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December 6, 2008

UPDATE: Man Convicted of 1978 Murder In Case Of Mom Killed While Jogging at Lafayette Reservoir


The Contra Costa Times reported that a jury this week convicted a 72-year-old man of first-degree murder in the 1978 slaying of a Lafayette woman. Darryl Kemp now faces the death penalty in the killing of Armida Wiltsey, 40, who went jogging one November afternoon before she was supposed to pick her 10-year-old son up from school. After Wiltsey didn’t make it to her son’s school, police found her body in a wooded area off the 2.7-mile trail that circles Lafayette Reservoir.


Decades passed before investigators in 2003, using new DNA technology, were able to identify a suspect: Kemp, who was serving time in a Texas prison for a 1983 rape. Detectives also learned that, four months before Wiltsey was killed, the then 42-year-old Kemp had been released from San Quentin after serving time for the 1957 rape and murder of a woman in Los Angeles.


This past week, the Times says, “jurors deliberated for about two hours before finding Darryl Kemp guilty on all counts, including murder and special allegations, that the killing of Wiltsey occurred in the course of a rape and attempted kidnapping. The penalty phase of the trial, when jurors will decide whether Kemp should be executed or serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, begins Tuesday.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad that horrible person finally got the justice he served. I knew Armida's husband a little. What he suffered.
It's just galling that Kemp got out of prison and could commit another heinous crime.

Anonymous said...

The arguments of the defense were pretty sick. Something about how Kemp didn't mean to kill his victims, just strangle them to the point of unconsciousness. And wasn't there something about how this woman wasn't raped, so he shouldn't be eligible for the death penatly? Oh, she was only sodomized. I guess that makes it not so bad. Give me a break.