Jury Votes Death for Kidnaper-Rapist of Girl, 10
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Death in the gas chamber was recommended Friday by the Pomona Superior Court jury that convicted ice cream vendor Robert Edward Stansbury in the kidnaping, rape and murder of a 10-year-old Baldwin Park girl.
Stansbury, 44, had asked the panel to sentence him to death if they found him guilty.
Jurors deliberated his fate for just over an hour and afterward said they took only one unanimous vote.
“Each pertinent bit of information showed there was no question about it,” jury foreman Arthur H. Childers said of the decision.
According to court testimony, Stansbury won Robyn Jackson’s trust with free treats from his ice cream truck in the weeks before he kidnaped her in September, 1982. He raped her and suffocated her in his ice cream cooler before dumping her body in a Pasadena flood control channel.
If Judge James Piatt carries out the jury’s recommendation when he sentences Stansbury on July 21, his case will be automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court.
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