Former Postal Worker Guilty in O.C. Rampage

SANTA ANA —  Former postal worker Mark Richard Hilbun was convicted Tuesday of murdering his mother and a close friend and attempting to kill seven others during a two-day rampage across Orange County.

Jurors must now decide whether Hilbun was sane when he committed those crimes.

The legal distinction is the difference between commitment to a mental hospital if Hilbun is found to be insane or a possible death sentence if jurors decide he was mentally competent.

Hilbun, 42, says he was convinced the world was ending when he raced across the county on May 6, 1993. He fatally stabbed his mother, slit her cocker spaniel’s throat and opened fire on co-workers at the Dana Point Post Office before getting back into his pickup and shooting at strangers.

After three days of deliberation, an Orange County Superior Court jury found Hilbun guilty Tuesday of two counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of attempted murder and other charges of robbery, attempted robbery, attempted kidnapping and animal cruelty. Jurors deadlocked on a single charge of burglary and the judge dismissed the count.

Hilbun sat impassively in a long-sleeved white shirt and charcoal trousers and looked away from the jury as a clerk read the verdicts, a task that took more than 30 minutes because of the many counts and special allegations.

Les Hilbun, his father, clutched the hand of his wife, MaryJane, as the verdicts were announced. Family members, along with attorneys on the case, declined to comment afterward.

The same jury returns Monday for the trial’s sanity phase, which is expected to last three to four weeks before Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey.

Hilbun has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. His lawyers contend he has a long history of mental illness and was driven by the desire to take away a female co-worker by kayak to Baja to live as Adam and Eve, once the world ended.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans doesn’t dispute Hilbun may have mental problems.

But the prosecutor contends Hilbun knew exactly what he was doing as he carefully plotted to kidnap co-worker Kim Springer, who had repeatedly spurned his obsessive attention, and to “pay back” his bosses for trying to fire him. Evans suggested that Hilbun has exaggerated his mental problems.

Springer hid inside the post office when Hilbun showed up armed at work. He shot another co-worker, friend Charles Barbagallo, between the eyes and wounded another postal employee. He also tried to shoot the postmaster, but his bullet hit a door instead.

Earlier, he had repeatedly stabbed his mother, Frances Nell Hilbun, in the heart at her Corona del Mar home.

If jurors find that Hilbun was insane, he would be sent to a state psychiatric hospital where he would remain until it is determined he has regained his sanity. If Hilbun is found sane, jurors will move to the third and final trial phase, in which they must decide whether to recommend the death penalty for the defendant, or life in prison without parole.

Although Hilbun’s lawyers urged jurors to convict him of lesser charges that would spare him a possible death sentence, Hilbun’s guilt was never at issue in the trial’s first phase.

His lawyers, Deputy Public Defenders Denise Gragg and Roger Alexander, contended Hilbun’s actions and the comments he made to detectives after his arrest clearly illustrated a man taken over by mental illness.

“I had the idea the world was going to end,” Hilbun told detectives at the time, his voice flat and calm throughout the interview. “It was going to go through a catastrophe and Kim and I were chosen, uh, as husband and wife of the race, the human race.”

Hilbun said he shot 42-year-old Barbagallo “between the eyes” after his good friend refused to tell him where Springer was hiding in the post office.

“I thought he was pushing me away,” Hilbun said. “I guess I wanted to penetrate him to get my point across. . . . No one could stop me from being complete. I just had it in my mind that Kim and I were two halves and together we’d be complete.”

Hilbun said he killed his 63-year-old mother to spare her from the apocalypse he believed would happen on May 9 that year--his birthday and Mother’s Day.

“She was still in bed,” he told detectives. “I just decided she was better off dead. So I walked in. The dog, Golden, knew I was coming to take her life. He howled and came up to me and I slit his throat.

“And I walked into mom’s bedroom and said I was going to take off camping and had a Mother’s Day gift for her. . . . I said, ‘I love you very much, and you’re going to go see Grandma,’ and plunged the knife in her heart a couple times.”

After leaving his mother’s home and the post office, Hilbun said he wounded a Dana Point man as he sought a place to hide out and ditch the kayak strapped atop his pickup.

He admitted shooting a Newport Beach woman after he stole her business sign to disguise his truck and she began following him in pursuit.

He was also charged with firing at three other people during hold-ups at two Fountain Valley automated bank machines. Two of those victims were wounded.

In between shootings, Hilbun picked up about $700 in camping equipment he had put on hold at a Mission Viejo sporting goods store. He called it “survival shopping.”

After terrorizing Orange County for 38 hours, his face plastered across live-TV reports, Hilbun was arrested at a Huntington Beach sports bar after a patron spotted him calmly sipping a beer.

Hilbun, who said he’d stopped taking lithium months before, told detectives his only goal in the hours following the postal office rampage was to evade police and find Springer.

“Did you think what you did was wrong?” a detective asked.

“I do now,” he replied. “At the time, I didn’t.”