Conviction Upheld in Culver City Double-Murder Case

CULVER CITY, CA – A state appeals court panel Wednesday upheld a transient's conviction for the stabbing and beating deaths of an 89-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman in Culver City seven years ago. The three-justice panel from California's 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense's contention that the trial court erred when it admitted evidence of Zackariah Lehnen's jailhouse confession to a police informant, in which the defendant admitted that he killed Lucien Bergez and Erica Escobar.

"Given that Lehnen was confiding in someone whom he believed to be a friend when he confessed to the killings, his statements were voluntarily (made) and free from compulsion," the appellate court panel found in its 20- page ruling.

The justices also rejected the defense's contention that jurors should have been instructed on the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter involving Escobar's killing.

Lehnen's jailhouse statements "showed that he brutally attacked Escobar shortly after meeting her because she refused to engage in sexual intercourse with him," the panel found. "The evidence further showed that, after Lehnen began the attack by hitting Escobar, he proceeded to repeatedly kick her face and body and stab her with a knife as she lay helpless on the floor."

Escobar was found dead on the living room of Bergez's home, and Bergez was found dead in the kitchen on May 3, 2011. The two may have been killed as much as two days earlier, authorities said.

Lehnen was convicted in November 2015 of first-degree murder. Jurors also found true the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders, along with an allegation that he used a knife during the commission of the crime.

Lehnen had met Bergez in the neighborhood about a year earlier and had gone to his home on occasion to try to get work, Deputy District Attorney Keri Modder said. Escobar hadn't met Bergez before and was in the "wrong place" at the wrong time when she met Lehnen shortly before the attack, the prosecutor said.

Lehnen was sentenced in January 2016 to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.

City News Service; Image via Shutterstock