LOS ANGELES -- Bobby Joe Maxwell, charged with the 'Skid Row Stabbings' of 10 men around the seedy downtown district in the winter of 1978-79, was convicted Thursday of two counts of first-degree murder.
Maxwell, 33, a reputed devil worshipper who professed to committing the slayings to procure souls for Satan, was also found guilty of special circumstances that mean he will be sentenced either to die in the gas chamber or spend the rest of his life in prison.
After 25 days of deliberations -- the longest time any jury has deliberated a criminal case in Los Angeles County -- the jury also convicted Maxwell of one count of robbery and found him innocent of three counts of murder.
The panel said it could not reach a verdict on five remaining counts of murder and three of robbery, and Superior Court Judge David Aisenson declared a mistrial on those charges.
Maxwell, a paroled robber, was convicted of the murders of Frank Garcia, 48, and David Jones, 39. He was acquitted of the murders of J.P. Henderson, 65, Francisco Rodriguez, 57, and Melford 'White Buffalo' Fletcher.
Maxwell had no visible reaction when the verdicts were read. His penalty phase was scheduled to begin July 17.
Most of the victims were transients who lived in the Skid Row area. Garcia, however, was a county custodian from East Los Angeles and Alvarez lived in suburban Culver City.
Prosecutor Ernies Norris told jurors that Maxwell 'turned turned Skid Row into strewn bodies of the poor, the hopeless and forgotten of our society.'
The killings occurred four years after Vaughn Greenwood, dubbed the 'Skid Row Slasher,' cut the throats of eight Skid Row residents.
Prosecutors said Maxwell killed some of the victims to get their money and stabbed others because he believed they were better off dead than living in squalor.
After his arrest he allegedly told another inmate he stabbed the 10 men in a search for souls for Satan, and other inmates said they saw him perform Satanic rituals.
Norris said other evidence that Maxwell was a devil worshipper included an entry in a diary, found at his home, reading 'Praise be to the prince of darkness'; a piece of cardboard with the word 'Satan' scrawled on it found on one victim's body; and a message Maxwell allegedly wrote on the wall of a bus terminal bathroom, 'My name is Luther. I kill winos. I put them out of their misery.'
Other evidence against Maxwell included a palmprint found on a park bench where one man died and an eyewitness who placed him at the scene of a killing on the steps of the central library.
Norris said Maxwell began the string of slayings months after his parole from Fort Pillow prison in Tennessee, where he had served a term for armed robbery. He then moved to Los Angeles, where his two sisters lived.
Maxwell was first arrested in December 1978 while standing with a knifeover a sleeping derelict on a Skid Row sidewalk, but was released three days before the final slaying. Police kept him under surveillance and rearrested him in April 1979, after finding his palmprint.
His trial was delayed for more than four years, primarily because of a suit by his attorneys over publishing rights to a book about the slayings.
