Juan Corona murdered 25 transient laborers in Sutter County, California in 1971. He was the most prolific serial killer in US history until Dean Corll two years later, and maintains the record for most prolific in California history. Corona was born in Ayutla, Jalisco, Mexico on February 7, 1934 and illegally immigrated to the United States when he was 16. He worked as a farm laborer in the Central Valley and moved to the Marysville-Yuba City area in 1953. Corona was married twice and had four daughters.
Corona's brother Jose had him committed to a mental hospital in 1956 after he had a psychotic breakdown. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, treated with electroshock therapy for three months, released, and immediately deported back to Mexico. Corona returned six years later on a green card and continued working as an agricultural worker, sometimes exhibiting psychotic episodes and anger issues. In time, he became a licensed labor contractor who rented out workers to area farms. Corona spent a few weeks institutionalized in 1970 for psychiatric treatment. Jose during this time operated a barroom in Maryville. A bar patron, Jose Raya, was slashed with a machete in a scuffle and victim filed a $250,000 damages suit against Jose Corona, but he fled back to Mexico.On May 19, 1971, a local Japanese-American farmer, Goro Kagehiro, was inspecting a peach orchard on his property, which employed some of Corona's rented workers, when he encountered a man-sized hole, freshly dug between two trees, and could not understand why someone would dig a hole there. Kagehiro returned to the orchard that night and found that the hole was filled in. He became suspicious and called police. At minimum, someone might have snuck onto the farm to bury trash there. Some deputies started to dig and to their surprise found a dead body, that of a slender white man. The dead man would soon be identified as 40 year old Ken Whitacre. He had been stabbed in the chest, beaten on the head, and slashed in the back of the head. His hands bore defensive wounds. A gay erotic novel was found in his pocket, suggesting he was homosexual.
Sutter County investigators did not consider the murder a high priority case. There was little evidence as to who could have killed Whitacre, although a plaster cast of tire tracks near the burial site was made. Most likely he was killed in an argument between one or more homosexual men and the injuries to him suggested the killer was quite angry. Only a minimal autopsy was done on Whitaker and he was sent off for burial.On May 24, workers driving a tractor on an adjoining ranch found some disturbed ground. The foreman checked it out and called police. They found another dead white male in there, who was identified after a week as Charles Fleming, a 67 year old drifter. Detectives combed the area but found nothing of interest until a deputy spotted a pathway into a weedy area next to a peach orchard. Along the riverbank, they found more soil subsidence that looked like graves. They began digging and found some grocery receipts from a nearby market dated May 20 and signed Juan V. Corona. In this hole a third body was found. This man had died of blunt force head injuries and slashed with a large, sharp weapon. He was also an itinerant farm worker. Corona was suspected of the earlier attack on Jose Reya in the barroom his brother owned, and moreover, Jose Corona was gay. Juan was said to have a pathological anger against homosexuals.
The digging turned up more and more bodies; although Sutter County DA Dave Teja wanted to arrest Corona, Sheriff Roy Whiteaker was not prepared to do that just yet. He felt there was not yet enough probable cause. The mostly rural county was a quiet one with low crime and nobody had much experience with homicides. As they dug, it was apparent that many of the murders were sexually motivated as victims had their pants and undergarments removed. Sometimes they accidentally amputated a body part with a shovel and the deeper they went, the worse the smell of decomposition got. Some bodies were so decayed that they just fell apart when lifted out. A total of nine bodies were found.As they were taken to the morgue, it was apparent that all of them were white men, all migrant workers, all killed via beating or stabbing. Some were also shot. The medical examiners claimed some of the bodies were anally sodomized, although this was not mentioned at trial later on. The victims were not young men, all were older than 40 and many were in their 50s-60s.
What a filthy and rotten society you Americans have.The Soviets should’ve wiped you sodomites off the face of the earth in 1962
Some of them had been seen by witnesses to be accompanying Corona or working for him. With enough probable cause, deputies arrested him at his home on May 26, to the shock of his wife and daughters. In the house, detectives found a digger, hatchet, meat cleaver, grocery receipts, a ledger with the names of 34 men, a stained wooden club, a '68 Ford van parked outside with apparent dried blood in it, a shovel, bag of bullets, bundles of clothing, and an 18" machete. Also parked there was Corona's '69 Impala, which had more blood stains in it. Corona additionally had an office on the Sullivan ranch where the second body was found. In there was found a loaded pistol and a long knife with the phrase "Tennessee Toothpick" printed on it. There were more grocery receipts and a smaller knife.The area continued to be searched with aircraft using infrared cameras. Near a prune orchard, deeper in the woods, was another area of ground impressions. Here more bodies were found. One man had identification papers with him. His head was nearly removed from his body from the force the blow that knocked him out. His wallet lay on top of him, searched for likely money. The search continued all through the Memorial Day weekend and until June 4, by which time 25 bodies were unearthed, all migrant workers. Many had their arms raised over their heads, as if a ritual or superstition was involved. All victims were male, most of them white--three were black and one Native American, ranging in age from 40 to 67, and none were Latinx. Some had died as long as a month earlier and four were never identified.
In one grave the diggers found bank deposit slips printed with Corona's name. Even with all this, there was still no definitive proof that he was responsible; despite the ledger with the victim' names, it could not be determined if it was in fact his handwriting, and even if it was that didn't prove he killed anyone. Still, he was in custody for now as detectives began researching his background. Nothing especially incriminating was found; he was known locally as a labor contractor, married with four children, a churchgoer, and nobody who worked for him had any complaints other than that he sometimes underpayed them. He was well-liked by ranchers. Further, Corona's rented workers were all Mexicans while none of the murder victims had been. Corona appeared mostly resigned to his fate. He was said to have a 130 IQ but had limited English skills. He painted in his spare time and hoped to obtain US citizenship.Deputy Jerry Gregory on the other hand reported that some who knew Corona said he was a man consumed with rage. Others reported having seen him near the graves. A month after his arrest, attorney Richard Hawk arrived in Yuba City to take over the defense. He fired Corona's psychiatrists and filed a lawsuit against the county officials, charging them with mishandling evidence, violating his client's constitutional rights, slandering him, and causing emotional distress.
As for the forensics tests, a lot of the "blood" found was actually just paint or animal blood and the machete had none on it. Dried blood in Corona's Ford van was just from a worker who had been injured on the job. Most of the victims were too decomposed to prove if they had been slashed with the machete, and the tire tracks didn't match his vehicles, nor did a bullet removed from one victim match his gun. And no analysis had been done on the receipts to prove that only Corona had handled them, or to link the receipts via date to the proper rate of decomposition of the victim in whose grave they were found, ie. to prove that the receipts had fallen or dropped into the grave on the day that person had been dumped there.Furthermore, Corona had been on crutches when many of the murders happened. Hawk believed he could testify in his own defense. But if it wasn't him, then who? Most people involved preferred a clean end to the case. Hawk managed to get a change of venue to Solano County and it took until September 11, 1972 for the trial to begin in Fairfield. He proposed to prove that Jose Corona was the real killer--in the wake of the Supreme Court's Furman v. Georgia ruling, capital punishment was suspended in the United States and the death penalty was not possible.
Dave Teja had never prosecuted a first degree murder case before. He made the mistake of not having the blood on the knives in Corona's office tested and he had to scramble to get that done, which annoyed the judge. Teja also got new handwriting experts to compare the ledgers against Corona's writing and asked for hair samples for testing. On the other hand, a cigarette butt found with one victim had saliva that didn't come from either him or Corona. It was later found that the tire track cast compared with Corona's van's tires wasn't the one made at the first grave. The correct cast was finally found and tested, and believed highly likely to be from Corona's van. Hawk argued that the police could have just faked the evidence. He tried to get his client bail, but was denied. However Judge Richard Patton complained that the prosecution had not given a satisfactory reason to deny Corona bail.
For the first few weeks, the prosecution's ineptitude made it look to Hawk that a victory for the defense was a near-certainty. His strategy was to claim someone else killed the victims and Corona was being framed for it. Police witnesses testified that the body they had dug up had been so fresh that there was no decomposition odor, and morticians admitted to errors and confusion as they'd picked up the bodies. They had given the bodies a numbering system different from that used by the police, so the end result was that some bodies had received more than one number. That was really what the confusion amounted to, said the prosecution; it wasn't about intentional evidence manipulation. Yet in the end, no one really knew what the testimony on this issue actually came to. Hawk insisted that the prosecution could manipulate the body numbering system to make whatever case they wished to make. Possibly, they had, but neither side could prove its position. A bag of fingertips removed from the victims to better manage the biological evidence turned out to have been mislabeled in several cases. The judge was once again indignant.
Other items of evidence were a candle and fragments of a candle holder that resembled one from Corona's Sullivan ranch office, and the prosecution suggested that it had been part of some superstitious religious ritual. Yet once again, Hawk contended that it could have been planted, for why would only one grave contain so much "evidence" - and the last one opened, at that? He continued to hammer at the state's case and it was true that the investigation was handled very sloppily. Corona himself said little throughout the proceedings and remained mostly mum.There had never before been a murder trial in US history where a defendant was charged with 25 murders and even the judge wondered why the DAs would bother filing charges for every single victim, but it was part of their strategy to overwhelm the jury with evidence of Corona's guilt. However they couldn't prove Corona was gay (as it seemed improbable that a married man with four children could be anything but straight) and Hawk claimed the victims were posed in such a way as to indicate that they played the "male" role, and the killer became enraged after a sexual encounter and killed his partner. Hawk claimed he knew of an expert witness on homosexual behavior, but this person was never called in to testify and apparently did not exist--he reportedly read that in a book. His strategy was to suggest that Jose Corona, known to be gay, was the real killer.
Hawk also attacked the forensic evidence. The bullet found in one victim came from the same type of gun Corona owned, but couldn't be proven to have come from his particular gun. Most of the victims were too decomposed to match knife wounds to his knife. Blood stains also proved nothing as if Corona killed the men, there would be a significant quantity in his house. A third DA, Ron Fahey, entered the case as it went into its third month. He and Hawk argued and belittled each other relentlessly so that the judge often had to break up their arguments. Neither could get the better of the other. The prosecution rested its case at last. Hawk then called for a directed verdict to nullify the case, but this request was turned down. His closing arguments in essence suggested that there was an alternative suspect, but nobody had been able to put Jose Corona in the area when the murders took place as he was in Mexico.The jury met to deliberate. Initially they voted 7-5 for acquittal. They took 16 more votes over 46 hours of deliberation and on January 18, 1973 found Corona guilty on all 25 counts. He was sentenced to 15 to life. The jurors later said they thought Hawk bungled the case by resting without any witnesses. Corona began serving his sentence at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. At the end of the year, four inmates stabbed him 32 times, taking out one of his eyes, and he nearly died. The assault happened because Corona had allegedly disrespected one of the inmates by bumping into him and not apologizing afterward. Of the inmates questioned, including the one he bumped, one admitted to being the bumped man's homosexual lover and three were friends of his. Four of them were charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
Corona's wife, who had not lived with him since his arrest, formally filed for divorce in 1974. He allegedly confessed the murders to a priest on the condition that he keep the confession a secret. Corona also supposed confessed in 1978 to a Mexican consular official. The same year, a state appeals court reviewed the trial and found that Hawk had poorly served his client. He criticized the police instead of suggesting a defense of mental incompetence when he knew Corona had been under psychiatric care, did not call any witnesses for the defense, was cited 19 times for contempt of court, and after the trial was charged with tax evasion and lost his law license. Further, ghostwriter Ed Cray, who had sat with Hawk during the trial to write a book about it afterward, was scrutinized. The appeals court found that the decision to pay Hawk from book sales was a conflict of interest. Hawk, who later told a reporter that he had since found religion and took on the case "to become famous", passed away in 1986 at only 54.Corona was granted a new trial, which opened in February 1982 in Hayward. The first trial had lasted four months, this one went on for seven months. Dick Fahey again prosecuted it, but Corona got a new defense team. Some witnesses had passed away over the previous decade. Some 1,300 evidential items were exhibited and 175 witnesses called. It ultimately cost the state a little under $5 million. Again, nobody attempted to prove the defendant was mentally incompetent and again the defense maintained that Jose Corona, who had died a few months after the original trial, was a likely suspect and attacked the police handling of the case. Corona did testify in his own defense this time, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter. He maintained his steadfast innocence.
Finally, the jury convened and took two weeks. On September 22, just past the tenth anniversary of the original trial's opening, they found him guilty. The biggest piece of evidence, they said, was the ledger of the victims' names, something Corona had never been able to satisfactorily explain. He was once again sentenced to 15 to life. The defense motioned for yet another trial on the grounds of jury misconduct, but this was turned down. One writer, Bill Tailbitzer, was granted full access to all police and court records for the case and felt satisfied of Corona's guilt.Dave Teja believed Corona killed far more than 25 men and suspected his body count could be as high as 43. Authorities in two neighboring counties had refused permission to search them for bodies, but Tehema County authorities reported the discovery of a body found floating in the Sacramento River back in July 1970, which looked like it was hacked with a machete. The body was floating face-up, had sand on it, and there was grass growing out of the armpits. A pay stub was found in the pants pocket.
After the first trial, a couple in Lake Oroville reported a suspicious incident. Their dogs were agitated over something they found in a walnut orchard. Teja examined the spot and found a depression in the ground that looked like a freshly-dug grave was found. The soil was pretty hard and he couldn't dig it. Teja didn't bother pressing the matter further, knowing how uncooperative Butte County police were, but he was sure Corona had buried victims there. As a result of the Corona trial, California passed a law that was aimed to assist small, cash-poor counties like Sutter with the cost of trials and not bankrupt themselves in the process. Caps on spending for criminal cases now frees counties from all but a fixed sum, which is determined by a property assessment formula. The state now picks up the rest of the prosecution's tab.Corona was transferred to Correctional Training Facility in Soledad after the stabbing incident. In 1992 he was transferred to Corcoran State Prison. In 1998 he was reported to be suffering from early onset dementia. He was disciplined a few times over the years for carrying scissors and taping an Exacto blade to a toothbrush. Corona came up for parole every few years and was turned down each time. In two parole hearings, he made what could be considered partial confessions. In 2006, Corona said "Those people had nothing to live for. They were all ready to go on to the next life." At his 2011 parole hearing, he said that the victims were drunks who trespassed on his property and that was why he killed them, but when he came up for parole again in 2016 he said he had no memory of the murders.Corona died of apparent natural causes at a Kings County hospital on March 4, 2019.
>>18654131That's crazy. One of the serial killers with the biggest body count ever and nobody ever remembers or talks about him because he killed people nobody cares about.
>>18654132>What a filthy and rotten society you Americans have.>The Soviets should’ve wiped you sodomites off the face of the earth in 1962
>>18654149$5 says his daughters all married white guys.
>>18654132soviets recruited homosexuals and transsexuals in the US as "useful idiots" and didn't stamp out dedovschina, communists spread degeneracy wherever they go
>>18654194same as Samuel Little? the media does not care about this stuff unless the victims were young attractive white females.
>>18654136Hawk seems like he saw too many detective movies and confused them with real life. Mf-er even tried to look like a lawyer in some cheap B-movie crime flick.
>>18654161>In two parole hearings, he made what could be considered partial confessions. In 2006, Corona said "Those people had nothing to live for. They were all ready to go on to the next life."Imagine being 60 like some of those dudes and still being a homeless drifter doing backbreaking labor in farm fields for a living. If you were 22 then no big deal but if you still have to live like that when you're a boomer, you done fucked up good.
>25 transient laborersPlenty more where that came from
>>18654132You lost.
>>18654424>If you were 22 then no big deal but if you still have to live like that when you're a boomerdude, it was 1971. boomers were the 22 year olds back then. these dudes were like their grandfather's age.
>>18654159>Authorities in two neighboring counties had refused permission to search them for bodieswere the cops actually bumping these guys off themselves? why were they so resistant to digging for them?
>>18654490They just didn't want to deal with it or do all that work, and they probably didn't care about the mostly homeless transient victims that much. If they were hot sorority girls you can bet the cops would never sleep until they caught the killer.
>>18654120>murder 1watch the videos yikes
>>18654490>whywhat is $$ ? what are budget issues ?
>>18654485Not literal boomers, meme boomers.
>>18654132But enough about India...
>>18654424mf-ers couldn't get a Social Security check until 65 so they did what they had to do
>>18654149>Mexican mom who doesn't weigh 250 poundsWhat?
>>18655960It was pre-HFCS
>>18654133>Many had their arms raised over their heads, as if a ritual or superstition was involved.Or they were just dragged by the arms
