Jury Votes Death for Killer of Three Teen-Agers

Mauricio Silva, convicted of killing three teen-agers within a week after his release from prison in May, 1984, should receive the death penalty, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury recommended Wednesday.

Silva, 26, sat quietly as the clerk read the verdict, reached after nine days of deliberations. A new jury was selected after the panel that convicted Silva of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in April, 1985, deadlocked last July on whether he should die in the gas chamber.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lonnie A. Felker, the prosecutor, said the only new element in the second penalty trial was evidence that Silva may have raped his half-sister, Martha Kitzler, 17, before stabbing and strangling her in the Hollywood home they shared. He was also convicted of the shotgun deaths of Walter P. Sanders, 16, of Lompoc and Monique Michelle Hilton, 16, a runaway from Illinois.

Judge Jean E. Matusinka set formal sentencing for Aug. 4.

During four months of testimony in the penalty phase, the defense attempted to show that Silva should be spared death because of an unusually grim childhood.

Witnesses said Silva ran away from home at an early age after being sent to live with a grandmother who neglected him. Orphaned by age 12, Silva suffers from a rare disease, acromegaly, which is also known as giantism, because it produces a growth hormone. In Silva’s case, he has disproportionately enlarged bones in his head, hands and feet, according to testimony.

But Felker, noting that Wednesday marked the second anniversary of Martha Kitzler’s death, said the jury’s verdict was appropriate.

“I believe it represents justice in this case. . . . There were four lives lost to this man.”

The first of those murders--that of 16-year-old Troy Allison Crovella--became an issue in the 1984 campaign for Los Angeles County district attorney after the Herald Examiner reported that then-Dist. Atty. Robert H. Philibosian was involved as a junior prosecutor in a plea bargain that resulted in a five-year sentence. Philibosian, who lost the election to Ira Reiner, said the decision to reduce the charge from murder to manslaughter had been made by his superiors.

Earlier this month, Silva’s parole officer testified that shortly after his arrest, the defendant told him he wanted to die.

“I killed them,” the officer, Sil Tucker, said Silva told him. “I know I’ll get the gas chamber this time. I just want to go to court, plead guilty and get it over with and go to the gas chamber.”