Inmate beaten to death had ties to San Luis Obispo

A state prison inmate allegedly beaten to death by a former actor in an “Austin Powers” film was arrested and spent time in San Luis Obispo County as a transient, and appeared to have lived the life of a vagabond, according to his county court case file.

Michael Thomas Graham, 50, was found Monday beaten to death in his prison cell at Wasco State Prison.

Graham had been sentenced by Judge Michael Duffy in San Luis Obispo Superior Court to a two-year term for his failure to register in the county in February as a sex offender. A recent autopsy conducted by the Kern County coroner’s office showed that Graham suffered multiple blunt force injuries. The coroner also determined the manner of death to be homicide.

His cellmate, 40-year-old Joseph Hyungmin Son, who played Random Task in the 1997 film “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery,” is suspected in the beating death.

Graham was almost 100 pounds lighter — at 5 feet 7 inches and 142 pounds — than Son, a former mixed martial arts fighter with a 5-foot 4-inch, 236-pound frame.

According to court records, Graham was convicted of first-degree burglary in 1985 in Santa Clara County and an attempted lewd act against a child younger than 14 in San Bernardino County in 1993.

Graham appeared to have lived a meandering life, failing to register as a sex offender seven times in Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Luis Obispo counties since 2000.

Duffy could have sentenced Graham to a longer term based on his prior criminal record, but he settled on two years.

Graham previously served a one-year, four-month sentence at Wasco for failure to register as a sex offender.

Son has been serving a life sentence at Wasco for his role in a 1990 kidnapping and gang rape of a woman in Huntington Beach.

Police identified Son in the rape after he was convicted of felony vandalism in 2008 and a DNA sample he gave linked him to the 1990 crime.

This story was originally published October 13, 2011 at 11:51 PM with the headline "Inmate beaten to death had ties to San Luis Obispo."