Saddleback student's killer sentenced to death

Robbin Brandley, Saddleback student

When Rebel Girl first came to Orange County as a grad student in the late 80s, the brutal murder of Robbin Brandley was still in the news as the killer had not yet been caught. Brandley was a 23- year-old Saddleback college student, a journalism major who also worked at the campus radio station KSBR. On January 18, 1986 she was a volunteer usher at an evening jazz piano concert. She was found stabbed 41 times at 10:30 PM in Saddleback College Lot 12.

As it turns out, her murder was the first of five that would be committed between 1986 and 1995 by a serial killer, then a marine at Camp Pendleton.

From last week's October 5, 2018 issue of the LA Times:

Serial killer convicted in murders of five Southern California women is sentenced to death

A former Marine convicted of brutally slaying five women in Southern California and three in Illinois over the course of a decade was sentenced to death Friday.

An Orange County Superior Court jury convicted Andrew Urdiales, 54, in May of five counts of special-circumstances murder, which prompted a second phase of the trial to determine whether he should serve life behind bars or face the death penalty.

Jurors ultimately recommended in June that he receive capital punishment for killing Robbin Brandley, Julie McGhee, Maryann Wells, Tammie Erwin and Denise Maney between 1986 and 1995. Judge Gregg Prickett affirmed that recommendation on Friday.

The original LA Times article:
Student, 23, Slain in Campus Parking Lot : Woman Found Fatally Stabbed After Leaving Saddleback Concert

Check out Nick Schou's excellent coverage of the case some years back in the OC Weekly (which also appeared in The Best American Crime Reporting 2018) : Just a Random Female

The grisly murder would remain unsolved for 11 years. Witnesses offered inconsistent accounts of events in the hours preceding the crime; Brandley's parents became convinced that someone she knew was responsible for the killing. Then, in April 1997, a man confessed to the murder—and several others. The cop writing down his confession would note that the killer had simply wandered around Mission Viejo until he ended up at a dark parking lot, where he saw a woman walking to her car.

The victim, in the words of the confessed murderer, “could have been anybody.” She “was just a random female.”

Robbin's murder inspired 1990 legislation:
1986 Murder in Dark Lot Spurs Campus Lighting Bill

excerpt:

...Reilley said Saddleback College has been at particularly high risk because of its location amid hills where shrubbery can conceal an attacker.

The year before Brandley's death, another Saddleback student was attacked on campus. In April, 1985, a 25-year-old student was abducted from a different parking lot by two men who beat her over the head, stripped her, then dumped her naked, but alive, about six hours later on a freeway off-ramp. Since Brandley's death, at least three other women have reported being sexually assaulted there....

The Brandley family maintains this blog about Robbin:
Who Murdered Robbin Brandley

Recently Rebel Girl has thought about Robbin, and not just because the jury conviction of her killer in May of this year brought her name back into the headlines. She came across Robbin's name in a document she received a few weeks ago which closes with a long paragraph that is a litany of 15 former students who variously were convicted of violent behavior and/or were victims of assaults or died under suspicious circumstances. It was a disturbing list, especially if you have a long memory, but perhaps much less so if you don't.

The most high profile one of these was Robbin Brandley.

Rebel Girl imagines that not enough people working in the district now would recall her name or remember the case. After all, it happened a long time ago, 32 years now, about the time the person who wrote the document started attending the college. 

Robbin Brandley

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