On November 16, 1984, police officers in San Bernadino, California, were alerted to the discovery of a woman's body at a local cemetery. Nude from the waist down, with her bra unfastened, the victim had been raped before she was shot in the chest and neck with a .357 magnum revolver. 

She was identified as 25-year-old Sonia Reed, last seen at a drug party the night of November 15. The following day, 42-year-old Ursula Houser was found dead in a San Bernadino alley, two miles from the Reed murder scene.

Shot twice from behind with a .357, the victim had then been dragged 35 feet to concealment, where the gunman finished his assault by raping her corpse. Ballistics tests matched bullets from the two shootings, and investigators knew they had a serial killer on their hands. 

Eight days elapsed before the next attack, in Riverside. Daniel Osentkowski, age 11, was walking his 13-year-old cousin home from a neighborhood store when they were accosted by a black man in uniform.

The stranger drew a pistol and grabbed Osentkowski's cousin, dragging the girl toward a van parked nearby. Daniel waded in on the attacker, kicking the man's shins, freeing his cousin before the gunman opened fire. Osentkowski was fatally wounded, but the gunman fled empty-handed, his would-be victim providing police with descriptions of both man and vehicle. 

That evening, 25-year-old Horace Kelly was stopped in a light green van, arrested when officers found a recently-fired .357 magnum in his vehicle. A native of New Jersey, employed for the past two years as a security guard, Kelly first denied everything, then confessed when his surviving victim made a positive I.D. 

Convicted of murder and attempted murder in the Osentkowski incident, Kelly was sentenced to death on May 21, 1986. 

Eight months later, he was convicted on two counts of murder in San Bernadino, receiving another death sentence.

Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers

Killer of 3 Is Mentally Fit to Be Executed, a California Jury Finds

By Don Terry - The New York Times

May 15, 1998

San Rafael, Calif. - A competency hearing that was supposed to have lasted a week ended here today after more than a month when a divided Marin County jury found a deeply disturbed death-row inmate with an IQ hovering in the 60's mentally fit enough to be executed.

The inmate, Horace E. Kelly, 38, is scheduled to be put to death this summer for the murder of three people in Southern California in 1984.

It is unconstitutional to execute the insane, and mental competency hearings are often convened before someone who is accused of murder is tried or before someone who is convicted of murder is sentenced. The Kelly hearing was called just days before Mr. Kelly's scheduled execution last month, when prison officials and state psychiatrists expressed doubts that he was able to meet the minimum mental competency standard. Mr. Kelly's lawyers argue that his insanity developed after he was sent to death row.

The threshold to be found competent for execution is so low that capital punishment experts can recall only a handful of cases across the country of a condemned inmate's being spared after such a hearing. If a jury, or a judge in most cases, determines that an inmate was ''aware'' of his pending execution and the reason for it, the inmate is deemed legally competent to die.

In a 9 to 3 verdict, the jury for Mr. Kelly said yes to both questions, even though one psychiatrist testified that when he asked Mr. Kelly during an interview what crime he had committed, Mr. Kelly answered, ''I'm here to go to college.''

Most of the mental-health experts who testified, including one appointed by the court, said Mr. Kelly was not competent enough to be executed.

''It was pretty much a surprise,'' Michael Aiello, the jury foreman, said of the decision. ''I thought we'd have a much closer vote. He's clearly insane.''

But Robert Mountanos, a juror who voted with the majority, said it was obvious that Mr. Kelly was aware of his crimes and his fate.

''I think he's ill,'' Mr. Mountanos said. ''But he's not insane.''

Robert B. Mazer, Mr. Kelly's main lawyer, said he would appeal. ''Mr. Kelly has a broken brain,'' Mr. Mazer said. ''He's completely out of touch with reality.''

Only one of the half-dozen psychiatrists and psychologists who testified at the hearing said that Mr. Kelly was competent to be executed, and she reached that conclusion, she said in court, partly because Mr. Kelly beat her in a game of tic tac toe.

The psychiatrist, Diane McEwen, who was appointed by the court, also said that Mr. Kelly was able to tell her the approximate ages of the three people he killed.

The other experts, including the other court-appointed psychiatrist, said that Mr. Kelly was suffering from severe mental illness and was unable to communicate coherently.

In his prison cell not far from here, according to testimony and prison logs, Mr. Kelly rolls his feces into little balls, hoards food in the toilet, rarely bathes and speaks in a low, rambling, incoherent string of mumbles. Most of the time, however, he remains silent.

His keepers call him Smelly Kelly and wear face masks when they clean his cell or escort him to meet with the small army of psychiatrists who have interviewed him over the last few years and months.

As the verdict was read, Mr. Kelly did what he has done for the entire hearing. He stared into the distance, a vacant expression on his face.

Horace E. Kelly

California: April 17, 1998

In San Rafael, a judge on Thursday postponed Horace Kelly's sanity hearing because 220 pages of his prison hospital records were missing from files that were handed over to his lawyers.

The results of the jury trial will determine whether Kelly is mentally fit to be executed.

Marin County Superior Court Judge William McGivern ordered San Quentin State Prison to provide the defense with Kelly's complete psychiatric and medical records, and the prison said it complied on March 24.

But on Wednesday prison officials came up with 220 more pages, showing Kelly was admitted to the prison hospital 9 times for psychiatric or related matters.

With the jury out of the courtroom, defense attorney Richard Mazer asked McGivern to postpone the hearing so that psychiatric witnesses could become familiar with the newly found material.

"The materials are highly relevant," Mazer said.

Ed Berberian, the Marin County prosecutor who will try to persuade the jury that Kelly is sane, opposed the delay, saying the records were unimportant.  The purpose of the sanity hearing is to determine Kelly's present comprehension, not his history, Berberian said.

But Mazer said prosecutors will tell the jury that Kelly is malingering. He said the evidence of long-standing, severe mental illness would refute those arguments.

"We are talking schizophrenia.  These are not the kinds of things that come and go like some form of mild neurosis," Mazer said.

Kelly was sentenced to death in Riverside and San Bernardino counties for the murders of 2 women and an 11-year-old boy.

His execution had been set for Tuesday but was postponed until the jury decides whether he is sane.  State and federal law forbid execution of the insane.

Kelly sat silently and almost motionless in the courtroom as 5 alternate jurors were selected and sworn in Thursday.  The 12 regular jurors were chosen a day earlier.

McGivern told the jury to report back next Tuesday when the trial is expected to begin.

The Sacramento Bee