A woman testified Tuesday that she was a “very naive” 19-year-old when she accepted a ride from a “really nice” stranger because she missed her bus and feared getting in trouble at work, not suspecting he was a serial killer on his way to murdering eight women.
Jennifer Asbenson’s testimony came at the outset of the penalty trial of Andrew Urdiales. Jurors who convicted the former Marine last week of murdering five women in the Southland between 1986 and 1995 must now decide whether to recommend the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 53-year-old defendant, who also killed three women in Chicago in the mid-1990s.
Asbenson described for the Orange County Superior Court panel the sequence of events leading up to her nightmarish escape in September 1992.
Asbenson at the time lived in Palm Springs, near where Urdiales had been stationed in the U.S. Marine Corps, and worked as an overnight shift as a caretaker at a facility for disabled children in Desert Hot Springs.
Asbenson said she had been late for work before and feared discipline when she missed her bus while ducking into a nearby liquor store to get snacks for the children. She testified she was visibly upset when Urdiales pulled up and offered her a ride.
Asbenson said she initially said no, and Urdiales began pulling away. She reasoned that he couldn’t be that dangerous since “a bad person would have attacked me and pulled me inside” the car, but nevertheless attempted to memorize Urdiales’ license plate number and then felt guilty about it because he was so friendly to her, she testified.
She said she told him about her job and that she was interested in acting, leading him to as, “Oh, are you in pornos?” She reacted with disgust, which seemed to irk Urdiales, and there was an “awkward” moment between them for a bit, she testified.
Urdiales told her he was a detective “on a hard case.”
“I didn’t feel like he was going to murder me,” she testified.
Urdiales asked her to have breakfast with him after her shift, and she tried to think of a polite way to put him off without hurting his feelings. She said she could not accept because she had a boyfriend, so gave him a fake phone number for her work that was one digit off so she could remember it if he asked again, which he did.
When Asbenson got off work a little early, she walked around the block in a different direction because she felt Urdiales would return, which he did. She said she still didn’t fear him, but wanted to avoid having to tell him she wasn’t interested in him.
“If he wanted to hurt me, under the cover of darkness would have been the perfect time,” she said, testifying that she figured the best way to let him down was to let him drive her home.
Jurors also heard more details from the reports of prosecutors in Chicago about the murders of Laura Uylaki, Cassandra Corum and Lynn Huber, who worked as prostitutes in Illinois.
In each case, Urdiales, who was working as a security guard at an Eddie Bauer store in downtown Chicago, picked up the victims in his truck and got into some sort of argument with them that led to the killings, according to Urdiales’ confessions, which were read as summaries in court.
Urdiales dumped Uylaki’s body into Wolf Lake around the Illinois-Indiana border. He broke his finger during the attack and had it set at a hospital after he dumped the body.
The defendant dumped Corrum’s body into the Vermillion River. He first handcuffed her and put duct tape over her mouth, then drove for a couple of hours with her bound in his truck before he found a remote rural area where he shot he. After she appeared dead, he stabbed her multiple times because he was still angry with her, he told authorities.
Urdiales also dumped Huber’s body in Wolf Lake. After shooting her, he put her into the bed of the truck and drove south to the lake. Urdiales grew angry when he pricked his finger while undressing her, so he stabbed her in the back multiple times and shot her again. On his way home, he stuffed her clothes into a Salvation Army drop-off box because he figured she didn’t need them anymore and someone else might want them.
Last Thursday, the panel that convicted him of the Southland killings found true the special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and multiple murders, making Urdiales eligible for capital punishment.
Urdiales was originally sentenced to death in Illinois for the murders there, but he was re-sentenced to life in prison after capital punishment was outlawed in that state.
Urdiales’ attorneys maintained that childhood trauma and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder left him incapable of controlling his anger, meaning that Urdiales did not plan the Southern California murders before committing them. Instead, they argued for implied malice, which would lead to a second-degree murder conviction, which would have spared him a possible death penalty.
He was convicted of killing:
— 23-year-old Robbin Brandley, who was attacked as she walked to her car following a concert on Jan. 18, 1986, at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo;
— 29-year-old Julie McGhee on July 17, 1988, in Cathedral City;
— 31-year-old Maryann Wells on Sept. 25, 1988, in San Diego;
— 20-year-old Tammie Erwin on April 16, 1989, in Palm Springs; and
— 32-year-old Denise Maney on March 11, 1995, in Palm Springs.