A man portrayed by the prosecution as a sexually motivated serial killer was sentenced Monday to two consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole for killing two Southern California women in the 1980s.
Horace Van Vaultz Jr., 67, was convicted last month of two counts of first-degree murder for the July 16, 1981, strangulation of Selena Keough -- a 21-year-old mother who was killed in San Bernardino County and dumped under bushes in Montclair -- and the June 9, 1986, asphyxiation of Mary Duggan, a 22-year-old Reseda resident whose body was found in the trunk of her car in an empty parking lot in Burbank.
The nine-man, three-woman panel deliberated for about three hours. Jurors also found true the special-circumstance allegations of multiple murders, murder during a rape involving both women and murder during sodomy involving Keough.
Vaultz testified in his own defense and denied any involvement in the killings.
The case marked the first criminal prosecution in Los Angeles County involving investigative genetic genealogy, in which detectives access commercial DNA databases, load DNA material from the crime and find a relative's match that can point toward a suspect and collect their DNA, then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said at the time.
"When you get past the shock of hearing your daughter is dead, you wonder who is out there that did this,'' Duggan's mother, Maureen, said in a statement read in court by Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman at the sentencing. "Then you just miss her so much, every day, at every family gathering and holiday… You don't think of who after so many years. It's one thing that your child dies at only 22 years old. It's a whole other thing to know she suffered in dying at the hands of a monster."
It's one thing that your child dies at only 22 years old. It's a whole other thing to know she suffered in dying at the hands of a monster.
Mother of Mary Duggan
U.S. & World
Keough's sister, Sabrina Plourde, said it was difficult to sit through Vaultz's trial.
"I didn't know how bad it was until I came to court," she said of hearing the graphic details of what happened to her sister.
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She urged the judge to impose the strongest punishment available.
Also in court were the parents and brother of Janna Rowe, a 25-year-old woman whose murder Vaultz had been acquitted of decades ago in Ventura County.
The prosecutor noted during Vaultz's trial that DNA evidence -- which now links the defendant to DNA from semen found in Rowe's mouth, vagina and anus -- was not available for testing when Vaultz was acquitted of Rowe's 1986 killing in Ventura County, noting that he cannot be retried for that crime but the jury could use it as "pattern evidence."
Rowe's mother, Marcia Conner, called Vaultz's latest trial "bittersweet," saying she was thankful for the outcome though her family "has had to live with the knowledge that we would never find justice."
She said she wanted to "thank everyone involved in solving this case and bringing it to trial" and hoped that the verdict "brings some closure to the families that have suffered through these past long years of heartbreak.''
Rowe's brother, Jeffry, said, "Horace Van Vaultz Jr., oh, how I loathe that name. It makes me ill just to speak it. I've despised the defendant since he was acquitted of murdering my sister Janna in 1988, knowing full well in my mind he was guilty. How unjust to have him alive and free on the same Earth as us for the last 37 years… I'm actually sad that he is not being sentenced to death. That seems the only tolerable sentence for people as evil as the defendant."
Vaultz's attorney, Damon Lamont Hobdy, read a statement from his client's sister, Cheryl, who wrote that he's been a good brother and friend.
"We will always love him as Jesus Christ loves him," she said in the statement.
Vaultz, by then a Bakersfield resident, was arrested in Inglewood during a November 2019 traffic stop by Burbank police in connection with the killings of Keough and Duggan.
Then-Burbank Police Chief Scott LaChasse credited contemporary technology with helping to identify Vaultz as the suspect.
The prosecutor told jurors in her closing argument the killings were "sexually motivated homicides'' that were "committed by the same serial killer between 1981 and 1986,'' and she urged jurors to find Vaultz guilty of both killings.
Vaultz has been "unable to explain any of the evidence tying him to the murders in this case,'' including DNA evidence found on or in the bodies of each of the women, who were discovered either fully or partially nude, Silverman said.
The prosecutor cited a ton of evidence'' that pointsonly to the defendant.''
"The defendant chose these victims,'' Silverman said. "The defendant is sitting here because he's a serial killer … a sexual predator."
The defense lawyer countered that the prosecution "didn't prove it."
"If the evidence shows he's not guilty, which it does, do your duty,'' Hobdy told jurors, urging them to acquit Vaultz of both killings.
He acknowledged that his client -- an admitted swinger who cheated on his wives and girlfriends -- is ``not perfect.'' But the defense attorney said that doesn't prove his client is a serial killer.
While on the stand, Vaultz told jurors he didn't remember Keough or Duggan and was not responsible for their killings or that of Rowe, whom he admitted he knew.
"My semen means I may have had sex with the person. It doesn't mean I killed them,'' said Vaultz, a former Marine. I'm telling you I didn't kill anyone."
Vaultz has remained behind bars without bail since his 2019 arrest.
Burbank Police Sgt. Aaron Kay lauded the initial investigators who handled the Keough and Duggan killings, saying after the verdict Aug. 18 that evidence was preserved when "DNA wasn't even a thing back in 1986, 1981" but that DNA technology caught up by the time he was handed the case to re-investigate it.
He said there were "two times when my heart pounded in this case." First, when he identified Vaultz as a suspect in the killings and then when he was in court to hear the guilty verdict being read.
It's been incredible to be able to deliver something to the victims' families," the sergeant said.
