- SEXUAL PREDATORS
- Serial Killer Andrew Urdiales
The First Known Victim
At approximately 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 18, 1986, a security guard making rounds at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif., spotted a figure lying on one of the student parking lots along the campus's western perimeter, according to the Orange County Weekly. It was dark, and at first he thought perhaps it was a mannequin that a student may have left there as a prank—the poorly-lit parking lot made it difficult to tell for sure. At first he simply drove past, but moments later, having second thoughts, he turned around and headed back to the nearly-deserted area where the whitish figure lay.
Getting out of his car, the security guard noticed that the figure was lying on the pavement next to a Chevrolet Citation. As he approached it, however, he saw that it was lying in a pool of blood and suddenly realized that it wasn't a mannequin at all. It was the dead body of a young woman.
Robbin Brandley
Detective Michael Stephany of the Orange County Sheriff's Department was among the first law enforcement officials to arrive at the scene. Stephany observed immediately that Brandley had been stabbed numerous times, mostly in her neck, chest and back. He also noted that she had sustained cuts to her hands, which he theorized were defensive wounds. Other than Brandley's body and her blood, there was little evidence: no other DNA, fingerprints, hair, or clothing fibers were found at the crime scene for Stephany and his colleagues to work with. An autopsy would show that Brandley had been stabbed 41 times, but the brutal murder would remain a mystery for the next 11 year - July 1988 - April 1999
On July 17, 1988, Julie McGhee, 29 and a prostitute, disappeared after being picked up by an unknown male in the Cathedral City area of Riverside County. Her remains, stripped of identification, were later found in a remote desert area. Identifying her body was made more difficult by the mutilation of her body by coyotes and possibly other animals. Cartridge cases for a .45-caliber handgun were found near McGhee's body. McGhee's slaying was initially investigated as a single, isolated homicide.
Julie McGhee
Two months later, on September 25, 1988, another prostitute, Mary Ann Wells, 31, was picked up by someone in nearby San Diego County and driven to a deserted industrial complex within the City of San Diego. Her body was found later, shot once in the head. As in McGhee's death, a cartridge case was left behind at the scene of Wells' murder. A condom found at the scene had the Wells' DNA on it, as well as DNA from another person—believed to be the killer's—but the stranger's DNA did not immediately lead anywhere.
By the time of the next slaying some seven months later, again in Riverside County, investigators began to see the links between the deaths. On April 16, 1989, another prostitute, Tammie Erwin, 20, was picked up and driven to a remote area near Palm Springs where she was shot three times and her body dumped. Again investigators found cartridge cases near the body.
Mary Ann Wells
Investigators from Riverside and San Diego counties began comparing notes. They realized that they had a serial killer on their hands: ballistics tests showed that the cartridge cases from the McGhee, Wells, and Erwin murders scenes all matched. Each of the women had been killed with the same gun, but they lacked, at this point, both the weapon and a suspect to whom they could link it.
But there was no link between the prostitute shootings and the murder of Robbin Brandley. The victim contrasts were too great: Brandley wasn't a prostitute; she was a college student. Brandley also had not been shot; she had been repeatedly stabbed. For the next three and a half years there were no additional murders that police could attribute to the same killer
Tammie Erwin
*A Victim Who Survived
Jennifer Asbenson, 19, a nursing assistant in Palm Springs, worked the night shift at a home for disabled children. On September 27, 1992, according to Asbenson and CBS News, she went to a bus stop to catch the bus that would drop her near the children's home. She first went to a store to make a purchase, but when she returned she saw the last bus for the night leave without her. In a panic, she knew that she did not have a way to get to work. Moments later a man pulled up in a car and asked Asbenson if he could give her a ride. He did not seem threatening and, in fact, seemed like a Good Samaritan, so she accepted the ride. She said that she "didn't feel any sense of fear," and thought that he "was so nice and so charming." Although he made a few advances toward her, he dropped her off for work in time for her shift, which ran from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m.
Jennifer Asbenson
The man was waiting outside the children's home the next morning when Asbenson got off work. She told police, as well as reporters, that she was not frightened by the man, who said: "Let me give you a ride home." Her thoughts were that the man was not dangerous, and that if he had wanted to do something to her he could have done it the evening before. As a result, she accepted the ride—again.
Once inside the car, however, things were much different this time. He put a knife to her throat, tied her hands behind her back and then drove her into the desert. When they arrived at the remote location, Asbenson's nightmare intensified. He cut off her shorts and bra, and shoved her underwear into her mouth. Afterward he forced her to perform sexual acts, and tried to rape her. He then strangled her until she passed out. When she regained consciousness he opened the car door and told her to get out, but held her back by yanking on her hair. He then forced her into the car's trunk and drove off.
Convinced that she was going to die, Asbenson desperately searched for the trunk's release mechanism. When she found it, she waited for what seemed the right moment and jumped out onto the road. After several cars would not stop for her, she stood in the road in front of a Marine truck and forced it to stop. When her abductor saw the two Marines helping her, he fled, she said. The Marines drove her to safety and she reported her terrifying ordeal to the police.
To Kill and Kill Again
Two and a half years later, on March 11, 1995, again in the Palm Springs area, the elusive and as yet unidentified serial killer claimed yet another victim. Denise Maney, 32, a Riverside County prostitute, was picked up from a street and driven to a remote desert area. According to police and court records, Maney disrobed, after which the killer tied her hands behind her back. After sexually assaulting Maney, the killer placed a .45-caliber gun in her mouth and "blew the back of her head off." Following his modus operandi, the killer took her clothes with him and left her body in the desert.
Denise Maney (left) and Laura Uylaki
On April 14, 1996, halfway across the nation, a Cook County, Ill., prostitute was picked up off a street and driven to the Wolf Lake area straddling the Hammond, Ind., and Chicago border. Sometime during the ordeal Laura Uylaki was shot twice in the head with a .38-caliber revolver, and afterward her killer threw her nude body into Wolf Lake where it was later found on the Chicago side of the lake. Police theorized that the killer had taken the victim's clothing and other items to hamper their efforts in identifying her. However, police in Illinois did not connect the murder with those in California.
Cassandra Corum (left) and Lynn Huber
Three months later, the killer struck again, also in Illinois. On July 14, 1996, the nude body of Cassandra "Cassie" Corum, 21, another prostitute, was found floating in the Vermillion River in Livingston County, Ill., near the town of Pontiac. Duct tape had been placed over her mouth, and she had shot been once in the head. An autopsy later showed that she had also been stabbed seven times in the chest and head. Her wrists had been handcuffed, and duct tape had also been used to bind her ankles. Corum had disappeared from a bar in Hammond, Ind., after conversing with a man, and had left with him after getting into his pickup truck.
The following month, on August 2, 1996, the nude body of Lynn Huber, 22, of Chicago, was found floating in Wolf Lake, only a few yards from where Laura Uylaki's body had been found in the spring. Like most of the other victims, Huber had been a prostitute, and the killer had left none of the victim's clothing or identification near the murder scene.
A Lucky Break
On November 14, 1996, Hammond, Indiana patrol officer Warren Fryer stopped a man driving a pickup truck after observing that the driver was parked outside a suspected crack house on the 800 block of Becker Street with a prostitute known to the police. As a precaution, Fryer called for backup and waited for additional police to arrive before moving on the suspicious person. When officers approached the pickup, according to Fryer, the driver, Andrew Urdiales, 31, was "cooperative." As Fryer spoke with him and Urdiales explained that he had served in the Marines, he noticed a revolver inside the pickup and loudly yelled, "Gun!" to his fellow officers.
The revolver, retrieved by another officer, was a snub-nosed, chrome-plated .38 special, and the officer noted that it was fully loaded with six bullets. Since Urdiales did not have a permit for the gun, he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and the revolver was confiscated.
Andrew Urdiales
As the pickup was being prepared to be towed, Fryer and the other officers noticed that the vehicle, inside and out, was "spotlessly clean." Fryer also noted that the truck bed and the cab "were as clean as you would wash the outside of your car...as if they had come out of the showroom." Rolls of duct tape were also found inside the vehicle.
Urdiales was soon released on the concealed weapon charge, but was later convicted of a misdemeanor for the unauthorized possession of a handgun.
April 1, 1997—Another Lucky Break
On April 1, 1997, Officer Fryer received a call about a man and a woman fighting at a motel, then known as the American Inn, at 4000 Calumet Avenue in Hammond. According to police, Urdiales told an officer that the woman, a prostitute, had stolen something from him. The prostitute, however, also known to the police, told Fryer that Urdiales was "kind of kinky" and that the altercation arose because Urdiales had wanted to take the woman to Wolf Lake, handcuff her in the back of his pickup and have sex with her. Fryer told the prostitute, "Geez...don't do that. We're finding girls up there dead."
Fryer wrote a police report about the incident and filed it, but did not arrest Urdiales or the woman. Instead, he later ran a computer check on Urdiales that encompassed known infractions involving him in Hammond, including the November 1996 incident involving the unauthorized possession of a handgun. Fryer then wrote a supplemental report that included all of the information he knew about Urdiales to date, and forwarded it to the detective division. Because Fryer had made the Wolf Lake connection to the murdered prostitutes, copies of the reports were in turn forwarded to homicide detectives with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) with the hope that the information might be useful to them. Following their review of the documents, CPD Detective Don McGrath asked Hammond police for Urdiales' confiscated revolver.
Upon receipt of the weapon, McGrath took it to a gun expert. After a thorough examination, the ballistics test results showed that it was the same gun that had been used to kill Laura Uylaki, Cassandra Corum, and Lynn Huber. McGrath now knew for certain that he had a serial killer on his hands.
Stakeout and Arrest
On the morning of April 22, 1997, a Tuesday, McGrath and his partner, Detective Raymond Krakausky, began a stakeout in an alley near Urdiales' parents' home, where Urdiales had resided following his discharge from the Marine Corps years earlier. It was a working-class neighborhood where unassuming bungalows and duplexes line the streets, and where the murder suspect's parents had lived for more than 10 years. As luck would have it, McGrath and Krakausky did not have to wait very long. Urdiales came out at approximately 9 a.m., leaving for his job as a security guard at a downtown Chicago Eddie Bauer store. The two detectives walked up to Urdiales and told him that they needed to speak with him about the incident in November 1996 in which his gun had been confiscated. Urdiales politely told them that the case had been resolved, but the detectives insisted there was unfinished business regarding the .38-caliber revolver. After minimal hesitation, he agreed to accompany the two detectives to their offices.
At one point McGrath asked Urdiales where he had obtained the gun, and he told him that he had purchased it about five years earlier in Calumet City for $300. When asked if it had ever been out of his possession, he said that it had not and stated that it had been under his exclusive control until it had been confiscated by Hammond police officers. At another point during the questioning, McGrath indicated that he and his partner were investigating some unsolved crimes, shooting deaths to be precise, involving a .38-caliber gun, and showed him photos of Uylaki, Corum and Huber. At first Urdiales said that he did not recognize the three women, but when McGrath told him that the bullets used in their murders matched his gun, he paused for a moment and then responded that he guessed he would not be going to work that day. He took off his security badge, loosened his tie, and began untying his shoe laces. He then provided the detectives with details of his murders of Uylaki, Corum, and Huber. Without any additional prompting from the police, Urdiales also said that there were "some matters" that police in California "might be interested in." Up until that point, police in neither state had connected the earlier murders in California to those in Illinois.
Similar .38 Special
Laura Uylaki
Urdiales explained to McGrath and Krakausky that he had met Laura Uylaki sometime during the winter of 1996, and that they had gone out on dates a few times. He said that they'd had sex on two occasions at Wolf Lake, using a sleeping bag Urdiales said he kept in the in the back of the truck, according to court records. It had been in April 1996, he said, that he picked up Uylaki and they again went to Wolf Lake. Along the way, an argument broke out between them. When they arrived at Wolf Lake, Urdiales took his .38-caliber revolver, which was loaded, from beneath the driver's seat and was "showing it to Laura" when it went off and shot a hole in the roof of his pickup.
Laura Uylaki
"Laura got mad and all hell broke loose," Urdiales told the cops.
Urdiales said that Uylaki had attempted to grab his gun, and had broken his left index finger during the struggle. Unable to gain control of the situation, Uylaki had jumped out of the truck and had tried to run away. Following her, Urdiales said, he had fired a couple of rounds in Uylaki's direction as he had chased her. After she fell to the ground, Urdiales had gone over to her and determined that she was dead. It had been then, he said, that he had made the decision to toss her body into the lake. Before throwing her body in the lake, Urdiales said, he had undressed her and taken her clothes with him. On the drive back to Chicago, he said, he had thrown the clothes out of the truck from the passenger side.
Lynn Huber
Urdiales then told the detectives about the murder of Lynn Huber, his seventh murder victim, whom he had met during the summer of 1996. Huber, he said, had been working as a prostitute in Chicago. As with Uylaki, Urdiales said that he and Huber had had sex on two occasions. On an evening in late July or early August 1996, Urdiales said that he had seen Huber carrying a large garbage bag, and that he had stopped and offered her a ride, and she had accepted. The detectives recalled that Huber's body had been found on August 2, 1996. As Urdiales continued with his account, he said that he had driven into an alley where he and Huber could have sex. He claimed she had begun arguing with him and started "acting kind of ditzy" before trying to get out of the truck. Urdiales said that he had grabbed her and had shot her in the head with the gun he kept under the driver's seat.
Lynn Huber
After he'd killed her, Urdiales said, he had placed her body in the bed of the truck, and driven it to Wolf Lake. As he had removed Huber's clothing, he said, he had pricked his finger with a needle. He said that pricking his finger had made him angry, prompting him to take a knife and stab the body. He said that he had stabbed Huber "a lot of times" in the back, and afterward had shot her again. He then had taken her nude body and thrown it in the lake, and left with the garbage bag that Huber had been carrying. After he had examined its contents and discovered that it contained clothing, Urdiales had taken the clothes that Huber had been wearing, along with the clothing in the plastic bag, and given them all to the Salvation Army because Huber "won't need them anymore."
- Cassandra Corum
In describing what McGrath and Krakausky would conclude was their serial killer's eighth and final victim, Urdiales said that he had known Cassandra Corum for about two years before killing her on the night of July 13, 1996. After meeting each other at a bar in Hammond, Ind., the couple had driven to Wolf Lake to have sex. Her body had been found the next day floating in the lake.
At one point that evening, Urdiales said, Corum had said something that angered him—he couldn't remember what—resulting in him striking Corum in the face several times with his hand and fist. Urdiales' anger, the cops noted, seemed to be a recurring theme. Frightened by his violence, Corum panicked and had begun to fight back, which is what had prompted him to handcuff her hands behind her back. Urdiales had then removed her clothing, and described Corum as seeming "numb with anxiety and fear" and "passive and submissive." He had then bound her feet with duct tape and placed duct tape over her mouth. He said that he had been "still pissed off" about whatever Corum had said that had angered him as he was driving south on Interstate 55, with a terrified, bound and gagged naked woman lying on the front seat who was about to be killed.
Cassandra Corum
After driving for about two hours, Urdiales recalled, he had begun to get tired and decided to exit the interstate. He had continued driving, however, and eventually crossed a bridge that led to a small park where he had stopped and shut off the truck's engine. He said that he and Corum had gotten out of the truck and that he had grabbed his gun from beneath the seat on the way out. After walking to the back of the truck Corum, still naked, had turned to face Urdiales, as if she had planned to say something, when Urdiales shot her, according to court documents. After she had fallen to the ground, Urdiales said, he, still angry with Corum for the earlier altercation, had taken out his knife and stabbed her "a few times." Afterward, he had dropped her body into the river from the nearby bridge, and threw her clothing out of the window as he had driven toward home. As he explained, he had been "trained to kill in the Marine Corps," he claimed that he had not felt any sympathy for Cassie.
"She was just a whore," he said.
Loner
Andrew Urdiales was described as a loner, and as someone who had difficulty engaging in small talk. He graduated from Thornbridge High School in Doloton, Ill., in 1982, and was given the graduating senior label of "social outcast." He had few friends, and joined the U.S. Marine Corps a short time after completing high school, and was stationed at Camp Pendleton and other locales in southern California over the next eight years.
Urdiales also claimed to have fallen in love with a 15-year-old girl whom he had gotten pregnant. He said that marriage had been out of the question because he had been fearful of the girl's parents and what the Marine Corps might have done to him, in a judicial or disciplinary sense because of the girl's age. As a result, they had both agreed that the girl would get an abortion.
Andrew Urdiales
"I loved her and still love her," Urdiales later told a psychiatry professor at Yale University. "But the law and the state of California and the righteous and the Marine Corps might not see it that way."
Background information and testimony at trial later on showed significant evidence of mental illness on both sides of Urdiales' family, that he had been sexually abused by relatives, and that he had been physically and emotionally abused by his parents, according to court records.
During his military service, Urdiales received several promotions but was later demoted when those under his leadership refused to obey his orders. Killing four women during his Southern California military service, he received an honorable discharge in 1991 and returned to Chicago to live with his parents. Urdiales returned to California in September 1992 for a short visit in which he attacked Jennifer Asbenson, but returned to Chicago again. In March 1995, while vacationing in Palm Springs, he took the life of Denise Maney, his fifth known California murder victim.
Robbin Brandley
When Urdiales made his confession to the detectives, and led them through significant details of each of the killings, he claimed that college student Robbin Brandley was his first murder victim, according to court documents. Stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, Urdiales recounted, he had become upset regarding relationships with some of the people on the base and decided that he wanted to rob someone. He had armed himself with a "big old hunting knife," about 11 inches long, and driven to Saddleback College where he had waited in a darkened parking lot for a victim. He explained that the victim "could have been anybody," and that the victim he had chosen had been "just a random female." The victim had turned out to be Robbin Brandley.
Robbin Brandley
After he had seen her, he had crept up behind her and placed his hand over her mouth, demanding her purse. After she had given it to him, he had begun stabbing her in the back, he said. When she had fallen to the pavement, Urdiales began stabbing her in the chest. At one point the knife had become stuck in her ribs, and, in order for him to remove it, he had had to place his foot on her body to brace it while he struggled to extract the knife. When he had finished, Urdiales said, he had left the young woman there to die.
With blood on his hands, jacket and jeans, Urdiales said, he had known he had to get back on the base undetected. He subsequently rubbed grease from his car's engine on his hands and clothes to conceal the blood, and told military police at the guard station at the base's entrance that his car had broken down and that he'd had to make repairs.
Urdiales told the detectives that he had later picked up a prostitute in Hollywood, with whom he'd had sex, and that he was carrying the same knife that he'd used to kill Brandley. That prostitute, he said, "was lucky."
Julie McGhee, Mary Ann Wells, and Tammie Erwin
According to court records that detailed his confession to the two detectives, Urdiales said that he had killed Julie McGhee, 29, on July 17, 1988 in Cathedral City, Calif., near Palm Springs, and that she had been his second murder victim. He described how he had picked up McGhee in an area frequented by prostitutes, and had driven her to a remote construction site, out in the desert, where they had had sex. A short time later he had told McGhee to get out of his car, after which he had shot her in the head, he said. He claimed that he had not felt anything after committing the murder, and commented about how "quiet and peaceful" it had been in the desert where he had shot McGhee. Afterward, he said, he had driven to a bar where he had drunk "some beers and watched the girls dance."
Two months later, on September 25, 1988, Urdiales said, he had picked up Mary Ann Wells and had driven her to an industrial area in San Diego where they had had sex. Afterward, he said, he had shot her in the head and taken back the $40 he had paid her, and had dumped her body in an alley where it was later found, along with the condom he had left behind.
The following spring, on April 16, 1989, Urdiales said, he had picked up prostitute Tammie Erwin, with whom he'd had sex on at least one prior occasion, and had driven her to a vacant lot near Palm Springs where she performed oral sex on him. Urdiales said that he did not recall having argued with Erwin as he had argued with some of his other victims, but he did remember shooting her as she had stood outside his truck as he prepared to leave. He had been inside the pickup when he shot her, and, as she had stood there holding her head, he shot her a second time, which brought her to the ground. Before he had driven off, he said, he had shot her a third time
The One Who Got Away
In one part of his confession, Urdiales described for the detectives the ordeal through which he had put Jennifer Asbenson before deciding that he would attempt to kill her. He said that after having offered Asbenson a ride to work that fateful September evening in 1992, he had asked her for her telephone number, and she had given him one. Problem was, he said, it had been a "bum" number that wasn't hers: he had tried calling her after dropping her off at work. He had stewed about it during the night, and, while waiting for her to get off work so he could offer to take her to breakfast and give her a ride home, he said, he had begun "feeling upset about the number or something...something was just kind of building up, you know. Tension." He had remained, nonetheless, and made his offer, which she accepted,
At one point while they were driving, Urdiales said, he had reached over and grabbed Asbenson by her hair and showed her a gun, after which she had become "pretty much submissive from that part forward." He forced her to turn around, called her a lot of unpleasant names, and tied her hands behind her back.
"I think," he said, "before we started moving after I tied her hands up, I reached over and I kissed her. I just put my lips on her mouth and then I just started, you know, I was trying to make out with her."
Urdiales, at another point, forced Asbenson to perform oral sex on him, according to court documents that depict many of Urdiales' statements to the police. However, Urdiales failed to attain an erection, both when he forced Asbenson—who feared for her life—to perform oral sex and when he attempted to rape her after cutting off her clothes and undergarments. Livid, Urdiales began to choke Asbenson.
"She kept kicking and...her saliva was coming out of her mouth...her face was turning blue and then red," Urdiales said. "It was just a battle for awhile."
After his hand had become tired from choking her, Urdiales said, he had forced Asbenson out of the car and threatened her so that she would make another oral sex attempt. Failing again in that regard, he said, he had forced Asbenson into the trunk of his car and had driven off. When Asbenson had escaped, he said, his first thought had been to shoot her, but he had driven away instead because of the presence of too many other vehicles on the roadway.
"So that was the last time I saw her," Urdiales told the detectives. "I don't know if somebody else picked her up and finished [what] I started."
However, in contrast to Urdiales' version of events, Asbenson testified in court that Urdiales had been successful in his attempt to rape her after cutting off her clotheS.
Denise Maney
Three years after the kidnapping, rape and attempted murder of Jennifer Asbenson, Urdiales returned to Palm Springs for a vacation in March 1995 and picked up prostitute Denise Maney in the same area where he had previously picked up McGhee and Erwin, according to court documents. Urdiales described how he had driven Maney into the desert, eventually turning off onto a deserted side road where he had stopped and ordered her to take off her clothes and perform oral sex on him. After getting "tired" of the oral sex, he said, he had grabbed Maney by her hair and forced her to go to the front of his car and lie face down on the ground. After tying her hands behind her back, he had forced her to perform fellatio again. Because he "wasn't really feeling satisfied," he had forced her onto her knees and abused her anally with his fingers, causing her to scream from the pain.
"And that went on for awhile," he said. "I just kept doing that to her."
Tiring of abusing Maney, Urdiales said, he had forced her to walk toward the desert. At one point they stopped, she turned around, and he forced the gun into her mouth.
"And then it went off," he related. He said it blew off the back of Maney's head. "Then she fell and she was still...gurgling...making a lot of noises."
Urdiales said he had gotten back in his car and started to drive away, but stopped and returned to where Maney lay dying.
"I didn't really think," he said. "I just kind of like wiped clean my hand...and I stopped, turned around and I went back to her."
By this time, he said, he had become "angry" and "very upset," and took out his knife. When he described his next actions, he began using both the singular pronoun "I" and the plural pronoun "we," prompting some people, including Robbin Brandley's relatives, to later question whether he may have been assisted by another person in carrying out his gruesome crimes.
"We took the knife out and we went back toward...to where she was lying...we just started stabbing for some reason," he told the cops, according to court records. "Just on the body several times, in the chest maybe, stomach...I remember I made a slashing motion by the throat...then we went back to the car. And I—we—we picked up her clothes. Then we were driving, we just started driving."
Wrap-up
Urdiales went to trial in Cook County, Ill., in 2002 for the murders of Laura Uylaki and Lynn Huber and was convicted of first-degree murder in both cases. He was sentenced to death. However, Governor George Ryan commuted all Illinois death sentences prior to leaving office in 2003, resulting in Urdiales being resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Former Illinois Governor George Ryan
In 2004, Urdiales was convicted of first-degree murder in the slaying of Cassandra Corum, and again received a death sentence. He is currently on death row in Illinois, but has appealed his death sentence. He will eventually be extradited to California to face charges in the murders of Robbin Brandley, Julie McGhee, Mary Ann Wells, Tammie Erwin, and Denise Maney after the evidentiary segment of his appeal in Illinois has concluded.
In July 2009, under a state law that allows for multiple murders connected to one another to be prosecuted together, prosecutors in California agreed to consolidate the five California murder cases into one, with Senior Deputy District Attorney Howard Gundy of the Orange County District Attorney's Office prosecuting the case.
Detective Don McGrath, testifying at Urdiales' sentencing for the murder of Corum, recalled that Urdiales had told him as he escorted Urdiales back to lock-up on one occasion that he was happy that he had been caught.
"'Well, you know, I'm kind of glad in a way that you caught me,'" McGrath quoted Urdiales. "'I was starting to get the urge again.'"