Man Who Killed Parents, Brother Sentenced to Die

ORANGE COUNTY — Superior Court Judge William Froeberg, unswayed by the defendant’s emotional display, sentenced Edward Charles III to death Friday, capping a courtroom drama that involved four juries.

A tearful Charles had slumped in his courtroom seat and said he took full responsibility for the brutal killing of his parents and younger brother four years ago in the family’s Fullerton home, but offered no explanations.

“I died the same night as everybody else,” he said at his sentencing. “My family was a loving and caring family.”

Two juries previously couldn’t agree on a sentence, and the death penalty voted by a third was thrown out because of jury misconduct. In October, a fourth jury recommended death for Charles. His case is believed to be the first in the state in which a defendant faced the death sentence in four penalty phases.

The 26-year-old man was convicted in 1996 of the murders of his father, Edward Charles Jr., 55, a Hughes Aircraft engineer; his mother, Dolores, 47, and brother Danny, 20.

Charles, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit and flanked by his two attorneys, looked down as he addressed the court.

“For the last four years, sitting here, I’ve tried to find a reasonable explanation to explain why we are sitting here,” he said. “I don’t even have the words to make up for something like this. The words are not big enough.”

According to evidence at trial, Charles’ family and his grandfather, Bernard Severino, gathered for dinner on Nov. 6, 1994. Following dinner, Charles stabbed and bludgeoned his brother to death and stuffed him in the trunk of a family car. Later that evening, he strangled his mother and killed his father with a hammer. The bodies were found in a burning car in a La Mirada high school field the next day.

Severino testified that his grandson asked him to take the blame for the murders because he was old and Charles still had his life ahead of him.