A bisexual killer beat and strangled a 77-year-old Newport Beach gay retiree in the victim’s condo 36 years ago before stealing his car and other valuables, a prosecutor told jurors Monday, but a defense attorney said evidence points to another culprit.
James Andrew Melton, now 65, was convicted in 1982 of the October 1981 robbery-murder of Anthony DeSousa, but a federal judge overturned that verdict in January 2007. A retrial in May 2014 ended with jurors deadlocked 10-2 for guilt.
A major difference in the defendant’s third trial will be testimony from a former cellmate who was Melton’s gay lover, Johnny Boyd, who died of AIDS in 1992, said Senior Deputy District Attorney Steve McGreevy.
Boyd had been granted immunity before he died, and his account of Melton’s apparent confession to the killing that acted out a strangulation will be read back to jurors.
The prosecutor told jurors that after DeSousa’s longtime wife died in 1974, he “began living an openly gay lifestyle.” McGreevy said one witness who is still alive — Al Satter — will testify that he was friends with DeSousa for about seven years and that the two were sometimes intimate and often spent weekends together.
Satter is expected to identify some of the stolen belongings and to testify how the victim was a “furious note taker,” who wrote down appointments on a calendar for dates he made with other men, the prosecutor said.
DeSousa was beaten and strangled by the defendant, McGreevy alleged.
DeSousa had a classified ad in a gay magazine, which is how he met Boyd, according to McGreevy. Boyd and Melton met as cellmates in a San Luis Obispo prison in 1980, where “they became lovers,” the prosecutor said.
It was in prison where they concocted a scheme to “contact gay men, especially older men, go to their homes and look for valuables,” McGreevy said, “and … to take whatever they want and by any means necessary.”
Boyd got out of prison before Melton and met with DeSousa, McGreevy said. The plan for the two of them to rip off DeSousa went awry when Boyd got picked up on an arrest warrant and landed in jail in Los Angeles County, the prosecutor alleged.
Boyd had told DeSousa he wanted to introduce him to his “cousin” Melton, who went alone to meet with the victim in his home on Bolero Way on Oct. 10, 1981, McGreevy alleged.
Melton, who had moved in with girlfriend Linda Diane Harris in Los Angeles after his release from prison in August of that year, told Harris, who has also since died, that he was going to a meeting at a Disneyland hotel and then head over to Costa Mesa before returning home, McGreevy said.
DeSousa was beaten so severely his attacker knocked out a tooth, McGreevy said. It wasn’t until a few days later that a Newport Beach police officer on a welfare check of DeSousa managed to get a look in the victim’s home and saw that he was dead, McGreevy said.
When Melton arrived back home, he was driving DeSousa’s car. And although he was broke before, he now had enough cash to treat Harris and other friends to dinner and a movie, McGreevy said.
Melton met after with Boyd in jail and shared some of the details of his encounter with DeSousa, McGreevy said. When Boyd asked what happened, Melton “takes his hands and makes a choking gesture,” the prosecutor alleged.
Boyd told his parole officer, who called Newport Beach police, McGreevy said. They found more of the victim’s belongings in the apartment he shared with Harris, he said.
Melton’s attorney, Denise Gragg, said “the key witness for the prosecution is Johnny Boyd… who led a lifetime of con man activity.”
Rudimentary DNA testing of evidence collected at the scene does not show Melton was in the victim’s home, Gragg said.
Boyd was a jilted lover, who was “infuriated” that Melton moved in with a girlfriend when they both got out of prison, Gragg said.
“The evidence in this case is going to show you someone other than Mr. Melton committed the crime,” she said.