Man convicted of 1988 murder, rape, and kidnap of woman from mall in Pasadena

LOS ANGELES - A man whose conviction and death sentence were overturned for the kidnapping, rape, robbery and murder of a woman who had been shopping at a Pasadena mall nearly 36 years ago was found guilty again Monday of the crime.

The downtown Los Angeles jury found Ronald Anthony Jones guilty of first-degree murder for the Oct. 18, 1988, slaying of Lois Haro, 26, who was found by Pasadena police in an isolated area near the 134 Freeway with a gunshot wound to her head.

Jurors also found true four special circumstance allegations -- murder during the commission of a rape, forcible oral copulation, kidnapping and robbery -- along with an allegation that someone involved in the crime personally used a handgun, but the jury's foreperson told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Eleanor J. Hunter that the panel had deadlocked 6-6 on whether Jones had personally used a handgun during the crime.

Jones, now 54, is facing life in prison without the possibility of parole, with sentencing set Oct. 22.

Jones' crime partner, George Marvin Trone Jr., also 54, is already serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for the crime.

U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton concluded in a September 2021 ruling that Jones' first trial in 1991 was "incurably tainted by race-based discrimination" two decades earlier and found that he was entitled to a new trial. That ruling stemmed from a defense petition alleging that his constitutional rights were violated when the now-retired prosecutor in that trial used four of the prosecution's 12 peremptory challenges to dismiss all four prospective jurors who were or appeared to be Black as Jones is.

Hunter subsequently barred the prosecution from again seeking the death penalty against Jones under the Racial Justice Act, but denied the defense's request to reduce the murder charge to second-degree or to dismiss the special circumstance allegations.

Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman, who was assigned to the case with colleague Seth Carmack after the federal court judge's ruling, told jurors in her opening statements in Jones' retrial that Jones and his crime partner had gone out "hunting" for a vulnerable woman and that there was "no way they're going to leave her alive" after kidnapping Haro to sexually assault her, rob her and "terrorize her."

The prosecutor noted that the two could have robbed the young woman in the underground parking garage at the now-defunct Plaza Pasadena and left her behind, but made the decision to abduct the woman, who had been on her way back to her car and repeatedly asked to be taken home.

" ... She was the sole witness, the only person that could identify them," the prosecutor said. "They decided to kill her in order to silence her."

The deputy district attorney told jurors that Jones "could have changed the entire course of events that night," and that he initially denied involvement in the shooting but subsequently told police in a tape-recorded interview that he had shot Haro.

Defense attorney Ilya Alekseyeff countered that Jones had "taken responsibility" for what he did and said there would be "no dispute" that his client is guilty of murder.

But he told jurors that Jones was "not the one who fired that gun."

"... Mr. Jones was never in control," the defense attorney said. "He never wanted any of this to happen."

Jones' lawyer said that "the search for the truth was over" when police got what they needed during one of their interviews with his client, telling jurors that Jones was trying to seek leniency from authorities by "simply telling them what they wanted to hear" and that he didn't correctly describe the way the victim was positioned when she was shot.

"They want him to be the murderer, the killer, except he's not," Alekseyeff said in asking jurors to reject the four special circumstance allegations and both of the gun allegations.

In his rebuttal argument, Carmack told the jury that the two men didn't attempt to conceal their identities "because they were going to kill her." He told jurors that the defense was "trying to throw out the confession," adding that "you heard the defendant himself confess to this murder."

The victim's husband, Tony Haro, who has remarried since the killing, said after the verdict, "I'm relieved it's over. It's just been tremendously emotionally painful to listen to all the evidence again."

He was called as the prosecution's first witness during the retrial and told jurors that he last saw his wife alive that morning and returned home that night to find a note from her that she had gone to the store and would be home in about 45 minutes. He said he and his stepfather drove to the mall to see if they could find her car there and testified that he remembered homicide detectives bringing him a pair of rosebud earrings and a bracelet early the next day that he identified as belonging to his wife.

After the jury's verdict, Jones' three sisters hugged and apologized to Haro and other family members outside the courtroom in a gesture that the victim's husband said he "really appreciated."

The defendant's sister, Antoinette, said, "We have always felt we needed to apologize, say, `We're sorry,' even though we were not involved."

Another of his sisters, Latisha, said her brother "made the worst mistake of his life" and is remorseful.