June 23--A Los Angeles jury convicted a man of carrying out a gruesome "ritualistic killing" in which the victim was dismembered at a skid row hotel.
Edward Garcia was found guilty of first-degree murder in the November 2010 killing of Herbert Tracy White, whose remains were found by staff in room 66 of the Continental Hotel.
The jury also found the special circumstances of robbery and torture to be true, and he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Prosecutors accused Garcia and his wife, Melissa, of killing White as part of a "long-held fantasy" of dismembering a body. The prosecutor said Edward carved up White's body with a 3 1/2-inch blade and dissected and sliced a piece of leg muscle from the bone in what he called a "ritualistic killing."
During his closing arguments, John McKinney, deputy L.A. County district attorney, recounted the grisly scene at the hotel. Police found White's severed arms still bound by duct tape, and a backpack full of flesh. Under the blood-soaked bed was White's torso riddled with scratches and small punctures.
"It was a bloodbath," McKinney said. "They took this man apart."
Days before his death in November 2010, White met the married couple at a Chase bank in Hollywood. White, a former cocaine addict turned Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, gave them his phone number and suggested they call him if they ever wanted helping getting sober, McKinney said.
On the evening before White's body was found, the couple called him and said they needed help. He drove them to skid row and paid to check them in to the Continental Hotel.
McKinney told jurors that the Garcias lured in White with the intention of robbing, torturing and mutilating him.
Deputy Public Defender Haydeh Takasugi did not dispute that Edward Garcia was responsible for White's death. But she said McKinney was pushing a "fantastical theory" because he lacked the evidence to prove premeditation, torture or robbery.
She described a far different series of events for jurors.
When White encountered the couple again after meeting at the bank, Takasugi said, White told them that he could not stop thinking about them. He then turned to Melissa Garcia and added, "I couldn't stop thinking of you."
He told a hotel security guard that Melissa Garcia was his girlfriend and wrote a false name in a registry at the front desk, the attorney said. Sexual lubricant -- the same type found at White's house -- was in the hotel room, Takasugi said.
At the time of the killing, Edward Garcia had used two baggies of meth that White reportedly gave him at the hotel. Garcia was a heroin and crack cocaine addict but had never used meth before, she said.
Takasugi said the dismemberment occurred after White died or near the time of death and that there was no evidence that the couple robbed White.
Melissa Garcia will be tried separately.
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