The California Supreme Court Thursday upheld a man’s death sentence for masterminding the beating deaths of an 81-year-old man and his 79-year-old wife in their La Habra Heights home in an effort to take over the male victim’s business.
In a split 5-2 ruling, the majority of the state’s highest court found that there was “considerable evidence” of Theodore Shove’s “involvement in the murders and as the mastermind behind the entire scheme,” including his interest in and extensive efforts to obtain victim Hubert Souther’s aerospace salvage business, Cal Aero Supply Co.
Associate Justice Kelli Evans wrote in a dissenting opinion that she would “reverse the judgment in its entirety,” with Associate Justice Goodwin H. Liu concurring in that opinion. The dissenting opinion noted that a prosecutor had failed to tell the judge why she sought to have one Black prospective juror excused when she provided justifications for her challenges of four other Black prospective jurors during the jury selection process.
Shove was convicted in October 2007 of first-degree murder for the Sept. 15, 2001, tire iron attack on the 81-year-old man and his 79-year-old wife, Elizabeth.
The Southers, who had been married more than 50 years, were found dead in their bed by one of their two adult daughters on Sept. 17, 2001.
Jurors recommended a death sentence for Shove, who is now 74.
Co-defendant Lewis Hardin, now 53, was also convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a life prison term without the possibility of parole.
He maintained at his June 2008 sentencing that he “had nothing to do” with the killings and that he “just got mixed up with the wrong crowd.”
Prosecutors said Hardin carried out the killings at the behest of Shove, who was trying to take over Hubert Souther’s business.
A state appeals court panel found in an October 2009 ruling upholding Hardin’s conviction that there was “substantial and compelling evidence of appellant’s guilt,” including “DNA from 11 bloodstains collected inside and outside the home was at least partially matched to appellant,” and seven bloodstains that were “definite DNA matches.”
The 2009 ruling noted that there was “no evidence appellant knew the victims or had any legitimate reason to be on their property and in their home” and “no innocent or legitimate reason for his trail of blood leading from inside their home, through their yard, and over a back wall.”
In 2023, a state appeals court panel agreed with a Superior Court judge’s finding that Hardin was ineligible to have his murder conviction vacated and be re-sentenced as a result of a change in state law.
One of the couple’s daughters, Allison Renck, said at Hardin’s sentencing, “My parents deserved the right to live and that was taken from them.” She noted then that “life has never been the same” since.