Riverside County Sheriff Wants Charges Filed Against Gardner
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department recommended to the District Attorney’s Office today that charges be filed against the admitted killer of two San Diego County teenagers for allegedly trying to abduct a Lake Elsinore girl in 2009.
Sheriff’s officials recommended that John Albert Gardner III be charged with attempted kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon in connection with an Oct. 28, 2009, attack on a teenager in the El Cariso area.
The former Lake Elsinore resident pleaded guilty last month in San Diego to the sex-assault slayings of 14-year-old Amber Dubois on Feb. 13, 2009, and 17-year-old Chelsea King on Feb. 25 of this year. He was sentenced Friday to consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole, plus 49 years.
Gardner was transferred this morning from county jail in San Diego to North Kern State Prison in Delano, leaving about 2 a.m. and arriving shortly before 6 a.m., said Terry Thornton of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
At the penitentiary about 180 miles north of Los Angeles, he will undergo a 45-day “reception center” evaluation to determine which of the state’s 33 prisons is best suited to permanently house him, according to Thornton. Among other factors, the review will take into account Gardner’s psychological makeup, physical health and education status.
During the process, Gardner will be confined in a maximum-security cell by himself.
A special task force is charged with determining whether Gardner — who was sent to prison in 2000 and served about six years for sexually assaulting a neighbor girl — is responsible for any other unsolved kidnappings, rapes or homicides.
