Juan Vallejo Corona was born in Autlán, Mexico, on Feb. The result was the same as the first trial, nine years earlier: Corona was convicted of all 25 counts of murder. The jury heard more than 200 witnesses during the seven-month proceedings, which cost the state more than $5 million. Corona’s attorney said the brother had “maniacal rage” from “the frustration of a morbid sexuality.”Ĭorona testified at his second trial, denying the charges.
His wife, the former Gloria Moreno, divorced him in 1974, and he had three heart attacks while incarcerated.Īt Corona’s second trial in 1982, a different defense team sought to shift the blame to his brother Natividad, who disappeared in Mexico and was thought to be dead. Less than a year after entering a California state prison in Vacaville, Corona was stabbed 32 times by inmates, lost his left eye and had a blade permanently lodged behind his right eye. No defense witnesses were called during the trial. A state appellate court overturned his conviction in 1978 on the grounds that his defense attorney had made a “farce and mockery” of the trial and was even more incompetent than the prosecution. “At this point,” Patton said, “it appears the investigation was inept, the preparation inefficient and the prosecution inadequate.”īut extensive circumstantial evidence was presented against Corona, and he was convicted on 25 counts of murder. Patton said during the 1973 trial that he was “truly appalled” and “almost incredulous” at the bumbling prosecution, which was charged with mishandling evidence. Despite Corona’s assertions of innocence, prosecutors called the ledger a “death list.” There was also a ledger with a list of 34 transient workers, including several of the victims. When police searched Corona’s home and truck, they found a machete with an 18-inch blade, a meat cleaver, a double-bladed ax and a wooden club.
All of the victims had been hired through Corona’s labor contracting business or seen with him previously. All but one had been slashed with a machete or a knife to the head, and many had been stabbed in the upper body. Within a week, the bodies of 25 men had been exhumed. After officers unearthed six additional bodies, Corona, then 37, was arrested on May 26, 1971. Near the third body, a deputy recovered two meat market receipts bearing the name of Juan V. Six days later, a second body was discovered in a shallow grave at a nearby ranch, and a third body was found close to the Feather River. Under the soil was the body of laborer Kenneth Whitacre. He grew suspicious and called the sheriff’s office. The killings were uncovered when a peach grower, Goro Kagehiro, who had hired Corona to supply field workers, noticed a freshly filled hole about 4 feet deep, 5 feet long and 2 feet wide in his Sutter County, California, orchard on May 19, 1971. His job was to recruit thousands of farm laborers, many of them Mexican, to work in the fields.
No cause of death was cited, but he reportedly had dementia.Ĭorona’s killings rocked the quiet agricultural town of Yuba City, California, a community of 14,000 people about 100 miles northeast of San Francisco, where Corona, a native of Mexico, lived with his wife and four daughters. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced that he died at a hospital outside the Corcoran, California, prison where he was serving 25 life sentences.
Juan Corona, a farm labor contractor who was dubbed the “machete murderer” for hacking and killing 25 migrant workers in California – a crime that made him the worst serial murderer in American history at the time of his 1973 conviction – died March 4.