Juan Vallejo Corona

(The Machete Murderer)

Juan Corona was one of the early pioneers of serial Killing. Unfortunately, he was never really told of his crimes. Hence, we are left with the information police were able to ascertain during there investigation into his crimes. Juan Corona was born in Mexico in 1934. His life in Mexico was somewhat of a mystery. Corona moved to the United States in the 1950's as a migrant worker and eventually became a successful labor contractor in Yuba County, California.

In 1970, a young Mexican man was viciously attacked with a machete at Corona's brother’s cafe. The man accused Corona's brother, Natividad Corona, of the crime and filed a lawsuit, seeking $250,000 in damages against him. Natividad fled the country not long after, and the case was soon forgotten.

On May 19, 1971, a farmer who had hired Corona to arrange labor for his farm found a large grave shaped hole between 2 trees. He asked the nearest worker about it but they just shrugged it off. The farmer wanted to know what was going on so he returned to the hole later that night. However, he was rather dismayed to discover it had been filled in and decided to call the police to check it out. After some digging, they discovered a corpse later identified as transient Kenneth Whitacre. It appeared as though his head had been mangled with some form of meat cleaver. They also discovered gay pornographic material buried with him. The pornography lead police to file the case as a sex crime.

On May 23, 1971, farm workers discovered another body, Charles Fleming, a known drifter. As police searched the area, another corpse was found, then another and another. After 9 days of excavation, police called the search off. It was June 4, and they found 25 corpses in all. Moreover, it was surmised that they had all been killed since February.

Police were able to identify 21 of the 25 corpses. It turned out that most of them were migrant workers, and a few had been drifters. Most of them had been attacked with a machete or knife. All of them had been stabbed to death, buried face up, arms stretched above their head, shirts pulled up over their faces, pants pulled down and signs of recent sexual activity.

Not one of the victims had been reported missing. Once police started looking over the corpses and their clothes, they discovered a receipt in one of the victim’s pockets. The name on the receipt was "Juan V. Corona". Upon further investigation, they also discovered 2 bank deposit slips with name "Juan V. Corona" on them. In addition, an eyewitness came forward and reported seeing Corona with one of the victims.

Police quickly charged Corona with murder and took him into custody. The case against him was based almost completely on the receipts found on Melford Sample's body which was purely circumstantial evidence. However, upon conducting a search of Corona's residence, police found a machete, a pistol, two butcher knives and a ledger that contained the names of seven victims. Corona's lawyers tried to argue this and tried to lay the blame on his brother, a known violent offender with homosexual tendencies. The only problem with this argument was that Corona's brother, Natividad, was not even in the country at the time of the murders. Corona's lawyers only called one witness during the entire trial, and never even brought up the fact that Corona was diagnosed as schizophrenic in 1956, thereby ruling out any chance of an insanity defense. In the end, it took the jury 45 hours to convict Corona of the 25 murders (a record for the US at that time) and a month later, he was sentenced to life in prison.

In 1978, an appeals court upheld an appeal by Corona citing that his legal team was incompetent and granted him a new trial. While awaiting his new trial, Juan was attacked by 4 inmates in prison. Following the attack, he never regained sight of one of his eyes. He was then put through an extensive psychiatric observation period, further delaying his retrial.

During the late 1970’s, Corona was reported to have told a Mexican consulate he was guilty. This is the only reported time of him admitting the crime. The exact quote went "Yes, I did it, but I'm a sick man and can't be judged by the standards of other men." Nonetheless, when he finally did make it to trial in 1982, Corona was again found guilty of 25 murders and was sent back to prison to continue serving his life sentence.

On March 19, 1999 the LA times reported that 3 inmates rushed into the most protected section of the prison, struck mass murderer Juan Corona and smashed a guitar, belonging to Charles Manson, in a string of security breaches inside the troubled San Joaquin Valley prison.