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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast, the podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did and how. I am your host, Thomas Vibor-Flu. And join me as we travel to the most popular state in the United States of America, the Golden State, or the state with several of the most infamous serial killer cases in the world.
I am, of course, talking about California. 1971 was a fantastic year for music and culture. With the number one Billboard Top 100 hits being Joy to the World, as you just heard us snip it off. But, it was also a deeply troubled time.
The Tate-Alabiancomerters by the Manson family two years earlier in the Los Angeles area had shown people, they were not necessarily safe in their hopes. To make matters worse, the enigmatic Zodiac Killer was still on the loose, and sending haunting and haunting letters to the public. Civic unrest was ramping up, and four students protesting the war in Vietnam had been shot and killed by police at Kent State University in Ohio. All over America, blacks were rioting for their rights in large cities around the country, and the government was not far away from the Watergate scandal.
In Sutter County, California, near the Feather River 8 kilometers north of Yuba City, a Japanese farmer named Goro Kageiro was storing his peach orchard on the 19th of May, 1971, when he spotted a freshly dug hole between two trees that appeared to be the size of a man. He could not understand why someone had dug there, and thereby picking peaches was a crew that he had hired through one Vallejo Corona who managed a labor contracting business. Corona supplied area ranchers with cheap labor in the form of migrant workers from Mexico. Curious about the hole, Kageiro returned to the orchard that night, and saw that it had been filled in.
That made him doubly concerned. So he called the police, who arrived the next morning to see for themselves. At the very least, someone had trespassed on the property, possibly to bury their trash. No one expected to find anything of significance.
Several deputies proceeded to dig, and to their surprise, instead of what they had suspected, he yielded the body of a slender white man. They immediately called the homicide detectives. The victim, Kenneth Whiteacre, had been stabbed in the chest, bashed in the head and slashed with a knife several times across the back of his skull. His hands also bore deep cuts, as if he had struggled to defend himself.
He was fully dressed, and in his pocket was literature that suggested he might be a homosexual. The killer would later turn out to be responsible for the murder of 25 men before the authorities stopped him. To date, only four other serial killers in America have killed more people than him, and his name is Juan Vallejo Corona. The gay rights movement had just begun in nearby San Francisco.
Prior to 1962, Sardemy, and this was the term used by lawmakers, was a felony in every state punished by a lengthy term of imprisonment and or hard labor. So, it's no surprise that homosexuality was very much a controversial issue, less than ten years later. Gay men were becoming more and more outspoken, and claiming their civil liberties, and people with prejudices against their lifestyle sent times struck back, out of hate, anger, and fear. Yet there were no clues aside from tired tracks near the lone grave as to who had killed him and buried him there.
It was certainly a homicide, but seemingly nothing to be particularly worried about. It was difficult to imagine what truly lay behind the man's murder. One theory at a time was that he had been part of a group of gay men having group six, and then, due to alcohol and partying, things had gotten out of hand, resulting in him ending up dead. The deputies at the grave site made plaster impressions of the tracks near the grave, but thought it appeared to have been an isolated incident.
In their view, probably the unfortunate result of a fight that someone was trying to cover up. The idea of homosexuality and homosexual rape was so rare and foreign to most people at the time, that a medical examiner did not even do the tests necessary to attempt to find evidence on the body of sexual assault. After a superficial autopsy in which it was learned that many of the head wounds had occurred after the victim was already dead, they handed him off to a mortician. The incident, considered random and probably unsolvable, was chalked off to just one more problem in that area with homeless drifters.
Given the intensity of the attack, the killer or killers seemed angry, but that's about all they could say. That is, until four days later, on the 24th of May, when workers driving a tractor on an adjoining ranch, came across yet an area where the ground appeared to have collapsed. Forman Ray Duran checked it out and got the police to come there as well, given what they had just found they proceeded with more caution. This second grave yielded yet another male corpse, and it took several days to identify him as Charles Fleming.
Charles Fleming was an elderly gentleman at 67 years old. Born in Louisiana, he was at the time of death homeless, but he had a family. He had two children and had served honorably in World War II, fighting for his nation against the Empire of Japan in the Pacific Theater of War. For the rest of that day, detectives scoured their surrounding grounds but found nothing suspicious.
Then, a deputy spotted a pathway into a weedy area next to a peach orchard. Along the riverbank, they found more areas of disturbed earth that suspiciously resembled graves. They got out their shovels again and turned up some receipts for meat from the Uba City Market, dated only four days earlier, and signed with the name One V Corona. As the deputies dug further into this hole, they exposed another corpse.
Like the other two, this man had also been bludgeoned in the head, crushing his skull, as well as slashed with a large, sharp weapon, perhaps a machete. He too had been a poor farm laborer. Sheriff Roy Vitaker considered the situation. He had already picked up information about labor contractor Juan Corona, 37 years old, which disturbed him.
According to the story, Corona was a key suspect in an incident across the Feather River in Mary's Will. A man, Jose Raya, had been beaten early to death in a local cafe. He was found bleeding in the bathroom from serious head wounds. The reason that Corona became a suspect was that his half-brother, Nativid Dade Corona, a known homosexual, owned the cafe.
And one, not only was seen there that evening, but was also rumored to have personal issues with gay men, through the point of rage. In addition, he had a stint in a mental institution during the 1950s, diagnosed with schizophrenia. Even more interesting to the Sheriff was the appearance of a blue and white pickup truck in the vicinity of the Exhumations, a truck that resembled one Corona's. But there was little time to do anything about it yet.
The digging that evening had turned up even more graves. The police and eventually the media started referring to the place as Graveyard Lane. As they unearthed more corpses in this area, the Sutter County District Attorney, G. Dave Teja, came out to have a look.
He had always wanted the challenge of a first-degree murder case, and now he seemed to have a case on his hands that far exceeded even his wildest dreams. He discussed an arrest warrant for Corona with Sheriff Whitaker, but Whitaker hesitated. He wanted better evidence than two receipts and some vague stories about the man's violent temper. The fire department set up floodlights so the digging could continue, with the hope of getting something else along the lines of those signed receipts.
If a man were that careless to let something fall from his pocket, it was likely that he had left behind other things that could be linked to him. Off-duty cops and part-timers came to lend a hand, as well as to see this bizarre and grisly find for themselves. They were used to sporadic violence in the area, but nothing like this. A few men shed tears, and some got physically ill from the sights and the overwhelming odor.
Here, dare listen up, I would like to go into a bit more detail. Many times in TV shows and films, the audience is presented with someone making a face when a corpse is uncovered, but seldom are we presented with what that smell is like. So, imagine if you can, that you have left a plastic bag or box of chicken in the fridge for a long time. Maybe you forgot you had it before you left for a lengthy holiday.
When you return, you see the chicken laying there and you gingerly open the bag or box containing the meat. The smell of rotting chicken meat is distinct. It's pungent and sweet at the same time, and you might recoil from the smell immediately. This is the smell of putrefaction, and the smell coming off of a human corpse is similar, only about 100 times worse.
In addition to the muscle tissue of the meat, the corpse has intestines, other organs, that have started to decompose. And there is probably feces still inside the column, also contributing to the smell. It's an extremely unpleasant smell, and all forensic investigators working in the field, as well as pathologists, have to deal with it on a regular basis. As each new body was discovered and photographs were taken, the diggers made bets on just how many they would find.
No one even came close. It was like something out of a bad horror film, as if they had come across someone's personal cemetery. Worse, the evidence of outright molestation kept becoming more and more extreme, as men were found with their trousers around their ankles, their genitals exposed, or nude from the waist down. This had not just been murdered for money, it had a much more deviant sexual connotation.
The diggers never knew what they'd find next, and many of the men who had originally showed up just to see a single corpse out of curiosity, now deeply regretted being there at all. Sometimes they accidentally cut off a body part with the sharp edge of a shovel, and the deeper they went, the worse the stench of decomposition became. A few bodies had been in the air so long, without benefit of embalming or a box, that they just fell into pieces when lifted out. As best they could, the crew put individual victims into separate body bags, and left them for pickup by local marticians.
This area, near the riverbank, produced a total of eight corpses. So, to that point, in late May of 1971, there were nine known victims. In the mortuary, the bodies were laid out, one next to another, to facilitate identification as well as to try to create a timeline based on decomposition rates. It appeared that all had been migrant workers, and certainly all had been murdered with a similar type of bludgeoning or stabbing.
A few had been shot as well, and there was some evidence of anal intercourse. Many of the men were old men, of well over 60, and showed signs of disease and a vagrant lifestyle. Sheriff Whittaker kept looking for more evidence, cautioning the diggers to be careful. The meat receipts were good, but they needed something that clearly linked Corona to one or more of the victims.
If it was not forthcoming in the graves or on the dead men over being pulled out, then it would have to come from whatever people might know about these men. And that would be a much more difficult task, especially considering that these men were probably homeless day laborers without much immediate family or network in the area. Some of the dead men that were quickly identified were possible to link up with one Corona in various ways. It was circumstantial evidence to be sure, but a sufficient amount of circumstantial evidence can often make the case, especially in the days before DNA analysis and high tech crime equipment.
As the DA said at the time, it can piece together a mosaic, so compelling that the lack of physical evidence will not become an issue. For example, one victim had been talking with another job contractor when one Corona had driven by. That victim had shouted to the man asking for work, and when Corona stopped to talk to him, he had gone off with Corona, never to be seen again. Other victims too had been seen with Corona or had worked for him.
In several cases the last time a person had been seen was in Corona's company. Thus, within a day of stumbling over the killer's personal graveyard, the sheriff and DA felt they had solid leads that supported a warrant for searching Corona's home, car and office. Thus prepared, they went looking for him. They arrested him late in the afternoon of the 26th of May in his home.
His wife and four daughters were shocked, but the sheriff ordered a team to start looking around. In Corona's home they turned up a number of potentially significant items, and I'll list him up here as follows. A post-hole digger, a hatchet, a meat cleaver, more meat receipts similar to the one found in one of the graves. A ledger with their names of 34 men, a stained wooden club, a van parked outside that appeared to have blood stains inside, a shovel, a bag of bullets, bundles of clothing, and an 18-inch machete.
Corona's Chevrolet Impala with apparent blood stains inside. In addition to this list, Corona also had an office on the Sullivan ranch where the second body had been unearthed, so deputies entered it to look around. There they found a loaded pistol and a long knife on which the phrase, Tennessee toothpick was printed. They also found more meat receipts and a smaller knife.
All of this was collected for evaluation and testing. As they identified some of the victims, they searched the ledgers and were able to link at least six of the dead men with Juan Corona. Yet even as these tasks were accomplished, some deputies continued to search the grounds to make certain they had not overlooked anything. Aircraft taking infrared photography helped to pinpoint suspicious areas.
This killer had chosen a secluded spot for mass burials, but that did not mean he had not done the same thing elsewhere. It was a good instinct. In fact, there was more than one such clandestine graveyard. And so ends part one of the two part series of the machete murderer, Juan V Corona.
They continue this story next week, so as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. I have been your host, Thomas Weiborg Thule, and this podcast would not be possible if it had not been for my dear patrons who pledged their hard earned money every month. There are especially a few of those patrons I would like to thank in person. These patrons are my 17 most loyal patrons.
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