LOS ANGELES -- A former Hare Krishna member already serving a life sentence for murder was convicted Tuesday of the 1986 contract killing of a dissident member of the sect.
Jurors in the retrial of Thomas Arthur Drescher, 42, returned the verdict in their fourth day of deliberations.
Drescher showed no emotion as he heard the verdict. He was found guilty of the May 22, 1986, shooting death of Stephen L. Bryant, an outspoken critic of the Hindu religious sect.
In addition, the jurors found the defendant guilty of a special allegation of murder for financial gain, meaning Drescher could be sentenced to die in the California gas chamber. His earlier murder conviction also could have a bearing on his sentence.
Drescher's first trial in the Bryant case last fall ended in a mistrial when the jury was unable to reach a verdict. The second trial began July 9.
He is currently serving a life term in West Virginia for murdering another Krishna devotee, Charles St. Denis, in 1983.
Bryant, 33, was shot twice in the head at close range as he sat in his parked van near the Krishna temple in the Palms area of Los Angeles.
He had quit the Krishna's splinter faction, headquartered in the lavish 'Palace of Gold' temple in Moundsville, W. Va., in April 1986 after making public allegations about corruption within the leadership ranks.
Deputy District Attorney Sterling Ernie Norris charged that top officials in the Moundsville temple paid Drescher $2,500 of a promised $8,000 fee for killing Bryant.
Norris was out of town Tuesday and could not immediately be reached for comment.
The prosecution's case relied in part on transcripts of the 1989 preliminary hearing testimony of Randall Gorby, a witness who died last year.
Gorby, who helped the Krishnas purchase their West Virginia property, apparently committed suicide last summer on the same day he was to be questioned by federal authorities in West Virginia about the Bryant murder and shortly before he was due in Los Angeles for Drescher's first trial.
The jury of six men and six women heard tape recordings of Gorby's telephone conversations with Drescher after the Bryant murder. They also had Gorby's earlier testimony transcript read to them.
During the preliminary hearing, Gorby testified that three months before Bryant's murder, Drescher and he tailed Bryant and saw him go into the FBI office in Wheeling, W. Va.
Gorby testified that Drescher said, 'That son-of-a-bitch is going to the police. He's going to have to be killed and I'm the one who is going to do it.'
However, Gorby also testified that Drescher, also known as Tirtha Swami, telephoned him from Columbus, Ohio, at 9 a.m. on May 22, the same day Bryant was killed in Los Angeles.
Drescher's attorney, Madelynn Kopple, charged that Gorby's testimony about that telephone call cleared her client because it would have been physically impossible for him travel from Los Angeles after Bryant's 12:30 a.m. murder and arrive in Ohio by 9 a.m.
Kopple also said a number of other Krishna members had motives to kill Bryant in order to stop his 'vendetta' against the movement.
In his closing argument last week, Norris discounted the importance of Gorby's testimony about the May 22 long-distance phone call with Drescher.
'It is the essence of the testimony we are concerned with, not the dates or the times or the numbers of minutes,' Norris said.
Drescher was convicted in December 1986 of murdering St. Denis and is serving a life prison sentence at the West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville. St. Denis was shot and repeatedly stabbed, then buried near New Vrindaban, the Moundsville Krishna site.
Kirtanananda Swami Bhaktipada, the leader of New Vrindaban, was convicted in West Virginia federal court of conspiracy charges stemming from the St. Denis murder.
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the mainstream leadership of 73 Hare Krishna branches in North America, in 1987 expelled Bhaktipada and his West Virginia followers, including Drescher, saying the group's activities 'have been an embarrassment to the movement over the past several years.'
