10 Serial Killers Among Those Whose Sentences Were Commuted by Gavin Newsom
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to convert every death sentence in California to life without parole does not stop at ordinary murderers.
Newsom’s decision covers at least 10 men convicted of serial killings, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation records.
🚨All of these innocent children were kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered in California and their pedophile killers have been sentenced to death and have now been spared by @GavinNewsom’s mass commutation.
Democrat soft-on-crime policies are evil.
Gavin Newsom is Satan. https://t.co/Qicz65VMml
— Dapper Detective (@Dapper_Det) November 6, 2026
Among the high-profile death row inmates whose sentences Newsom wants reduced are some of California’s most notorious serial killers, according to a report from KTLA.
The list features Randy Kraft, the “Scorecard Killer,” convicted of murdering 16 young men throughout the ’70s and ’80s; Chester Turner, who was convicted of 14 murders of women in South Los Angeles over nearly a decade; and Charles Ng, who alongside accomplice Leonard Lake abducted, tortured, and killed 11 people at a remote cabin.
Also included is David Carpenter, the “Trailside Killer,” who targeted hikers in Marin and Santa Cruz counties.
Newsom’s commutations additionally extend to William Suff, the “Riverside Prostitute Killer”; Cary Stayner, who was responsible for the Yosemite murders; Joseph Naso, the “Alphabet Killer”; Wayne Adam Ford, Steven Dean Gordon, and Michael Gargiulo, the “Hollywood Ripper.”
Gavin Newsom has spared our daughter’s killer – and made a mockery of her life: Parents of woman butchered by depraved murderer detail unimaginable agony after governor commutes death row inmates https://t.co/i2H25JDbqq
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) November 9, 2026
Do you know about serial killers Charles Ng and Leonard Lake?
Gavin Newsom just wiped out Ng’s death sentence.
To call Ng a monster would be generous.
Here’s the story:
Charles Chi-Tat Ng.
Hong Kong-born. Age 65.
Death row. Now headed to life without parole.
His partner: Leonard Lake.
Lake swallowed cyanide after arrest in June 1985.
He never faced a jury. Coward.
Ng did.
Wilseyville, Calaveras County. 1984-1985.
A remote cabin with a cinder-block bunker.
Lake called it “Operation Miranda.”
A sex-slave dungeon inspired by a novel.
Men and babies killed.
Women held as sex slaves, tortured, then murdered.
Videotaped.
Ng on tape cutting a woman’s shirt with a knife:
“You can cry and stuff, like the rest of them, but it won’t do any good.”About 45 pounds of burned and crushed human bone fragments on the property.
Buried IDs suggesting as many as 25 victims.
Ng convicted of 11.
THE 11:
Harvey Dubs, 30
Deborah Dubs, 33
Sean Dubs, 16 months
Clifford Peranteau, 23
Jeffrey Gerald, 25
Michael Carroll, 22
Kathleen Allen, 18
Lonnie Bond Sr., 27
Lonnie Bond Jr., 19 months
Robin Scott Stapley, 26
Brenda O’Connor, 202 baby boys.
Deborah was pregnant when she vanished.
Kathleen Allen, 18, and Brenda O’Connor, 20, on the “M-Ladies” torture tapes.
Lake is also believed to have killed his brother Donald Lake and friend Charles Gunnar before Ng rejoined him.
Ng: Marine deserter. Stole weapons. Fled to Canada after Lake’s arrest.
Shot a security guard in Calgary while shoplifting.
Fought extradition for years.
Brought back in 1991.
Trial cost California about $20 million.
One of the most expensive in state history.Feb. 24, 1999: guilty on 11 first-degree murders.
Multiple-murder special circumstance.
Not guilty on Paul Cosner.
Death sentence.
Judge John J. Ryan refused to reduce it to life:
“Mr. Ng was not under any duress, nor does the evidence support that he was under the domination of Leonard Lake.”July 28, 2022: California Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence.
Nov. 5, 2026: Gavin Newsom moved to commute ALL 548 California death sentences to LWOP.
Including Charles Ng.
Ng is a multi-felon, so the California Supreme Court still has to sign off.
But a jury said death for 11 murders, including 2 toddlers.
Newsom took the death penalty off the table.
This is what “compassion” looks like for California’s worst of the worst.
— Kentucky Girl (@Kentuckygirl1) November 7, 2026
These are not ambiguous cases or claims of innocence. Juries convicted each man of multiple premeditated killings, often involving sexual violence, mutilation, or the targeting of vulnerable people.
Many of the convictions have been upheld on appeal for years. In his open letter, Newsom framed the mass commutation as a moral stand against “state-sanctioned killing” and argued that distinguishing among cases would create unequal categories of victims.
For the families of the people these men killed, that reasoning lands as an erasure of the specific, repeated crimes that put the men on death row in the first place.
California law requires Supreme Court approval for about 60 percent of the 548 cases, which are those involving inmates with more than one felony conviction, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Newsom has asked the court to act before he leaves office in January, as previously covered by The Western Journal.
Even if the justices sign off, the men remain in prison for life. The action does not free anyone, grant a pardon, or erase the convictions. It simply removes the death sentence that juries and judges imposed after full trials.
🚨 HOLY SMOKES. The father of m*rdered 12-year-old California girl Polly Klaas just WENT OFF on national TV at Gov. Gavin Newsom commuting the death penalty of her k*ller after the midterms
“WHY does he wait until TWO DAYS after the midterms to PULL a STUNT like this? So he can be in the history books?!”
“HE TURNS A BLIND EYE! […] Quite frankly I don’t understand! He has been governor for 8 YEARS yet he FAILED to get rid of the death penalty. It still exists!”
You can hear the pain in his voice.
Newsom announced on Thursday, two days after Election Day, that he’s commuting the sentences of ALL 548 death row inmates in California to life without parole, with two months left in office 🤯
That includes Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped Polly from a sleepover in 1993 and strangled her
Marc Klaas called it “a shiv in my back” 💔
“It shouldn’t have been a unilateral decision by a lame-duck governor.”
California voters REJECTED abolishing the death penalty in 2012 and again in 2016. Newsom overruled them anyway on his way out the door. Disgusting.
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 9, 2026
That distinction matters less to many prosecutors and victims’ families than Newsom appears to believe.
By adopting a blanket approach, Newsom has drawn swift criticism from individual district attorneys and the California District Attorneys Association, who argue the move openly disregards jury verdicts.
For families who spent painful years in courtrooms, the action felt like a blindside, delivered with absolutely no advance notice. Ultimately, it leaves grieving families feeling as though decades of rigorous legal processes are secondary to one governor’s personal opposition to capital punishment.
“It was callous. It was calculated. It was mean. It was ugly. It was ill-spirited. It was a lack of any empathy. It was immoral.”
Orange County DA Todd Spitzer torches Gavin Newsom on “Fox News @ Night” for commuting the death sentences of hundreds of California inmates.
Spitzer says Newsom “stabbed in the heart” victims’ families who endured years of legal proceedings, only to have the sentences thrown out.
Full story here https://t.co/MvLWhKVjZn
— Fox News Flash (@FoxNews_Flash) November 7, 2026
California has not carried out an execution since 2006. Newsom imposed a moratorium in 2019, but voters rejected a ballot measure to abolish the death penalty in 2016. Newsom’s move leaves the statute on the books for future cases while nullifying every existing death sentence, including those for serial murder.
Whether the Supreme Court will clear the path for all of them remains an open question. What is already clear is that 10 of the state’s most notorious serial killers are part of the group Newsom has chosen to treat identically.
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