LOS ANGELES — A serial killer who pleaded guilty last year to a crime spree in Los Angeles and Santa Monica that left five men dead and seven others injured, along with the killings of his aunt and uncle in Texas, has been charged with murdering his cellmate in a Kern County prison, authorities announced Monday.
Ramon Alberto Escobar is set to be arraigned Thursday in connection with the Feb. 24 strangulation of Juan Villanueva at North Kern State Prison, according to the Kern County District Attorney’s Office.
The murder charge includes the special circumstance allegation of seven prior murder convictions. Escobar is also accused of committing an assault with malice by an inmate serving a life sentence, according to the Kern County District Attorney’s Office.
Villanueva — who was sentenced in Los Angeles County to life with the possibility of parole for aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14 — was discovered unresponsive in the cell that he occupied with Escobar, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said earlier this year.
Escobar was sentenced in May 2022 to two life prison terms without the possibility of parole plus 124 years to life in prison for the crime spree in Los Angeles County.
During a subsequent video conference in that same downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Escobar pleaded guilty to the August 2018 killings of his aunt, Dina Escobar, and his uncle, Rogelio Escobar, in Texas, in a plea deal that spared him a potential death sentence in that state. He was also sentenced to life in those two slayings, and will serve his time in a California prison.
The murder charges in Los Angeles County involved:
–A Sept. 10, 2018, attack in Santa Monica on Juan Antonio Ramirez, 51, who died of his injuries in January 2021
–The Sept. 16, 2018, killings of Branden Ridout, 24, and Kelvin Williams, 59, in downtown Los Angeles
–The Sept. 20, 2018, killing of Steven Cruze, 39, of San Gabriel, under the Santa Monica…
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