Juan Corona, killer of 25 farm workers, has died.
Juan Corona, convicted in the slayings of 25 itinerant farm laborers in one of America’s worst serial murder cases, has died, California state prison officials said Monday.
Corona, who was 85, had been held at California State Prison-Corcoran, where he was serving multiple life sentences following his conviction nearly five decades ago for hacking to death farmworkers. He died of natural causes Monday morning at a hospital, the state said.
The Mexican-born farming contractor was arrested in 1971 after a farmer in Sutter County found a freshly dug hole in a peach orchard. The farmer, who had contracted with Corona to hire field workers, returned the next day and saw the hole filled with dirt. To allay his suspicions, he called sheriff’s deputies.
In the shallow grave, deputies found a man’s body on May 19, 1971. His head had been hacked off, and his body was riddled with stab wounds. The man would later be identified as Kenneth Whitacre, a 40-year-old homeless man. Four days later, at the nearby Sullivan Ranch where Corona housed laborers, investigators unearthed more butchered bodies. Corona was arrested a week later at his home, south of Yuba City. Over the next two weeks, police recovered the bodies of more slain farmworkers from shallow graves along the Feather River near Marysville, north of Sacramento.
The vast majority of the 25 victims were viciously slashed and hacked with a machete, and many bore deep puncture wounds to the chest. One victim was shot.
Investigators found meat receipts signed by Corona in one grave and bank deposit slips in two other graves with Corona’s name and address. Authorities said the dates recorded in the ledger corresponded with the killings over a six-week period.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-juan-corona-serial-killer-dead-20190304-story.html