Accused Robber Charged In 2 More Killings
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man accused of strangling a Hawthorne couple during a home invasion robbery was charged Wednesday with two additional robbery killings, prosecutors said.
John Wesley Ewell, 53, now faces four counts of murder with special circumstances, four robbery counts and a charge of receiving stolen property.
He remained jailed without bail, and prosecutors had not decided whether to seek the death penalty, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.
The new charges accuse him of killing Hanna Morcos, 80, who died of a heart attack after he was attacked in his Hawthorne home during a holdup on Sept. 24.
Morcos was attacked, bound and gagged as his wife slept. A coroner's report deemed his death a homicide, concluding that he suffered a heart attack caused, in part, by the attack.
Ewell also is newly charged with robbing and killing Denise Roberts, 53, of Los Angeles, during an Oct. 13 home invasion. No details were released about her death.
Ewell already was accused of robbing and killing 69-year-old Leamon Turnage and his wife, Robyn, on Oct. 21. Their bodies were found the next day at their ransacked Hawthorne home -- five blocks from the Morcos residence.
Detectives believe that Ewell posed as a utility repairman to get into the Turnage home where he bound, beat and gagged the couple, then killed them.
He was arrested two days after the killings in Hawthorne, when detectives traced the use of the couple's stolen ATM card to a nearby gas station.
Ewell was convicted of robbery in 1985 and 1989, and was charged in September with grand theft and commercial burglary. He was out on bail when the Turnages were killed, authorities have said.
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