Death Row Inmate Charged With 1989 Slaying Of Long Beach Student
LONG BEACH (CBS) — A man on death row for strangling a 14-year-old Fresno girl was charged with murdering a 15-year-old high school sophomore in Long Beach in 1989, the District Attorney's Office announced Thursday.
Next month, Royal Clark Jr., 49, is expected to be brought from San Quentin State Prison to Long Beach to be arraigned in connection with the Oct.30, 1989, slaying of Danielle Marie Haddon, according to Deputy District Attorney Carol Rose.
The criminal complaint -- filed late Wednesday -- includes the specialcircumstance allegation that he has a prior murder conviction, along with an allegation that he used an electric cord in the commission of the crime.
Clark was linked to the crime through a DNA hit confirmed in September by investigators, according to the District Attorney's Office.
Haddon, who was a sophomore at Wilson High School in Long Beach, was alone in the apartment she shared with her grandmother in the 1000 block of Coronado Avenue and was talking on the phone with a friend when she said she had to answer a knock at the door, according to the prosecutor.
The teen's body was found inside the apartment early the next morning after her grandmother returned home from work.
She had been strangled with an electric cord, authorities said.
In August, the California Supreme Court upheld Clark's conviction anddeath sentence for the first-degree murder and attempted rape of Billie-Jo Laurie Farkas, who was found dead on a rural road in Madera County with a rope around her neck and her blouse pulled up after being attacked in a restroom in a recreation area.
He also was convicted of the attempted murder, false imprisonment and kidnapping of Farkas' 15-year-old best friend, who survived being choked unconscious.
Clark lived in Long Beach before eventually moving to Fresno, the California Supreme Court noted in its Aug. 29 ruling.
