Itzcoatl “Izzy” Ocampo, the presumed serial killer of a mother, her adult son and four homeless men in North Orange County in late 2011 and early 2012, says on a newly released video taped before he committed suicide in jail that he possessed “the kill gene” and that ridding OC of the “blight” of homelessness “had to be done.”
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Sources: Itzcoatl Ocampo Died After Eating Ajax in His Single-Man Cell
What's amazing is how calmly and matter-of-fact the former Marine, who never saw combat, describes the murders, his motivation and the “killer gene” he believed were inside him, as shown in this KTLA/Channel 5 report by Chip Yost:
Ocampo, awaiting a death-penalty trial, died in November 2012 after presumably eating Ajax in his single-man Orange County Jail cell. But Lt. Bob Dunn, the Anaheim Police spokesman who had a prominent part in the KTLA report, tells the Weekly that Yost had presumed the taped confession story since shortly after the alleged serial killer's capture.
“I think we actually recorded it two months ago,” Dunn says of his interview. “I don't know why the decided to air it today.”
The Anaheim Police station video, recorded in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 14, 2012, has Ocampo telling detective Sgt. Daron Wyatt:
* Homeless people are a “blight” on California and Orange County and that something had to be done to clean up the community.
* He understands right from wrong and what he did was, “Wrong, but it had to be done.”
* He possesses “the kill gene.”
” But he didn't rely on the gene while in the service” I didn't get to kill when I was in … I'd look at other Marines and, you know, want to be like them.”
It's presumed Izzy's killing spree began Oct. 25, 2011, with the multiple, violent and fatal stabbings of 53-year-old Raquel Estrada and her 34-year-old son Juan Herrera in their Yorba Linda home, which was not far from Ocampo's own. Estrada's other son, who attended the same Yorba Linda schools as Ocampo, was held for months as the suspected killer.
Ocampo is believed to gone on to fatally stab 53-year-old James McGillivray in Placentia, 42-year-old Lloyd Middaugh in Anaheim, 57-year-old Paulus Smit in Yorba Linda and 64-year-old John Berry in Anaheim, all homeless men.
The last murder was done in broad daylight near a fast-food restaurant, where frantic 9-1-1 calls led to a police chase and arrest of a man later identified as Izzy Ocampo.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.