California in the 1970s was a harrowing time. But no one expected to find 25 bodies on unassuming ranch grounds near Yuba City.
Juan Vallejo Corona was born on February 7th, 1934 in Autlán, Jalisco, Mexico. He first immigrated to the United States in 1950, when he was sixteen years old. He picked carrots and melons in the Imperial Valley for three months, and then headed north towards the Sacramento Valley.
In 1953, Corona moved to Marysville/Yuba City, where his half-brother Natividad Corona had moved to after immigrating in 1944. Corona quickly found work on a local ranch, and found that he enjoyed manual labour, and ranch life.
On January 17th, 1956, Corona’s mental health began steadily declining. He began complaining that he was seeing ghosts, and that the ghosts were out to get him. Natividad was afraid for his brother’s safety, and unsure of what to do. He had his brother committed to the DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn, California for treatment. There, Corona was diagnosed with “schizophrenic reaction, paranod type”.
Corona was released, after undergoing 23 shock treatments and being pronounced “recovered”. In 1959, he married his wife Gloria I. Moreno. The couple would go on to have four daughters. However, for reasons unknown, Corona was deported back to Mexico.
In 1962, Corona returned to California, and entered the United States legally with a green card, intending to earn his full citizenship. Corona went back to ranch work, working mainly out of the Sullivan Ranch, and was described as a hard worker with a violent temper.
Before long, Corona became a licensed labour contractor, and earned a very comfortable living hiring ranch hands and workers to staff local fruit ranches. He had a reputation for being tough on the workers, and many of them complained that he paid them very little. However, they didn’t want to complain too much.
Many of the workers lived transient lifestyles, going from place to place to work and earn a little money. Some were homeless, some were alcoholics, and some were seen as unemployable. Corona was the one who found them jobs, to try to get them back on their feet, or get them going to their next location.
In 1970, an altercation occurred between himself, his brother, and another man that would set the tone for the events to come.
Corona was known to have a violent temper, and he especially held anger towards gay men. Natividad was openly gay, and this caused much friction between the brothers. On the morning of February 25th, 1970, José Romero Raya was attacked with a machete outside of the Guadalajara Cafe, owned and operated by Natividad Corona. He never saw the face of his attacker.
The young man was discovered at 1:00 AM by a customer, who alerted Natividad. Natividad called the police, and they quickly zeroed in on him as the main suspect for the attack. Natividad had had his romantic interests rejected by José, and police figured that was motive enough.
José filed a lawsuit against Natividad, and was awarded $250,000. Instead of paying the settlement, Natividad sold his cafe, and moved back home to Mexico. He vehemently denied being involved in the attack, but alluded to knowing who might have been responsible. It’s fairly certain that he believed his brother, Juan, to be responsible, though he never mentioned it to police.
But Juan had gotten a taste of senseless violence, and he had seemingly gotten away with it.
Juan Corona also seemed to have control issues. While housing many of the workers that he employed on Sullivan Ranch, he controlled when they got paid, how much, and how long they could stay, if they didn’t leave by themsleves. Their living arrangements were described as a “dismal prison-like environment”, where Corona controlled their shelter, food, and other basic needs. He enjoyed the power this gave him. And he abused it relentlessly.
Corona also knew that so many of these workers had no family ties, and would not be missed. For them to simply disappear wouldn’t be a problem. Until it was.
On the morning of May 19th, 1971, Japanese farmer Goro Kagehiro was walking through his peach orchard, when he came across a freshly dug hole. He thought it strange, but went about his business. The following day, he noticed that the hole had been filled in. He immediately called police.
When they arrived, police dug up the body of a man who had been stabbed and hacked to death. At first, they believed that this had been someone’s attempt at covering up a fight gone bad – just another anonymous attack between transient workers that would go unsolved.
The coroner found that many of the wounds on and around the man’s head had been inflicted after he’d already died, indicating that the killer, or killers, had been extremely angry. While this was odd, there wasn’t much else of note that investigators could go on.
The man was identified as Kenneth Edward Whitacre, and the body handed off to the mortician.
Days later, on May 24th, 1971, ranch workers driving a tractor on an adjoining ranch near the peach orchard came across an area of ground that appeared to have collapsed. The foreman took a look, and, having heard what had recently been found, called the police.
This second grave produced another male corpse, that of elderly man Charles Fleming.
Nearby, a deputy spotted a pathway into a weedy area next to the peach orchard. There, police found more areas of disturbed dirt that looked similar to the two previously discovered makeshift graves.
Here, they found receipts from the Yuba City market, dated four days earlier. The receipts had been signed by Juan V. Corona. As investigators continued to dig, they found another body. The man had been bludgeoned in the head, and slashed. The man had also been a farm labourer, and police suspected he’d been attacked with a machete.
As news media got wind of what was going on around Sullivan Ranch, they began calling it Graveyard Lane. More graves have been found, and more bodies had been unearthed. The more bodies they found, the more frenzied the attacks seemed. The bodies were also being found in states of undress, suggesting a rage-filled sexual element to the attacks.
By this point, a total of 9 bodies had been found in the area. Police, with the help of coroners, attempted to establish a timeline based on the decomposition rates of the bodies. However, this county had never seen violence of this nature before, and there were many instances where the bodies were mishandled, or evidence wasn’t preserved the way it should have been.
While these examinations were ongoing, most of the bodies showed similar signs of violence – being bludgeoned, hacked, and signs of sexual assault and rape. And many of them seemed to have one thing in common.
As the bodies were identified, many of them were found to be linked to Juan V. Corona. He’d employed them to work as farm labourers, and had been seen around Sullivan Ranch. It was circumstantial at best, but it was still a lead. A lead that tied into the receipts found in one of the graves.
In many cases, the last time any of these men had been seen, they had been in the company of Corona.
Bolstered by witness statements, and the fishy circumstantial evidence, police entered his home with a search warrant on May 26th, 1971.
While searching his home, they found two bloodstained knives, a machete, a pistol, and clothing with suspicious stains on them. They also found a ledger – later known as “The Murder Book” – which contained the names of 34 men, and specific dates. 7 of the known victims were found on the ledger.
Police also found bloodstains in a van parked outside the house, and in Corona’s Chevy Impala. He was arrested, and charged with murder.
Having found so many graves in close proximity, police wanted to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. An aircraft flew over the ranch, taking infrared photographs in order to help pinpoint suspicious areas.
Deeper in the woods, near a prune orchard, police found evidence of more disturbed earth. There were more graves. They began digging. And found more bodies than they had before.
The media reported about Graveyard Lane, and The Murder Book, inciting locals to panic. They called the local police often, worried about their loved ones, asking if their names were in the ledger. Police were overwhelmed.
On June 4th, 1971, the search for bodies came to a close. In total, 25 bodies were found in and around Sullivan Ranch. It is entirely possible that more bodies never been found. Only 21 of the 25 have been positively identified. The following is a list of victims, in the approximate order in which they’d been murdered:
John Joseph Haluka, 52 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Sigurd E. “PeteP Beierman, 62 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife of machete.
John Doe, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
John Doe, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
William Emery Kamp, 62 years old, shot in the head with a 9mm.
Clarence Hocking, 53 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
John Doe, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
John Doe, stabbed/slashed with a knife of machete.
Albert Leon “Scratchy” Hayes, 58 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Warren Jerome Kelley, 62 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
John Henry Jackson, 64 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Joseph J. Maczak, 54 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Mark Beverly Shields, 56 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Donald Dale “Red” Smith, 60 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
James Wylie Howard, 64 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Sam Bonafide (aka Joe Carriveau), 55 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Edward Martin Cupp, 43 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Charles Levy Fleming, 67 years old, Stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Jonah Raggio Smallwood, 56 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Elbert J.T. Riley, 45 years old, stabbed/slashed witha knife or machete.
Lloyd Wallace Wenztel, 60 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
Paul Buel Allen, 59 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete
Raymond Reand Muchache, 47 years old, Stabbed/slashed with a knife of machete.
Kenneth Edward Whitacre, 40 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife of machete.
Melford Everett Sample, 59 years old, stabbed/slashed with a knife or machete.
It appeared as though the victims had all been murdered between February 25th, 1971, and May 21st, 1971.
Initially, Corona was provided legal aid. His public defender hired several psychiatrists to perform psychological evaluations on Corona in order to determine his mental health status, and his fitness to stand trial.
On June 14th, 1971, Corona’s public defender was replaced by a privately retained defense attorney, Richard Hawk. He fired all of the psychiatrists, and refused to entertain the idea of pleading guilty by reason of insanity. He knew he could win his case if he really wanted to – and he fully intended to prove his client’s innocence.
On February 18th, 1972, the California Supreme Court voided the death penalty, ruling it unconstitutional, cruel, and unusual. As such, the case against Juan V. Corona would not be tried as a capital case.
On September 11th, 1972, Juan V. Corona went to trial. He was charged with 25 murders. The case against him was flimsy at best. There appeared to be very little physical evidence tying him to the scenes, other than the market receipts, and some of the bloody objects found in his home weren’t bloody at all – they were paint stains, from Corona’s painting lessons.
The prosecution often angered the judge. The routinely asked for more time in order to receive results of testing they’d sent for – testing that should have been conducted months prior. Richard Hawk saw all of these flaws, and exploited them in his statements and cross-examinations.
When the case rested, Hawk believed he’d done his job – he’d established reasonable doubt by showing that the police had mishandled evidence, and the prosecution were not prepared for their case. The defense called no witnesses, and they rested.
The jury deliberated for 45 hours.
On January 18th, 1973, they found Juan Vallejo Corona guilty of first degree murder on all 25 charges. He was sentenced to 25 terms of life imprisonment, to run consecutively, without the possibility of parole.
However, the Department of Corrections stated that, under section 669 of the penal code, Corona would be elegible for parole in 7 years.
On May 18th, 1978, the California Court of Appeal granted Juan Vallejo Corona a new trial. His new defense team argued that at his first trial, his counsel had been ineffective. The courts agreed.
Corona’s second trial began on February 22nd, 1982 – nearly ten years after his first trial. His new defense team argued that Juan Corona could not possibly be responsible for the murders. Instead, they placed the blame squarely on his half-brother, Natividad, who hadn’t been in the area enough to have had committed the murders. But the jury didn’t need to know that. They also didn’t need to know that Natividad had died in Mexico 8 years earlier.
This time, Corona took the stand in his own defense, and more than 50 witnesses were called. Corona, through an interpreter, denied any involvement in the murders.
The entirety of the trial lasted seven months. On September 23rd, 1982, after deliberating for 54 hours, the jury once again convicted of first-degree murder on all 25 charges. In the end, it was the ledger, Corona’s “Murder Book”, that sealed his fate.
In 2011, a conversation Corona had had with a psychiatrist hit news media. He admitted to the psychiatrist that he had murdered the men. He stated that he believed them to be “winos” who were trespassing.
Juan Vallejo Corona was denied parole 8 times. He died in prison on March 4th, 2019, at the age of 85.
The reasoning behind Corona’s 6-week killing spree has been a matter of much debate among legal and psychology professionals alike. While the motivations remain mysterious, one thing remains factual – 25 bodies were found on ranch grounds in 1972, and Juan Vallejo Corona remains one of the most prolific serial killers in United States history.
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Sources:
Juan Corona, ‘machete murderer’ convicted of killing 25 migrant workers, dies at 85 – Ellie Silverman – The Washington Post
Juan Corona, the Machete Murderer – Charles Montaldo – ThoughtCo
The Serial Killer Podcast – Juan V Corona | The Machete Murderer – Part 1 – Part 2
Juan Corona Wikipedia page