SLO serial killer Rex Krebs’ appeal rejected, but his execution is still on hold
The California Supreme Court has rejected an automatic appeal by serial killer Rex Allan Krebs to avoid execution, roughly 20 years after the bodies of his two college student victims were found in shallow graves in rural Avila Valley in San Luis Obispo County.
With the ruling, Krebs’ legal options have now been exhausted.
The court published its unanimous opinion Dec. 26 upholding Krebs’ 2001 trial court convictions of charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping, forcible rape, sodomy, and burglary, as well as his sentences of death for each murder conviction.
Krebs, 53, has been incarcerated on Death Row in San Quentin State Prison since July 2001.
Despite the high court’s ruling, it will likely be years before his sentence is carried out, if at all.
In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he will not conduct any executions of condemned inmates during his time in office, effectively placing a moratorium on the practice.
That move has brought the governor accolades from civil liberties groups, but also condemnation from public officials and family members of crime victims, such as Gail Crawford, whose daughter Aundria was murdered by Krebs in March 1999.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Crawford said she had not yet been notified of the Supreme Court ruling, but that she was grateful for the court’s opinion and that the justices upheld Krebs’ sentence.
Though she said she remains outraged over Newsom’s moratorium on capital punishment, she is comforted knowing he will remain locked away in isolation on Death Row.
San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow wrote in an email Tuesday that his office is “grateful for the finality of the long-awaited Supreme Court decision affirming the conviction and the death penalty for Krebs.
“Mr. Krebs surrendered his right to live when he senselessly raped and murdered these two young women, and the People of California have continuously affirmed their support for the death penalty,” Dow wrote. “It is now time for our governor to implement the death penalty, which is the most appropriate and just punishment for Mr. Krebs’ horrific crimes.”
Krebs’ appellate attorney, Neil Quinn, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. His trial attorney, Patricia Ashbaugh, was not immediately available for comment late in the day.
The Supreme Court’s 129-page published opinion reveals few new details about the murders, but does go into detail about officials’ interrogation techniques, whether Krebs was adequately advised of his rights, and whether physical evidence existed to support charges of rape and sodomy.
One new detail contained in the ruling is that, outside of the crimes for which he is known, Krebs also admitted to shooting and wounding an unidentified man during a drug deal in Santa Barbara in the 1980s.
Serial killer’s crimes
In November 1998, Krebs stalked and kidnapped Cal Poly student Rachel Newhouse of Irvine from the Jennifer Street bridge as the 21-year-old walked home alone from a downtown San Luis Obispo bar. According to numerous accounts, including Krebs’ own confession, he knocked Newhouse unconscious and dragged her to his truck.
Krebs took Newhouse to an abandoned A-frame cabin on the way to his Davis Canyon home, where he hog-tied and raped her. Krebs claimed that Newhouse suffocated while trying to escape her binding when he left her for several hours.
As a multi-agency dragnet was underway searching for Newhouse, Krebs sneaked into a San Luis Obispo apartment through a bathroom window and kidnapped 20-year-old Aundria Crawford, a Cuesta College student from the Fresno area. Krebs beat Crawford unconscious, took her to his Davis Canyon home, and repeatedly raped her.
After she nearly escaped and saw his face through a blindfold, Krebs strangled Crawford to death with a rope.
Both she and Newhouse were buried in shallow graves on and near the Davis Canyon property, where Krebs was living while on parole after being released from prison for committing a pair of sexually motivated invasions of women’s homes in the late 1980s.
It was Krebs’ parole officer, David Zaragoza, who recognized similarities in Krebs’ past crimes and the apparent abduction of Aundria Crawford. Zaragoza’s suspicions helped narrow the manhunt’s focus to Krebs, who was soon arrested on a parole violation and interrogated heavily by now-retired county District Attorney’s Office investigator Larry Hobson.
As evidence was collected, Hobson eventually convinced Krebs to confess to many of the crimes, ultimately leading investigators to the bodies of Newhouse and Aundria Crawford.
He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Monterey County Superior Court over the next two years.
This story was originally published January 7, 2020 at 7:38 PM.
