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Thread: Lorraine Alison Hunter - California Death Row

  1. #1
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Lorraine Alison Hunter - California Death Row




    Jury Rules 62-Year-Old Moreno Valley Woman Should Receive Death Penalty for Killing Her Husband in 2009

    A jury recommended a Moreno Valley woman be put to death for fatally shooting her husband in 2009 after evidence was presented suggesting he was not the first husband she had killed, officials said Friday.

    Lorraine Alison Hunter, 62, was convicted of first-degree murder in the death her truck driver husband, Albert Thomas, on Aug. 21, according to a statement from the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.

    At that time, the jury also found that she had killed Thomas for financial gain and committed the crime while lying in wait.

    Though she was prevented from collecting the money, prosecutors alleged that Hunter was aware of more than $1 million available in life insurance policies in Thomas’ name in the event he was murdered.

    In determining whether the 62-year-old should be given the death penalty, jurors were shown evidence that another husband of hers was murdered in 1996 in Inglewood. That time, it appears she collected around $312,000 in life insurance funds, officials said.

    No one was ever charged in that case.

    Thomas was found shot to death in the sleeper section of the semitruck he drove for work on Nov. 4, 2009. The vehicle was parked in a dirt lot near the intersection of Eucalyptus and Edgemont avenues in Moreno Valley at the time, officials said.

    Though law enforcement interviewed Hunter in the immediate aftermath of the discovery, she was not arrested until 2011.

    Hunter originally testified she was not aware of any life insurance policies in her husband’s name, but investigators later determined she had already spoke to the trucking company that employed him and learned of two policies totaling $225,000 that would double if he were murdered.

    “The administrator at the trucking company told detectives that Hunter, prior to Thomas being found dead, had personally been told about the policies and that they doubled in the case of a murder,” DA’s officials said in the press release.

    A relative also provided further information that led to her arrest and helped authorities bring charges in the killing, according to prosecutors.

    Briuana Hunter, the defendant’s daughter, testified under a plea deal that she and her mother spent months plotting Thomas’ death, according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

    “She told me, `We need to figure something out,” the 23-year-old told the court, the newspaper reported. “She said that we needed the money. At first, I didn’t know what she meant, but later on, it became clear.”

    Detectives also learned that, in addition to the $450,000 available through Thomas’ job if he were murdered, Hunter forged her husband’s signature in attempt to secure another life insurance policy in the amount of $750,000 six months before his killing.

    However, her inability to obtain a certified copy of the death certificate prevented her from collecting any of the money.

    Hunter is expected to be sentenced on December 8. The DA’s office said it seeks to sentence her to death in the case.

    http://ktla.com/2017/09/16/jury-rule...sband-in-2009/

  2. #2
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Moreno Valley woman gets death for life insurance slaying

    City News Service

    A death sentence was handed down Friday, Dec. 8, for a Moreno Valley woman who fatally shot her 56-year-old husband to collect more than $1 million in life insurance proceeds.

    A Riverside jury in August convicted 62-year-old Lorraine Alison Hunter of murder in the slaying of Albert Thomas in 2009 and ultimately recommended that she be put to death.

    Riverside County Superior Court Judge Mac Fisher agreed with the jury’s recommendation, rejecting a defense plea for Hunter’s sentence to be reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Along with first-degree murder, jurors in her two-month trial found true special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and killing for financial gain.

    The prosecution’s key witness was Hunter’s now-23-year-old daughter, Briuana Lashanae Hunter, who confessed to plotting with her mother to kill Thomas.

    Briuana Hunter pleaded guilty last year to three counts of attempted murder and one count of voluntary manslaughter. She’s slated to be sentenced Wednesday to 18 years, nine months in state prison.

    The young woman, who’s being held without bail at the Indio Jail, testified that her stepfather was a “calm, quiet person,” who was “never overly aggressive” in the seven years that she and her mother lived with him in Moreno Valley.

    The witness stated that he held down two jobs — one as a short-haul trucker and another as a clerk at a Moreno Valley Auto Zone.

    According to Hunter, her mother frequently argued with Thomas about not having enough money to spend. Deputy District Attorney Will Robinson described the elder Hunter as “money hungry” and not interested in holding down a job to contribute to the household.

    Briuana Hunter said she aided her mother in filling out at least three life insurance applications, naming her stepfather as the insured party and Lorraine Hunter as the principal beneficiary. The woman forged Thomas’ name on each application.

    Hunter took out a $750,000 policy, as well as a $10,000 policy, Robinson said. A third policy apparently lapsed before Thomas was killed.

    Thomas additionally had a $450,000 policy through the trucking company for which he worked, according to court papers.

    In the two months before he was killed, Lorraine Hunter planned to shoot Thomas three other times — twice on walks through their neighborhood in the area of Day Street and Eucalyptus Avenue, and another time outside the victim’s workplace — but each time, the presence of too many witnesses foiled the plots.

    Briuana Hunter admitted being there on each occasion, knowing beforehand what her mother had planned.

    On the evening of Nov. 3, 2009, Thomas and the defendants left their apartment and strolled to his big rig, where he wanted to grab a sweatshirt that he had bought for Briuana Hunter, who was 15 at the time, according to trial testimony.

    The three of them climbed into his truck, and Thomas ducked into the rear sleeper compartment to find the shirt, while Lorraine Hunter and her daughter sat in the front seat.

    Robinson said Lorraine Hunter pulled a small-caliber handgun she’d stolen from a member of her church and shot the victim point-blank in the back of the head twice, then shot him twice in the upper back as he knelt in the compartment. Sheriff’s deputies found him dead in a kneeling position.

    Hunter and her daughter fled the scene with the help of a relative, and the case went cold for two years, until the same relative confessed everything she knew to investigators after being arrested herself for an unrelated offense.

    Robinson theorized during Hunter’s penalty trial that she was a sociopath with blood on her hands when she married Thomas.

    The prosecutor argued to jurors that she had masterminded, and probably carried out, the slaying of her previous husband, Allen Brown, who was gunned down in what appeared to be a random act of violence in Inglewood in 1996. The circumstances were eerily similar to Thomas’ death, with Brown shot in the back, and like Thomas, the victim was a truck driver.

    No charges were ever filed in the case, which remains unsolved.

    This is the second death sentence in Riverside in one week. On Dec. 1, San Jacinto gang member Raymond Alex Barrera received a death sentence for three slayings in 2013.

    http://www.pe.com/2017/12/08/moreno-...urance-murder/

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On October 14, 2020, counsel was appointed to represent Hunter on direct appeal before the California Supreme Court.

    https://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca....JSQCAgCg%3D%3D

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