Survivor of serial killer fights for death penalty

The only known survivor of a serial killer, a man authorities say murdered eight woman, is now worried voters might get rid of California’s Death Penalty law she hopes her would-be killer will someday face.

Jennifer Asbenson is still is waiting for her would-be killer, Andrew Urdiales, to face the justice she says he deserves, 24-years after her attack.

“On the confession tapes, he said he stopped strangling me because his hands got tired,” Asbenson said. “He says my face turned blue, my eyes started protruding. My eyes got bloodshot.”

Asbenson thought she was going to die that September morning in Desert Hot Springs, 1992.

Asbenson said, “Anybody who would get into his car, he would take them somewhere and he would murder them.”

She freed herself and escaped Urdiales, later convicted of murdering three other women in Illinois and Indiana in 1996.

A trial for the murders of five more women here in Riverside, Orange and San Diego counties between 1986 and 1995 is about to begin in Orange County in February of 2017.

Julie McGhee, 29, of Cathedral City was shot and killed in a remote area of Palm Springs in July 1988.

Prosecutors say Urdiales also shot Tammie Erwin, 18, in April 1989.

“I’ve heard a lot of people say serial killers, or monsters like that, aren’t afraid of anything. They are! They are afraid to die,” said Asbenson.

She’s using Facebook to spread her message.

She’s against Proposition 62, which would end California’s Death Penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

“It’s justice. You’re getting to know the person who did this is no longer on this earth,” said Asbenson. ” They can no longer hurt another human being and is gone because of what they did. And that’s what’s right,” Asbenson added.

Hundreds of death sentences have been handed down in our state.

But since 1973, California has only carried out 13 executions, the last in 2006.

749 people are currently on death row waiting to die.

19 states and the District of Columbia have banned the punishment.

31 states still have the death penalty.

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty is among the critics who say some on death row have later been exonerated of their crimes. They want it to end.

Asbenson, Urdiales’s only known survivor, says no. “There are definitely a lot of people out there who are pure evil and they do not deserve to live,” Asbenson said.

She’s supporting Prop. 66, which would require more attorneys to represent those on death row, speed up appeals and allow prisons to develop new execution methods.

She’s been defriended, and has unfriended others online, but she feels it’s worth it.

Asbenson said, “There’s no reason for such evil to exist. There’s no reason.”

Urdiales escaped the death penalty in Illinois, when the state abolished it.

The Orange County D.A.’s office tells News Channel three a hearing on his California case was held last Wednesday.

His jury trial has been delayed a number of times, but is currently set to start on February 6th next year.

You can see those currently on California’s Condemned Inmate List at: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Capital_Punishment/docs/CondemnedInmateListSecure.pdf?pdf=Condemned-Inmates