http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_969bfdc0-5fa6-11df-9125-001cc4c002e0.htmlREGION: Gardner sentenced to two life termsSentencing closes another chapter in Amber Dubois and Chelsea King murdersMay 14, 2010
Maurice Dubois, father of Amber Dubois, speaks to John Gardner during Gardner's sentencing at the County Courthouse in downtown San Diego on Friday. John Albert Gardner III, a convicted sex offender who was previously imprisoned for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old neighbor, was sentenced Friday to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole for raping and murdering North County teenagers Amber Dubois and Chelsea King.
The sentencing came after the parents of the slain girls and another woman he assaulted addressed Gardner, 31, directly in court, prompting him to cry at times and,
in one instance, to show a dramatic flash of anger.
That moment came when the woman he assaulted on Dec. 27, 2009, Candice Moncayo, ended her emotional statement by saying, "How is your nose?"
That was a reference to her fending off the attack by hitting Gardner in the nose.
Gardner's face changed from one of sadness to rage and he was seen telling his attorneys that she had hit him.
During the hour-long hearing, Moncayo, along with the parents of Chelsea and Amber, variously called Gardner a monster, said he should burn in hell and predicted he would be murdered by a fellow inmate.
Amber's mother Carrie McConigle told Gardner that he extinguished a bright and shining star.
"I believe in my heart that Amber would forgive, and today I choose to take my strength from my daughter's strength and forgive, but I also choose to never forget the pain that you caused or the loss that I feel," she said.
Chelsea's mother Kelly King demanded the handcuffed Gardner, who spent most of the hearing staring downward, face her when she spoke.
"Look at me," she said, pausing, and Gardner eventually did.
"You have taken a life that was worth an infinite number of yours," she said. "You have earned the hatred of millions of people and you now spend the rest of your life and eternity in the worst and deepest parts of hell."
Videos of the two girls shown during the hearing recounted the upbringing of each and their hopes for their adult years.
It was when the first video was played, one telling about the life of Amber, that Gardner began to cry.
Amber's father, Maurice Dubois, told Gardner he had "heartlessly murdered and discarded our beautiful daughter."
"I truly hope you suffer a hundred times the amount of pain you caused," he said. "You will burn in hell for the acts you committed. I just hope that day is an agonizingly long way away and that you will have to suffer as much as we all have, actually more."
Chelsea's father Brent King called Gardner a coward.
"You are not a man," he said. "You are evil."
The Kings also were highly critical of Gardner's mother, who sat in the front row of the packed San Diego courtroom.
Both said she had failed to alert authorities about her son when Amber was abducted and did not tell police that her son was staying at her Rancho Bernardo home when Chelsea went missing in the area.
"You have much to account for," Brent King said to Gardner's mother, who was quickly escorted from the courtroom by deputies when the hearing ended.
Moncayo told Gardner that she wakes up screaming some mornings.
"I had the utter conviction that I was going to die and the pain that comes from being the only survivor," she said. "But I came here today for all of the women who have ever been victims of violence."
Gardner did not speak during the hearing. The public defender's office issued a statement following the sentencing:
"Mr. Gardner has accepted responsibility for his actions. Mr. Gardner wishes to express remorse for his actions, knowing that nothing he can say or do can possibly atone for the harm he has caused the victims and their families. Mr. Gardner is willing to assist by giving authorities some insights as to his thought process at the time these crimes were committed."
The punishment for Gardner was the result of a plea deal that pulled the death penalty off the table. The deal spared the families of the slain girls a lengthy and brutal trial. And because Gardner waived his right to an appeal, Friday's sentencing brought an end to the legal cases.
The sentence was handed down by San Diego Superior Court Judge David Danielsen.
The crimes
Amber, 14, was a freshman at Escondido High School when she vanished while walking to school the morning of Feb. 13, 2009. She might have been the victim of foul play, or she might have run away from home, police said.
Hundreds searched for the shy girl who had planned on the day she disappeared to buy a lamb through the Future Farmers of America Club. She went to school carrying a $200 check to pay for the animal she was going to name Nannette.
Police had little, if anything, to go on. They questioned parents, neighbors, even sex offenders in the area ---- including Gardner ---- but turned up nothing.
What followed was a cruel year for her family. No way she ran away, they insisted. She had been abducted. In fact, two weeks before Amber vanished, her mother spoke to her about news reports of a man who was following young girls in inland North County. Amber's mom warned her to run away if it happened to her.
On Dec. 27, 2009, college student Moncayo was taking a run on trails at Rancho Bernardo Community Park near Lake Hodges when a man tackled her and asked for money.
Fearing the stranger would rape her, she jammed her elbow to his nose and fled.
Two months later, on Feb. 25, Poway High School senior Chelsea went for a run on those same trails and vanished.
Authorities searched the area and made an ominous find: the 17-year-old teenager's underwear. Lab tests revealed the material contained the DNA of Gardner, a registered sex offender.
On Feb. 28, authorities tracked Gardner to a popular restaurant on the north side of Lake Hodges, and arrested him for the rape and murder of Chelsea.
It took another two days to find Chelsea's body, buried alongside a lake tributary.
Gardner pleaded not guilty the day after Chelsea was found, on March 3. But behind the scenes, he was confessing.
On March 5, Gardner secretly led authorities to a remote site in Pala northeast of Escondido where he had raped, killed and buried Amber.
Amber's parents were told her remains were found in the rural spot, adjacent to a paved road off Pala-Temecula Road near the Pala Casino. The remote spot is about a 30-minute drive from Escondido High School.
But authorities kept mum, even to the slain girl's parents, regarding the truth of how they knew where to look.
Publicly, the only information Escondido police shared was that Gardner was "a focus" of their investigation into Amber's slaying.
Gardner pleads guilty
Then, on April 16, came the bombshell: Gardner pleaded guilty to killing both teens.
Amber, he raped and stabbed within 90 minutes of grabbing her, he admitted.
Chelsea, he raped and strangled inside of an hour after dragging her from the running trail, he said.
San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said her office struck a deal: Gardner would plead guilty to both killings, and they would not seek to have him executed.
She said there was simply no evidence linking Gardner to Amber ---- other than the fact that he told authorities what he had done.
But in exchange for leading investigators to the Amber's remains, prosecutors agreed not to use Gardner's confession against him.
If they found anything else tying Gardner to Amber, that was fair game. But there was nothing.
The dilemma: authorities said they had enough evidence in Chelsea's slaying to send Gardner to death row. But they could not win justice for Amber's slaying without Gardner's confession.
Chelsea's parents ---- who said they had wanted their daughter's killer to be executed ---- agreed to a deal that spared Gardner from execution, in part to give Amber's parents the answers and justice they needed.
McGonigle then did what for many was unthinkable: on Wednesday, she sat down with her daughter's killer to get answers.
McGonigle said the 30-minute encounter at a downtown San Diego jail brought her the answers she needed.
She is not yet willing to share what he told her, other than to say Gardner said he had targeted Amber at random.
McGonigle said she does plan to share the answer to a vital question for parents: how he got Amber into the car as she walked on a very busy street in the light of day.
Gardner's case brought changes
The plea deal, coming just six weeks after Gardner was charged with killing Chelsea, brought a lightning-fast resolution to crimes that shook the North County community.
"I think it's another step toward closure," said Joe Peters of Carlsbad, a longtime friend of Amber's family who helped organize searches for the teen. "Hopefully, it gives them peace. And hopefully it would also serve to remind the community again to take care of their children ... because there's people like John Gardner still out there."
Aside from the local impact, the stories of Chelsea and Amber have prompted scrutiny of state sex offender laws and whether enough is being done to protect the public from sexually violent predators.
Within two weeks of Gardner's arrest, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a review of the way the state handled Gardner's molestation case from 2000.
The scrutiny also led Schwarzenegger to change a corrections department policy of destroying parole agents' field notes a year after ex-convicts were released from supervision. Now, the field notes are kept indefinitely.
Cheslea's parents worked with state Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, R-San Diego, to introduce a bill dubbed "Chelsea's Law," which would tighten laws governing violent sex offenders.
Amber's parents turned their attention toward the search for missing kids. Her father, Moe Dubois, has started an organization he named "More Kids," which focuses on bringing media attention and resources in the search for missing children.
Amber's mother, McGonigle, last month hosted a four-day search-and-rescue training, and plans to hold similar programs again.
Dawn Davis, a senior case manager for the Texas-based Laura Recovery Center Foundation, which helped organize searches for both Amber and Chelsea, said the case will always scar the families of Gardner's victims. Closure, she said, is a fallacy.
"As glad as we are that he's going to be sentenced, there's still going to be missing pieces. Amber's still missing. Chelsea's still missing. ... For the families, I don't think there's any such thing as closure. There's always an open wound."
Call staff writer Teri Figueroa at 760-740-5442. Call staff writer Mark Walker at 760-740-3529.
Staff writer Chris Nichols contributed to this report.