A man convicted of murdering his girlfriend in her South Los Angeles apartment was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the killing, which occurred just under a year after he was granted parole for two murders in 1995.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig E. Veals told Darryl Lamar Collins, now 55, that the July 2021 killing of Fatima Johnson was “completely inexplicable” and that he will be “locked up for the rest of your life,” with a packed courtroom full of the victim’s family members and friends responding with loud applause.
The judge noted that “a very special person can’t be brought back,” but said the defendant “will never be free again.”
Collins was found guilty Feb. 19 of first-degree murder, with the special-circumstance allegation of murder with a prior murder conviction, for which he had been serving a 50-year-to-life term before he was paroled. He also had a prior conviction from 1992 for attempted robbery.
The 53-year-old victim — a mother of six and grandmother of eight who was pursuing her nursing license — was discovered by her daughters — bound, gagged and wrapped in a blanket — in her apartment in the 7600 block of South Western Avenue. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene.
Within hours of her killing, Collins had pawned two of her necklaces and sold her vehicle for drugs, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
Three of the victim’s children spoke during Collins’ sentencing.
One of her daughters, Tanesha Hargrave, called Collins “a monster” and said he “should have never seen the light of day.”
Another daughter, Tyesa Harvey, told the defendant that her mother was killed for “a hit of dope,” not because of anything she had done to Collins.
“Every appeal, I will be there,” she vowed. “You will never see the light of day. I promise you that.”
A third daughter, Kamia Jones, told the defendant, “My mom didn’t deserve what happened to her because of your actions.”
Collins did not speak during the sentencing, but his attorney, Ilya Alekseyeff, said just before the sentencing that “He’s very remorseful.”
Collins was arrested in September 2021 by Los Angeles police and has remained behind bars since then, jail records show.
He was initially charged with murder, along with the allegations that he had two prior convictions — one in 1992 for attempted robbery and the 1998 conviction for the double-murder.
Then-District Attorney George Gascón came under fire for his office policy not to file special-circumstance allegations that could lead to the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole, with critics saying that the lack of a special-circumstance allegation meant Collins could again be eligible for parole if convicted.
But in June 2022, Gascón announced that “an internal committee of experienced attorneys with diverse backgrounds has reviewed the facts of this case and determined that, in this extremely rare instance, a policy deviation was warranted and approved the filing of a special-circumstance allegation.”
Gascón was subsequently defeated in his bid for re-election by now-District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who sat next to Deputy District Attorneys Katrina Anderson and Noelle Brown during Collins’ sentencing.
In a statement released shortly after the sentence was handed down, Hochman said, “Darryl Collins took three innocent lives. Today’s sentence isn’t just about punishment. It’s also about protection from this sociopath to ensure he will never walk free again.”
The district attorney said the case “shows exactly what can happen with someone with a history of extreme violence is released from prison early,” adding that, “We can only hope that three families who have experienced unimaginable loss find some measure of peace knowing he will never again be back in our communities.”
Collins had previously been convicted of murder for the September 1995 shooting deaths of 28-year-old Derrick Reese and 44-year-old Thomas Weiss during attacks 11 days apart, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
A state parole board panel found Collins suitable for parole after a March 2020 “youth offender” parole hearing that was held because the murders occurred when he was 24 years old. He acknowledged then that his own mother was murdered when he was about 6 years old and that he had a history of drug abuse, saying that he had a “spiritual change” while in state prison and wanted to “finally stay sober,” according to a transcript of that hearing.
A representative from the District Attorney’s Office objected to Collins’ bid for parole, saying then, “… We don’t feel that he’s currently amenable for release.” But the parole board panel’s presiding commissioner said that they did not find that Collins posed an “unreasonable risk to public safety” in finding him suitable for parole, according to the transcript.
Johnson was killed 364 days after Collins was released from prison following 25 years in custody, according to the District Attorney’s Office.