Nevada handyman convicted of 2015 killing of 81-year-old California man – East Bay Instances
A Nevada craftsman was convicted Tuesday of killing an 81-year-old man who was strangled six years ago in the bedroom of a Newport Beach house.
An Orange County Supreme Court jury found 62-year-old Anthony Thomas Garcia guilty of the murder of Abelardo Lopez Estacion on April 11, 2015.
However, the jury found that the killing was not carried out for financial reasons. Such determination would have made it a murder in special circumstances that would have resulted in a likely life sentence with no parole.
The conviction comes less than a year after another jury failed to pass judgment, resulting in a trial and a second trial. The second trial was postponed several times in the middle of the testimony after Garcia was temporarily quarantined for exposure to other prison inmates who tested positive for COVID-19.
The murder came amid an ugly battle over the estate of Dortha Lamb, Estacion’s dying wife. Garcia was Lamb’s granddaughter’s ex-boyfriend, and two of Garcia’s daughters were Lamb’s great-granddaughters.
At the beginning of Garcia’s latest trial, Assistant District Attorney Seton Hunt told the jury that the case was about “family, greed, hatred and deception.”
Lamb – a self-made woman who owned valuable properties in Newport Beach, San Clemente, and Costa Mesa – had been with Estacion for more than 20 years, but didn’t marry him until shortly before his death. At the time of Estacion’s murder, Lamb died of terminal cancer and dementia.
According to testimony during the trials, Garcia and some of Lamb’s relatives believed Estacion was abusing Lamb and taking advantage of her health problems to suck money from their accounts. Garcia had told others that he reportedly wanted to kill Estacion.
A lawsuit broke out in which Lamb’s family took her from their Newport Beach home and tried to kick Estacion out of the residence and not be allowed to contact Lamb. A judge delayed a decision approving an injunction against Estacion.
Hours later, someone walked into the Newport Beach home, cut power to the residence, and suffocated, beat, and strangled Estacion.
Prosecutors allege Garcia drove from Carson City to Newport Beach to kill Estacion and then drove back immediately. It is said that he left his cell phone with his adult daughter, Samantha Garcia, to make it look like he was still in Nevada.
Samantha Garcia first told investigators that she had her father’s cell phone the night Estacion was murdered, and led a fake text conversation between the two. But during both trials, the daughter retracted these claims because she was pressured by detectives to lie and said she did not have her father’s cell phone that night.
During the trials, Garcia’s attorney, Alisha Montoro, described Garcia as a non-violent, devoted family man who led a simple life. The defense attorney denied that Garcia believed his daughters were entitled to Lamb’s money and told jurors that Garcia was not even in California on the night of the murder.
Garcia is due to return for trial on April 28. He faces a life sentence of up to 25 years.
