Annals Of Crime

Murder For Financial Gain Leads To Death Sentence

Here's a hideous holiday (not specifically holiday-related, just concurrent w/ the season) story to start your wknd. of forced consumption & pseudo-joviality. Hohoho.

The prosecution’s key witness was Hunter’s now-23-year-old daughter, Briuana Lashanae Hunter, who confessed to plotting with her mother to kill Thomas.

Briuana Hunter pleaded guilty last year to three counts of attempted murder and one count of voluntary manslaughter. She’s slated to be sentenced Wednesday to 18 years, nine months in state prison.

The young woman, who’s being held without bail at the Indio Jail, testified that her stepfather was a “calm, quiet person,” who was “never overly aggressive” in the seven years that she and her mother lived with him in Moreno Valley.

The witness stated that he held down two jobs — one as a short-haul trucker and another as a clerk at a Moreno Valley Auto Zone.

According to Hunter, her mother frequently argued with Thomas about not having enough money to spend. Deputy District Attorney Will Robinson described the elder Hunter as “money hungry” and not interested in holding down a job to contribute to the household.

[...]

Robinson said Lorraine Hunter pulled a small-caliber handgun she’d stolen from a member of her church and shot the victim point-blank in the back of the head twice, then shot him twice in the upper back as he knelt in the compartment. Sheriff’s deputies found him dead in a kneeling position.

Hunter and her daughter fled the scene with the help of a relative and the case went cold for two years, until the same relative confessed everything she knew to investigators after being arrested herself for an unrelated offense.

Robinson theorized during Hunter’s penalty trial that she was a sociopath with blood on her hands when she married Thomas.

The prosecutor argued to jurors that she had masterminded, and probably carried out, the slaying of her previous husband, Allen Brown, who was gunned down in what appeared to be a random act of violence in Inglewood in 1996. The circumstances were eerily similar to Thomas’ death, with Brown shot in the back, and like Thomas, the victim was a truck driver.

Best Practice/ProTip: Avoid all human contact you possibly can, & trust no one w/ whom you do come in contact, especially not family members. You're more than welcome.