Juan Corona

Juan Corona Vallejo (February 7, 1934 – March 4, 2019) was a Mexican serial killer who was convicted of the murders of 25 migrant farm workers found buried in peach orchards along the Feather River in Sutter County, California, in 1971. At the time, his crimes were among the most notorious in U.S. history. Until the discovery of Dean Corll's victims two years later, he was the deadliest known American serial killer.

Corona was convicted of 25 counts of first-degree murder in 1973. An appellate court overturned the conviction in 1978 on the basis of incompetent legal representation and granted him a new trial. In 1982, he was again found guilty on all counts. He served a life sentence in California State Prison, Corcoran, and died in 2019.

Early life
Juan Corona was born in San Antonio de los Moran, Ayutla, Jalisco, Mexico, on February 7, 1934. He first illegally entered the United States through the California border in 1950 at age 16, following the footsteps of his four brothers and one sister. He picked carrots and melons in the Imperial Valley for three months before moving on north to the Sacramento Valley. His half-brother, José Natividad Corona Sánchez, later attacked a man with a machete-like weapon in Marysville and after losing the lawsuit, fled back to his native Mexico. Corona was a Catholic and went to St. Isadore's Roman Catholic Church.

In May 1953, Corona moved to the Marysville-Yuba City area at the suggestion of Natividad, finding work on a local ranch. He was first married to Gabriella E. Hermosillo on October 24, 1953, in Reno, Nevada. In 1958, he married Gloria I. Moreno, and they had four daughters, Martha, Victoria, Yolanda and Guadalupe.

Mental illness
In January 1956, after what was thought to be a schizophrenic episode, Natividad had Corona committed to DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, California, where he was diagnosed with "schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type." He received 23 electroconvulsive therapy sessions before he was declared recovered and released three months later. He was deported to Mexico upon his release.

In 1962, Corona was given a green card and returned to the United States legally, where he was regarded as a hard worker with schizophrenic episodes and a violent temper. He became a licensed labor contractor, in charge of hiring fruit ranch workers. In March 1970, he was again admitted to Dewitt for treatment. In March 1971, he applied for and was denied welfare.

Evidence
On May 19, 1971, a farm owner who had used Corona to contract field workers noticed a freshly dug hole in his peach orchard, which was filled the next day. In the hole was the body of a man who had been stabbed and hacked.

In one grave, deputies found two meat receipts bearing Corona's signature. In another two graves, there were two crumpled Bank of America deposit slips printed with Corona's name and address. This circumstantial evidence supported their case.

Witnesses later told police that some of the victims had been last seen riding in Corona's pickup truck.

In the early morning hours of May 26, 1971, police entered Corona's Yuba City home with a search warrant and arrested him. Evidence indicating his guilt was discovered and seized, such as two bloodstained knives, a machete, a pistol, and blood-stained clothing. There was also a work ledger that contained 34 names and dates, including seven of the known victims. The ledger came to be referred to as a "death list" by the prosecution, who alleged it recorded the dates the men were murdered.

Corona had been supplying workers to the ranches where the victims were discovered. Most of the victims were discovered on the Sullivan Ranch, which had a bunkhouse where Corona housed many of the men who worked for him.

Victims
All of Corona's victims were middle-aged Caucasian male drifters between the ages of 47 and 64 (except three); most of them had criminal records, and all but one were stabbed or slashed with a knife or machete.

Legal proceedings
Corona was provided legal aid and assigned a public defender, Roy Van den Heuvel, who hired several psychiatrists to perform a psychological evaluation. Although the sheriff, Roy Whiteaker, said the prisoner was in no apparent or immediate danger from his fellow townsmen, Corona was moved to the new and larger county jail in Marysville on May 30, 1971, for "security reasons."

On June 2, Corona was returned to Sutter County for arraignment, which was closed to the media and public. A plea of not guilty was entered, and a date was set for Corona's preliminary hearing.

By the time the search was terminated on June 4, a total of 25 male victims had been discovered. Four of them were unidentified.

On June 14, Van den Heuvel was replaced by Richard Hawk, a privately retained defense attorney. In return for his legal representation, an agreement was made granting Hawk exclusive literary and dramatic property rights to the defendant's life story, including the proceedings against him. Under the agreement, Corona waived the attorney–client privilege. Shortly after taking over the defense, and even before seeing Corona's medical record or reading any of the reports, Hawk decided against having him plead not guilty by reason of insanity and fired the psychiatrists.

Corona complained of chest pain from his cell in Yuba City on June 18 and was taken to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with having had a mild heart attack. The grand jury returned a 25-count murder indictment against him on July 12. In early August, Corona was hospitalized again after complaining of chest pain and saying he had not been able to sleep because of it.

Trial
It took over a year after the murders were discovered for the case against Corona to come to trial. The California Supreme Court voided the death penalty in the state on February 18, 1972, ruling it unconstitutional, cruel, and unusual. Therefore, it would not be a capital case. Hawk succeeded in getting a change of venue from Sutter County to Solano County.

The trial began on September 11, 1972, at the courthouse in Fairfield, California, more than 60 miles (100 km) from Yuba City. Jury selection took several weeks, and the trial took another three months.

Though Corona denied culpability, he was not called to the stand to testify in his own defense, and no defense witnesses were called. The jury deliberated for 45 hours and returned a verdict on January 18, 1973, finding Corona guilty of first-degree murder on all 25 counts charged. The judge, Richard Patton, sentenced Corona to 25 terms of life imprisonment, to run consecutively, without the possibility of parole. Despite being sentenced to so many consecutive terms, the Department of Corrections said that Corona would be eligible for parole in seven years, citing Section 669 of the penal code, which mandates that when a crime is punished by life imprisonment, with or without the possibility of parole, then all other convictions shall be merged and run concurrently.

Corona was first incarcerated at Vacaville's California Medical Facility, nine miles (14 km) from Fairfield, because of the heart irregularities. In December 1973, he was stabbed 32 times in his cell, lost his left eye, and had a blade permanently lodged behind his right eye because he had bumped into a fellow inmate in a corridor and failed to say "excuse me." Of the five men questioned, including the one involved in the bumping incident, one identified as the bumped man's sexual partner, and three inmates identified as friends of the partner, four were charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

Corona was transferred to Correctional Training Facility (CTF), in Soledad, California. In 1974 his wife filed for divorce, which was granted on July 30.

Second trial
On May 18, 1978, the California Court of Appeal granted Juan Corona a new trial based on his appeal and petition for the writ of habeas corpus filed by his lawyers, Alan Exelrod and Michael Mendelson. The Appeals Court based its decision on two primary issues raised by appellate counsel: first, trial counsel did not do the requisite legal and factual investigations required; and second, trial counsel's obtaining publication rights as part of his fee created an impermissible conflict between trial counsel and Corona.

The second trial began on February 22, 1982, in Hayward, California. Corona's defense posited that the real murderer of the ranch workers was most likely his brother, Natividad Corona, a known homosexual who was accused of attacking Romero Raya with a machete-like weapon at his cafe in Marysville and, after losing the lawsuit Raya filed, had fled back to his native Mexico. Natividad had died in 1973 in Guadalajara.

This time, more than 50 defense witnesses were called to the stand by Terrence Hallinan. Corona was called in his own defense. He was asked only two questions through an interpreter, taking only two minutes. "Do you understand the state has accused you of killing 25 men?" "Yes," Corona answered, almost inaudibly. "Did you have anything to do with killing those men?" "No," Corona replied. Hallinan then turned Corona over to the prosecutor, Ronald Fahey, for cross-examination. Startled prosecution attorneys requested a brief recess to gather their wits and prepare some of the more than 630 exhibits for their cross. Later, Fahey questioned Corona about the various vans and cars he used at the ranch where he worked and lived and where some weapons were found.

The trial lasted seven months. Corona was again convicted of the crimes on September 23, 1982, and returned to prison after the strategy failed to persuade the jury, which deliberated for 54 hours over a two-week period, of his innocence. Afterward, the foreman told the press that the most incriminating piece of evidence against Corona was his work ledger, for which the labor contractor had "no reasonable explanation." He said the jury had dismissed the defense's contention that Natividad committed the murders. "He wasn't in Marysville enough to have committed the bulk of the killings," he said.

Later years and death
In 1992, Corona was transferred from CTF at Soledad to Corcoran State Prison, Corcoran, California, where he served his sentence in the Sensitive Needs Yard (SNY) because he had dementia. He was denied parole eight times.

Corona died on March 4, 2019, aged 85, from natural causes.