Subject: William Froeberg

• Stall in Montessori Killer/Rapist Sentencing

  Superior Court Judge William Froeberg had intended to announce punishment this morning for convicted Montessori killer/rapist Jonathan Phong Khanh Tran, 22. But Tran's mother switched defense lawyers and, through new counsel Al Stokke, asked for a five-month delay. Froeberg granted the request. The decision means that Tran continues living in the Orange County Jail, where family members can easily visit. A prison sentence could land him at, say, Pelican Bay State Prison near the California-Oreg

  May 11, 2007

• White Supremacists Jury Reaches Some Verdicts

  White supremacists Michael Lamb and Jason Rump must have sighed in relief this afternoon. Despite a week of deliberations following their nine-week trial, the panel hasn't been able to reach unanimous verdicts on the murder and attempted-murder counts. But at lunchtime today, jurors announced they had found the Public Enemy Number One (PENI) Death Squard hoodlums guilty of street terrorism and possession of a firearm by a felon. Lamb was also convicted of conspiracy to commit a crime. One jur

  July 2, 2007

• White Supremacist Gangsters Guilty

  An Orange County jury of seven men and five women took nine days after a nine-week trial to convict two Public Enemy Number One Death Squad hoodlums for the 2002 murder of another gangster and the attempted murder of an undercover Anaheim cop. Michael Allan Lamb, 32 (left), and Jacob Anthony Rump, 30, made no outbursts as Superior Court Judge William Froeberg's clerk read the guilty verdicts. Minutes later, when the lawyers huddled with Froeberg, they smiled at each other and twiddled their fin

  July 10, 2007

• OC White Supremacist Killer Avoids Death Penalty

  Just before lunch today, the jury in the Michael Allan Lamb murder case announced itself "hopelessly deadlocked" on whether the Public Enemy Number One (PENI) Death Squad member deserved the death penalty. The vote was nearly tied after almost three days of deliberating. Six jurors wanted death; five wanted life in prison without the possibility of parole; and one person remained undecided. Lamb kept silent, but studied his fingernails after the decision. Throughout the three-month proceedin

  July 31, 2007

• PENI Gangster Won't See Freedom Again

  This afternoon Superior Court Judge William Froeberg sentenced convicted killer Jacob Rump, a 30-year-old Orange County gangster, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a 2002 ambush murder in Anaheim. Details about the case involving Rump (pictured), who is a member of Public Enemy Number One (PENI) Death Squad, can be found here, here and here. Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh also won a conviction against Rump's white supremacist cohort, 32-year-old Michael Allen La

  October 5, 2007

• Overheard in the Courtroom

  Before a recent Orange County criminal trial of a Vietnamese American defendant, Superior Court Judge William Froeberg asked if any of the prospective jurors could speak Vietnamese. There was silence and then: Juror #126: I know one word of Vietnamese! Froeberg: One word? Juror 126: It's not a good word. Froeberg: I won't ask you to say it then.

  October 19, 2007

• Lamb Chopped: White Supremacist Gets Death

  White supremacist gangster and killer Michael Lamb (pictured) trotted into a heavily guarded Orange County courtroom this afternoon, chuckled with his lawyers and watched quietly as a court clerk announced the jury's verdict: death. But the proceedings, which took less than two minutes, nearly left Senior Deputy District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh 0-2 in his attempts to give Lamb, a career criminal and member of Public Enemy Number One's (PEN1) Death Squad, the ultimate punishment. A lone, sobbi

  June 11, 2008

• Death Official for PEN1 White Supremacist Killer

  Dana Point's Michael Lamb ditched his menacing shaved head look and entered Judge William Froeberg's 10th floor Santa Ana courtroom this morning with a full, messy head of hair that still couldn't cover the white supremacist tattoos doting his scalp, face, throat and neck. It wasn't like Lamb, a vicious Public Enemy Number One (PEN1) Death Squad killer/drug addict/petty thief/bully, cared what anyone present--including Froeberg or homicide prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh--thought. Well, in fairness

  August 22, 2008

• [Moxley Confidential] Politeness Didn't Help Montessori Killer Jonathan Tran at Sentencing

  May 1, 2008

• Author Tells of Her Relationship with Killer Skylar Deleon

  "I sat down with a killer the other day," begins Tina Dirmann's feature in the March issue of Orange Coast. "Funny, I thought, how, up close the face of evil often doesn't look so very evil at all."Dirmann's subject is Skylar Deleon, the former Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers actor turned con man, drug dealer and murderer who, with his co-conspirators, tied a husband and wife to an anchor on their yacht in 2004 and pushed them overboard somewhere in the Pacific Ocean to steal their boat. It w

  March 16, 2009

• Letters From OC Weekly Readers

  October 30, 2008

• [Moxley Confidential] Sheriff Hutchens' Concealed-Weapon Policy Prompts Talk of Homosexual Plot

  October 16, 2008

• OC Murderer Escapes Death Row--for Now

  Jury deadlocks on ‘ultimate’ punishment for Michael Lamb

  August 2, 2007

• White Power With a Lisp

  In a sensational gang murder trial, Billy Joe Johnson talks about sex, drugs, guns, dirty cops and Jews but not his homeboys

  June 14, 2007

• 'Nicest Killer I've Ever Met'

  Jonathan Tran, 22, convicted in Montessori murder and teen prostitute rapes

  March 22, 2007

• A Day in the Park With Hitler

  July 27, 2006

• One Good Bribery Charge Deserves Another

  July 21, 2005

• Letters

  December 7, 2000

• 31 Scariest People in OC

  November 2, 2000

• Shantae Molina is Innocent

  August 31, 2000

• I-Want-The-White-Girl Killer Also Wanted His Conviction Tossed and Gets a Surprise

  Hanna Montessori's Killer Gets An Unpleasant Surprise​Jonathan Phong Khanh Tran--dubbed by a homicide detective as "the nicest killer" he'd ever met--has waited 17 months in a California prison in hopes that a state court of appeal would overturn his rape, oral copulation and murder convictions in the famed killing of Hanna Montessori, a 15-year-old prostitute related to the founder of Montessori schools. But late yesterday a three-judge panel based in Santa Ana delivered two rounds of bad new

  September 1, 2009

• Why is Brenice Lee Smith Still Behind Bars, Awaiting Trial?

  Nick SchouBrenice Lee Smith at his first court hearing​A man accused of of membership in the so-called "Hippie Mafia"--and who has spent the past three decades living a peaceful, possession-free life in a Nepalese monastery--has now been languishing in jail for more than a month.Brenice Lee Smith was arrested at San Francisco International Airport on Sept. 26 after four decades on the run. A founding member of the Orange County-based Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which formed in 1966 with the i

  October 28, 2009

• Capo Unified's Fleming Delays His Day in Court, Again

  Anna, James, Maya: All reminders of a simpler time.​Remember 2007? M.I.A. released a really good album, the surge in Iraq was all the talk, Anna Nicole Smith laid to rest her gentle head and everyone assumed Hillary Clinton was going to be the next President.It was also the year in which James Fleming, the former superintendent of Capistrano Unified School District, was indicted for allegedly creating an "enemies" list of parents and students and then lying about it.He still hasn't stood trial

  October 30, 2009

• Fugitive Buddhist Monk Pleads Guilty, Goes Free Tonight, Brotherhood Case Finally Closed!

  Lorey JamesBrenice Lee Smith and his family in Kathmandu, circa 2000Brenice Lee Smith, the last remaining fugitive from the once-infamous 1972 Brotherhood of Eternal Love case, will be set free from Theo Lacy Prison tonight, having pleaded guilty this morning to transporting hashish from Afghanistan to Orange County between 1966 and 1972. Although questions remain about whether justice was served, one thing can be said with certainty: history has finally closed the book on the longest, most surr

  November 20, 2009