DEALING WITH A CONFESSED SERIAL KILLER

The vision of hatred and defiance lasted just seconds. Then, the self-confessed architect and participant in the ritual murder of nine helpless people in the Wat Promkunaram temple lowered his glance. The savage light disappeared.

With his head down, the anger that glows beneath the surface of this 17-year-old former Agua Fria High School student was no longer visible. I remember, too, a perhaps fairly important detail Garcia admitted to the County Attorney's Office investigators about Alice Cameron.

The police arrested George Peterson, a mental defective, for the crime. He has been in jail for more than a year, after signing a coerced confession of first-degree murder.

Garcia never cared that an innocent man was perhaps facing the death penalty. Garcia and his girlfriend shot the woman in the back twice, for $20. She begged them for her life, to no avail. Garcia admits waiting at the murder scene for an hour to make sure his victim was dead. This is the defendant Romley chose as the one whose life should be spared.