A state appeals court panel Tuesday upheld a man’s first-degree murder conviction for dousing the mother of his four children with gasoline and setting her on fire during a domestic dispute in Pomona on Christmas Day 2015.
The three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal found that there was “overwhelming evidence of first-degree murder” by Clarence Dear, and that there was “ample evidence of Dear’s pre-existing motive and cold, calculated manner of killing.”
The 61-year-old man is serving a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole for the killing of Dawn Hensley.
He was convicted in October 2022 of first-degree murder, with jurors finding true the special circumstance allegation of murder involving the infliction of torture.
The 41-year-old victim was chased, doused with gasoline and lit on fire with a cigarette lighter, then kicked while she was on the ground, Deputy District Attorney Phil Stirling said.
Dear testified in his own defense during the trial and contended that the woman informed him she had been sexually assaulting him for years as he slept and that he killed her in self-defense, according to the prosecutor, who called the testimony “preposterous.”
“This was clearly a desperate effort to make up a story to avoid being convicted,” Stirling said after the verdict.
Pomona police officers responded to the 1500 block of Cordova Street the afternoon of Dec. 25, 2015, to reports that someone had been set on fire.
“Neighbors who saw the victim run from the residence engulfed in flames rendered assistance as she collapsed on the street and remained with her until L.A. County fire personnel arrived,” Pomona police Sgt. Bert Sanchez said soon afterward.
Hensley died shortly after being taken to a hospital.
Dear was arrested without incident two days later after officers were tipped off that he had boarded a Metro bus in Altadena. He has remained behind bars since then.