CA - 'Onion Field' killer Jimmy Lee Smith dies in prison

[Taximom]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/09/obit.smith.ap/index.html
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Jimmy Lee Smith, the lifelong criminal whose role in the 1963 kidnapping and killing of a police officer inspired Joseph Wambaugh's crime book "The Onion Field," has died behind bars at age 76, a state prisons official said.

(Now that I think about it, this book (and movie) along with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood started my "true-crime" addiction.)

 

[Floh]

I'm glad he never walked the streets again.

 

[nanandjim]

I'm glad he never walked the streets again.

It sounds like he did walk the streets again, or, at least, that is how I interpret the article. I think that he was paroled and then got back into trouble his entire life.

The policeman's partner was able to escape, thank goodness. I wonder if he is still alive today.

 

[Malapoo]

Yes he served 19 years for the murder and was then paroled. Was in for other thiings over the years and this one sounds like a parole violation. I know they were originally sentenced to death, and it seems to me that a death sentence when commuted should be life without parole.

Hettinger died in 1994 at 59 after an illness is what I found. (The other officer)