SAN DIEGO–A man who fatally stabbed an 87-year-old woman and seriously wounded her 60-year-old daughter in Mira Mesa last year was sentenced to 36 years to life in state prison on June 26.
Anthony Duane Siddle, 61, pleaded guilty earlier this year to murder and attempted murder charges for the April 22, 2022, killing of Peggy Brandenburgh, as well as the stabbing of Brandenburgh’s daughter, Patricia Labarge, at the victims’ home on Pagoda Way.
According to Deputy District Attorney Melissa Vasel, Siddle was a friend of Brandenburgh’s son and at one point, the defendant had lived at the victims’ home.
Brandenburgh died at the scene, while Labarge survived despite sustaining around two dozen stab wounds.
Labarge’s daughter was also at the home when the attacks occurred. Vasel said she ran to a neighbor’s home to get help and the neighbor was able to photograph the license plate of the car Siddle drove to and from the scene.
That license plate number was publicly disseminated by San Diego police, who said in a statement at the time that Siddle might be headed for Mexico. The prosecutor said Siddle was then living in Mexico.
In addition to the photograph of his license plate, a Ring camera in the neighborhood captured a picture of Siddle leaving the Pagoda Way home with a knife in his back pocket, Vasel said.
A warrant was obtained for Siddle’s arrest and he was taken into custody on June 1 in Cave Junction, Oregon.
At a court hearing last month, Siddle was asked by a judge why he wanted to plead guilty at a relatively early stage of his case.
“It’s clear. I did it. It’s obvious I did it. There’s no doubt about it ... I could waste the court’s time and taxpayer money to drag something out that is cut and dry. It should just be over with,” Siddle said.
At Monday’s sentencing hearing, Siddle did not make a statement in court but his defense attorney, Paige Stevens, said her client has wanted to plead guilty since she first met him.
Stevens said that in a letter, Siddle stated he was “sorry to the victims and their family. He’s sorry for what he put them through.”
A motive for the stabbings has not been disclosed, but Stevens said, “I do not believe Mr. Siddle was himself the day that this incident occurred” and that there were statements from witnesses indicating “that he was not in his right mind at the time of the offense.”
Several of Brandenburgh’s family members who spoke at the sentencing hearing described her as a giving person who would open her home to strangers. She was a mother of seven who often raised her children on her own while her husband was deployed overseas with the Navy, family members said.
She and her husband founded the Miramar Food Locker at Naval Air Station Miramar—now Marine Corps Air Station Miramar—and she ran it for 24 years.
Brandenburgh’s granddaughter, Stephanie Labarge, said, “Her charity did not end at the gates of Miramar, but continued at home where she would invite friends and others into her house and treat them like family, including the defendant.”
Labarge said, “He killed one of the greatest people I’ve ever known. And although that loss was extremely difficult for me, I didn’t even have time or energy to grieve because my mother was lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life.”
Patricia Labarge was present at the sentencing, but Vasel read a letter on her behalf.
She described her mother as a “true angel” and “a woman who was beyond selfless and always took care of others.”
During the stabbing, she was able to fight Siddle off by kicking him in the chest, she wrote.
Since then, she wrote that she is unable to return to her home due to the memories of the attack.
“My childhood home was my favorite place and we had so many wonderful memories there, but now I can’t even look at pictures of it,” she wrote.
Stevens asked San Diego Superior Court Judge Rachel Cano to impose the murder and attempted murder sentences concurrently for a total term of 25 years to life.
But the judge said that “given how atrocious this crime was,” consecutive sentences were warranted, describing it as “a brutal and senseless attack on two very fragile people in their own home.”
