LOS ANGELES—An ex-convict was found guilty on March 10 of the murder of an 11-year-old boy who was kidnapped more than three decades ago while walking home from school in Inglewood.
A downtown Los Angeles jury deliberated about three hours before convicting Edward Donell Thomas, 53, of Pomona, of first-degree murder for the May 24, 1990, death of William Tillett.
Jurors also found true the special circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a kidnapping, but could not unanimously agree on a second special circumstance allegation—murder while lying in wait.
In California law, a murder case with a special circumstances allegation—which makes the case a more serious kind of first-degree murder—can lead to either capital punishment or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The boy was kidnapped just before 3 p.m. that day in the area of Imperial Highway and Crenshaw Boulevard while walking home from Kew Elementary School.
Authorities did not determine a motive for the crime.
“We don’t know if he was forcibly taken off the street or lured into the vehicle,” Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors on March 9 in her closing argument.
The boy was found unresponsive and not breathing just before 10 p.m. that night in a carport in a residential neighborhood in Hawthorne. He had been suffocated, and his hands and feet were bound with duct tape, according to the deputy district attorney.
“The family’s been waiting for many years,” the prosecutor told the jury. “Science finally caught up with the defendant.”
