PASADENA, Calif. -- A South Carolina woman faces a possible life prison term for her conviction of the torture-murder of a Glendale pizza deliveryman.
After six days of deliberations the Superior Court jury Thursday found Ruby Padgett, 21, guilty of one count of first-degree murder and three counts of armed robbery but acquitted her of two counts of attempted murder involving two other pizza shop employees.
Padgett, called by prosecutors a 'consummate liar,' faces a maximum of life in prison without the possibility of parole at a sentencing hearing April 3 before Judge Jack Tso.
Deputy District Attorney Terry Green said pizza clerk John Harrigan, 21, was delivering a Domino's pizza to a Glendale motel room shortly before midnight Dec. 9, 1985, when Padgett and her boyfriend, Mitchell Sims, 26, robbed and choked him then drowned him in a bathtub.
Police found Harrigan's bound and gagged body submerged in the overflowing motel bathtub early the next morning. A washcloth had been stuffed in his mouth and a pillow case was tied over his head.
Green said Padgett and Sims, both from West Columbia, S.C., also robbed and tried to kill two other employees inside the Glendale Domino's shop shortly after Harrigan's death. But jurors acquitted Padgett of the attempted murder charges, while convicting her of robbery.
Sims faces a possible death penalty in an upcoming trial. Prosecutors did not seek the same sentence in Padgett's case because of her age and her lack of a prior criminal record.
The two robbery victims, Kory Spiroff and Edmund Sicam, were found alive, but were tied to metal hooks in a darkened food freezer in such a manner that they had to stand on their toes to avoid strangulation, Green said.
Sims is also charged in South Carolina with the Dec. 3, 1985, robbery-shooting murders of two other Domino's employees, Gary Melke and Christopher Zerr. Both were 24-year-old workers at a Hanahan, S.C., Domino's where Sims used to work.
Padgett is charged as an accessory after the fact in that case, which will go to trial after the California trials.
Defense lawyer Rayford Fountain portrayed his client as a 'passive' observer who obeyed Sims out of fear for her own life and fled with him from South Carolina to Florida and later to Glendale.
But Green called Padgett a 'consummate liar' who played an equal role with Sims in the Harrigan murder.
Padgett and Sims were arrested Christmas Day 1985 in Las Vegas, where they had driven in Harrigan's truck after they killed him, Green said. The couple was then extradited to Los Angeles County.
