![]() “I promised her then I would never stop until somebody knew and could help her.” “She told me she was convicted,” Knocke said. Sometime later, Knocke met Mellen again when she arrived at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla. ![]() Knocke said she called Mellen’s attorney to pass along that information, but he never contacted her. You didn’t have nothing to do with it.’ ” “He said, ‘Don’t worry, you are going to walk. “She goes, ‘Why are they doing this to me?’ ” Knocke recalled. Knocke said she was an inmate on the same Sheriff’s Department bus as Mellen and Landrum when they were taken to Torrance court. “June Patti, what a piece of dirt,” Knocke said. Shirley Knocke, who met Mellen in jail, said she plans to welcome her friend to freedom. The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Valerie Rose, “outlawyered” him, O’Connor said. He wasn’t prepared to properly impeach the witness.” “He fell asleep during the trial and did minimal investigation. Mellen’s attorney, who was more than 70 years old and primarily did divorce work, did not properly handle the case, O’Connor said. “June was herself a tweaker and she was a supremely vengeful, vindictive person.” “(The detective) built this case around Susan, solely on June Patti’s word and, in the process, she neglected to investigate (others involved),” O’Connor said. With God’s hands upon me now, I’m innocent.”Īt the time, Patti’s sister - a Torrance police officer - told Los Angeles police Detective Marcella Winn that her sister was a liar, O’Connor said. “And, I mean I wish you guys could believe me and know in my heart and soul and know I’m innocent. Patti’s testimony, however, was enough to convict her. She said she had spent the day moving into a residence in Gardena. Mellen maintained her innocence, testifying on her own behalf that she had nothing to do with the murder and wasn’t even home at the time. A third defendant in the case, like Landrum a gang member, was released. The neighbor, Chad “Ghost” Landrum, 24, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. There was insufficient evidence to prosecute the boyfriend. ![]() Super glue was found in his mouth and on his lips. Patti claimed Mellen was the person who shoved the woolen scarf into Daly’s mouth and used a hammer to jam it 10 inches into his throat. The boyfriend then paid a neighbor a quarter-ounce of methamphetamine to help him kill Daly.ĭaly died of asphyxia and a beating. Mellen, Patti told the jury, joined in to keep Daily quiet and to show her loyalty to him. ![]() Patti said Mellen’s boyfriend walked into the house, caught Mellen and Daly in a sex act, and attacked Daly. The crime was traced to a Lawndale house, which deputies referred to as the “Mellen Patch,” a lot containing two houses where methamphetamine users lived and hung out. When firefighters extinguished the flames, they discovered Daly, a 30-year-old 1985 Redondo Union High School graduate and father of two, had been bound with electrical wire, gagged and beaten with a claw-foot hammer. It gave her a sense of comfort.”Ī Torrance Superior Court jury convicted Mellen on May 15, 1998, of killing Richard James Daly, whose body was found burning in a San Pedro alley on July 21, 1997. “She didn’t want to be miserable and depressed, so she kind of turned to her faith. “She never gave up,” said Deirdre O’Connor, executive director of Innocence Matters, a Torrance-based organization that worked on her behalf. Susan Mellen, convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, will be greeted by her family, including her children, two of whom were 7 and 9 years old at the time their mother was sent away. A Gardena woman who spent 17 years in prison for a murder she did not commit is expected to walk free from a Torrance courtroom on Friday, when prosecutors will recommend releasing her.
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