SAN FRANCISCO—The California Supreme Court on Jan. 22 upheld the death penalty for Glenn Taylor Helzer, the leader of a small cult who was convicted of five murders in Contra Costa and Marin counties.
In a unanimous 85-page ruling, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero rejected a challenge to discredit the evidence from a sweeping search of Helzer’s Concord home, as well as a defense argument that a trial error might have occurred when a juror candidate who was against the death penalty was dismissed.
“We reject defendant’s claims and conclude blanket suppression of the evidence is not warranted,” Ms. Guerrero wrote in the opinion. “A review of the entire record before us and the totality of the officers’ conduct does not reveal the kind of flagrant disregard of Fourth Amendment protections that might justify the extraordinary remedy of wholesale suppression of all seized evidence.”
Ms. Guerrero also rejected the defendant’s claim of error in the process of jury picking, saying the juror candidate initiated as C.W. “did not repeatedly affirm that she could be a fair and impartial juror.”
“Rather, she repeatedly expressed doubt regarding her ability to impose the death penalty, even in an ‘appropriate case,’” Ms. Guerrero wrote.
Defendant Mr. Helzer, a self-proclaimed prophet, established a small cult called “Children of Thunder” around 1998. He started a plan called “Transform America” and extorted money from his past financial clients. The money was to fund “Transform America” and bring about the second coming of Christ.
Mr. Helzer believed that he would “sacrifice a few to save billions” and started extortion and a spree of killings in 2000. Victims included Ivan and Annette Stineman; Mr. Helzer’s 22-year-old girlfriend Selina Bishop; Ms. Bishop’s mother, Jennifer Villarin, 45; and Ms. Villarin’s boyfriend, James Gamble, 54.
Mr. Helzer pleaded guilty to five counts of murder in a 2005 trial and was sentenced to death by the jury the same year.
The first three victims were cut into pieces and thrown away with multiple bags on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
As an accomplice in the spree of killings, Mr. Helzer’s younger brother Justin Helzer was also sentenced to death and hanged himself in prison in 2013.
Another accomplice, Dawn Godman, pleaded guilty in a deal to testify against the Helzer brothers with prosecutors and was sentenced to 38 years in prison.
California has 650 prisoners on death row. Although Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on death penalty executions after taking office in 2019, so far none of the sentences have been reduced to life in prison.
