Jury Urges Death Penalty for Killer of Three Women

A Santa Monica Superior Court jury recommended Monday that a former television cameraman die in the gas chamber for the 1984 murders of three Westside women.

After 3 1/2 days of deliberation, the panel of seven women and five men recommended that Dean Phillip Carter be executed at San Quentin State Prison.

The same jury last month convicted Carter, 33, on three counts of murder, two counts of rape and two counts of burglary in the string of assaults in April, 1984.

Carter, the son of a former police and fire chief in Nome, Alaska, was convicted of killing Culver City roommates Jillette L. Mills, 24, and Susan Lynn Knoll, 33, and their friend, Bonnie Ann Guthrie, 24, of West Los Angeles. Mills and Guthrie were also raped.

Carter earlier was convicted and sentenced to 56 years in prison for the March 29, 1984, rape and attempted strangulation of a 22-year-old Ventura County woman.

He still faces murder charges in Alameda and San Diego counties.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Marsh Goldstein contended that the Westside assaults were a series of crimes that Carter committed over two weeks between Oakland and San Diego.

Carter, who worked for KTUU-TV in Nome, and later as a free-lance cameraman in Seattle in the early 1980s, was arrested in mid-April, 1984, on a drunk-driving charge near Flagstaff, Ariz. He was driving Mills’ car. Inside were one of Guthrie’s sweaters and a piece of luggage that belonged to a victim in Oakland.

Judge Robert W. Thomas set formal sentencing for Sept. 15.