission Viejo in 1986 and ended in Cathedral City in 1995, prosecutors said in court.
Four of the slayings occurred while he was stationed at Camp Pendleton, and the final while he was on vacation in Palm Springs, the Associated Press reported.
His first victim was 23-year-old Robbin Brandley, a student at Saddleback College. According to the AP and court proceedings, she was walking back to her car after volunteering as an usher at an on-campus piano concert when she was attacked by Urdiales, who had been lying in wait looking for a random person to kill.
Brandley father’s, Jack Reilley, took in the details of her case while sitting feet away from Urdiales in court on Wednesday.
“When they showed the picture of Robbin laying by her car, and then they showed the picture of Robbin’s face with the eyes open, and then there’s the other picture where her dress was pulled up with a bloody hand,” Reilley told KTLA. “I’ve never hated anybody before, ever in my life, but boy, sitting there looking at him I felt pure hate.”
His other four Southern California victims were prostitutes who he picked up and drove to secluded areas, where he had sex with them before killing them, the AP said.
The father of Tammie Erwin, who Urdiales was convicted of murdering in Riverside County when she was 18, said he hopes the serial killer is sentenced to death.
“Because of the nature of his crimes — the way he did the girls like they were just trash, just throw them away — I think he deserves it,” Charles Erwin said.
Urdiales was twice given capital punishment in Illinois, but the sentences were commuted to life in prison when the state’s governor abolished the death penalty in 2011.
That same year, Urdiales was extradited to California to stand trial in Orange County, which handled the prosecution of all five Southern California murders.
The penalty phase of the trial, when the court will decide whether to again sentence him to death, is set to begin Tuesday.