BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — After about 30 minutes of talking, the jury all agreed that Jose Lara was guilty. They said that the 61-year-old is guilty of murder in the first degree. This is the cold case of a woman named Desiree Thompson from California City.
On January 7, 2012, Thompson disappeared. Police said her husband, Edward Gibson, hurt her physically in their California City home. After hearing the news, Eyewitness News spoke with her mother. She says she is still figuring things out.
Before the jury started thinking about the case, both the prosecution and the defense gave their final points.
The prosecutor, Christine Antonios, said that Lara was angry because he was kicked out of a Diablo party. He wanted to get back at someone, so he killed someone he didn’t know named Thompson. The prosecutor said that Javier Morfin Jr. and Javier Morfin Sr. told officer Brandenberg Lara that he killed Thompson in his house.
Antonios said, “He told them that he took a girl home, slammed her head into a refrigerator, stabbed her, burned her, and buried her.”
Desiree’s burned body was found in the garden of the house Lara used to live in. Mark Stamper, the 61-year-old’s lawyer, said that Lara was working extra jobs to make money at the time. He said that Gibson had Lara kill Thompson.
Stamper said, “That’s not just a fair conclusion.” “It’s obvious that the man who pointed a gun at his wife, killed her, and then paid someone else to get rid of the body is my client.
Jose Lara was found guilty of murder in the first degree. The date for the sentence is June 16.
Jose William Lara, who is 61 years old, was found guilty of killing Desiree Thompson, who was 30 years old, in California City 11 years ago.
On January 7, 2012, Desiree Thompson and her husband, Edward Gibson, got into a fight at home.
She was last seen in California City that night at a booze store. In July 2022, the Kern County Coroner reported that Thompson’s body was found in the California City backyard of Jose William Lara’s old house.
On May 9, 2023, the trial started.
The judge will give the sentence on June 16, 2023, at 8:30 a.m.