A man who beat and strangled a woman in Scripps Ranch more than 35 years ago was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in state prison.
Read more Disagreements between Supreme Court justices bubble into public view as major rulings loom
Randall Oyler, 65, was found guilty by a downtown San Diego Superior Court jury of first-degree murder for killing 47-year-old Margaret Orozco Jackson, whose body was discovered on July 11, 1990, off Scripps Ranch Boulevard, where Scripps Ranch High School would later be built.
Deputy District Attorney Chris Lindberg told jurors that a woman walking to work on July 11 spotted a length of rope on the sidewalk, which led down the hill to Jackson’s body. The rope was wrapped twice around the victim’s neck, the prosecutor said.
Oyler was not identified as a suspect until DNA testing conducted decades later linked him to DNA found beneath the victim’s fingernails, as well as from other areas of her body, the prosecutor said.
Oyler was arrested on suspicion of murder in 2023.
At Oyler’s sentencing hearing on Friday morning, Lindberg called the killing unprovoked and “a brutal attack” in which Jackson was strangled for five to six minutes.
In a probation report interview, Oyler stated that Jackson stole drugs from him, though Lindberg noted that when Oyler was placed in a cell with an undercover jail operative posing as an inmate, he made several incriminating statements related to Jackson’s killing, but never mentioned a drug theft.
“While no one really knows if this is true, such a slight provocation is no excuse for such a cruel murder,” Lindberg wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Read more A Trump commission urges ‘bridges’ between church and state in sweeping draft report
In video clips of the jail operation played during the trial, the two men can be heard discussing why Oyler was arrested.
At one point, Oyler says, “She scratched me.”
In another clip, the operative asks Oyler if he “just left her there,” and Oyler responds that he “threw her down a hill.”
Jackson’s niece, Rebecca Cepeda, called Oyler “a monster” at Friday’s hearing.
“You took her life, and for what? Now you’re going to spend, who knows, the rest of your life in prison, and for nothing,” Cepeda said.
Oyler did not make a statement in court, but his defense attorney, Kara Oien, said on his behalf, “He does want to say he is sorry and express his condolences to the family. He knows that doesn’t excuse anything, but does wish to say he is sorry.”
Judge Jeffrey Fraser said he believed there was “no doubt” that Oyler committed the murder and “he did get away with it for over three decades.”
The judge said, “There used to be a saying that, ‘Justice delayed is justice denied,’ and to a large extent that’s true, but it’s not true today.”
Read more Judge blocks Tennessee from reporting sick children to immigration authorities, for now
