Darrell Mark Gurule.
Jurors deadlocked Thursday in the penalty phase of trial of a man who killed a young woman during a rape in Glendale 37 years ago.
The jury that convicted Darrel Mark Gurule of murder was unable to reach a unanimous verdict in the penalty phase, with 10 voting in favor of recommending life in prison without parole and two recommending death.
A hearing was set for Dec. 2 to determine the next step in the case.
Gurule was convicted Sept. 28 of first-degree murder for the shooting death of 23-year-old Barbara Ballman. During the penalty phase of trial, Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Chung showed the eight-man, four-woman panel a photo of Ballman, whose naked body was found in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 1979, inside her Volkswagen sedan parked across from Edison Elementary School.
That image was followed quickly by a photograph of a bloodied Roberto Bruno, whom Gurule was previously convicted of murdering. Bruno was shot in the head in 1987.
Chung said witnesses and transcripts show that Gurule, 57, also kidnapped and sexually assaulted another woman in 1977, assaulted two brothers in 1979, robbed a man in 1982 and received stolen goods in 1986.
Defense attorney Philip Peng asked jurors to “choose life.”
“At minimum, Darrel Gurule will die in prison. He’s never going to get out,” Peng said.
During his 10,592 days in custody, Gurule “has never threatened anyone, never harmed anyone,” the defense attorney told jurors.
The question is “does Darrel die on God’s time or is he going to die on man’s time?” he said.
Gurule grew up in Echo Park in the 1960s and ’70s, when the area was controlled by warring gangs, Peng said.
“Darrel’s father was an extremely vicious man with heavy hands,” who regularly beat his wife Lydia and their eight children, the defense attorney said. He pointed to Gurule’s troubled childhood as a mitigating factor weighing favor of a life-without-parole sentence.
On July 4, 1973, Gurule was found with six of his siblings, ages 4-17, in what police had thought was an abandoned house in Glendale, devoid of furniture other than a few mattresses. Officers found “rotting food all over the floor” and a “kitchen floor covered with newspaper and feces,” Peng said.
Gurule’s father was “out of the picture” by then and his mother was out on a date.
Ballman was killed on Sept. 20, 1979, sometime after leaving her older sister’s home at 7:30 p.m.
Linda Benjamin told jurors that her sibling moved to California after she did.
“When she first came out, I felt responsible for her well-being,” Benjamin said.
Ballman took classes at Glendale College and worked at a group home and residential treatment center for young women called Penny Lane.
“I hate that she … was murdered on my watch,” Benjamin said, reading from a journal she kept after her sister was killed.
“If I could have had only five more minutes with you it would have made my life more bearable,” she read. “I would gladly trade places with you to do the hard part. It’s just a thing I will never be able to understand,” she wrote in referencing “the tragedy and horror of your death.”
Benjamin referred more than once to Gurule as a monster and said she was not only sad, but angry “that coward, that monster is still walking around.”
Jurors found true special circumstance allegations of murder during the commission of a rape and murder with a prior conviction but deadlocked on a third special circumstance allegation — murder during the course of a robbery.
Gurule wasn’t charged with Ballman’s murder until 2010. Glendale police said semen evidence was recovered from the victim, who had been shot in the abdomen, but DNA analysis was not available at the time.
In 2004, Gurule’s DNA was submitted to a law enforcement database. When Glendale police re-opened an investigation into Ballman’s killing and submitted the semen evidence to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s crime lab, a match was made with Gurule’s DNA.
Gurule was 19 at the time of the killing and has been serving a life prison sentence since 1987 for the kidnap-murder of Bruno, which detectives believe was the result of a drug deal gone wrong.
–City News Service
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