Gardner Faces Sentencing For Teen Murders
A registered sex offender who admitted raping and murdering 17-year-old Chelsea King and 14-year-old Amber Dubois is scheduled to be sentenced today to a pair of life terms without parole, plus 33 years to life for assaulting a woman in December.
John Albert Gardner III pleaded guilty in April to attacking King while she was jogging behind Rancho Bernardo Community Park and taking her to a remote area, where he raped her, strangled her and buried her in a shallow grave.
He also admitted killing Dubois, who vanished while walking to Escondido High School in February 2009.
Dubois’s father blasted the court system today for releasing his victim-impact statement a day before his daughter’s killer was to be sentenced.
Moe Dubois said a senior probation officer instructed him and longtime girlfriend Rebecca Smith to submit their statements five days in advance so they could be part of the court record.
The statements were released to the public and posted on the Internet last night.
Dubois said the release of the statements victimized him once again.
“I think this is baloney,” Dubois said. “This should never, ever happen.”
Dubois said the victim-impact statement is the one time victims get to “face their accused killer and tell them what they feel.”
“No victim, who has the right to make the one victim-impact statement, should have that taken away from them,” the father said.
Dubois spoke two hours before the sentencing hearing for John Albert Gardner III, 31, who pleaded guilty to raping and murdering his 14-year-old daughter and raping and killing 17-year-old Chelsea King of Poway.
