A 34-year-old man accused of killing, decapitating and burying a 60-year-old homeless woman whose body was discovered weeks later in the backyard of his family’s Huntington Beach home was convicted on Tuesday, Feb. 18 of second-degree murder.
An Orange County Superior Court jury deliberated for a little more than five hours before finding Antonio Padilla guilty of killing Gina Lockhart, whose headless, hog-tied body was found buried at a mobile home park in the 7900 block of Slater Avenue in July 2022.
A strong odor in their backyard, as well as Padilla’s strange behavior, led his family members to call police, who unearthed Lockhart’s body. Lockhart was a fixture of the shopping centers surrounding the nearby Beach Boulevard and Slater Avenue intersection, and was well known to local workers and residents.
During the trial, Senior Deputy District Attorney Janine Madera told jurors that Padilla killed Lockhart in a shed the prosecutor said the defendant lived in behind his parents’ mobile home. Padilla then used a machete to decapitate Lockhart and her own shoelaces to bind her hands and feet, the prosecutor said. Weeks later, Lockhart’s head was found buried underneath her body.
The prosecutor did not outline a motive for the killing. She acknowledged there was no evidence of a previous connection between Lockhart and Padilla.
The combination of Lockhart being decapitated after her death and the body being buried for several weeks made it difficult to determine a cause of death. But the prosecutor argued that Padilla had suffocated or strangled Lockhart, something pathologists did not rule out.
More than a week after Lockhart’s disappearance, Padilla’s sister described waking up to see him digging a deep hole in their backyard and filling it with concrete and dirt. Padilla’s mother also reported seeing him with what appeared to be blood-stained blankets. Padilla told his mother that he had killed a large raccoon, the prosecutor said, then threatened her when she kept asking questions.
“All his actions were to conceal a murder, showing he knew exactly what he had done,” Madera told jurors.
An officer who responded to the mother’s 911 call told her the odor was probably a dead animal and suggested she clean the area. While cleaning, the mother found bloody clothes, a patch of hair attached to part of a scalp and dirty shoes with no laces. Police once again responded to the home and after being told about Padilla’s digging and what had been found in the shed located Lockhart’s body.
Padilla’s sister later recalled to police that she had heard what sounded like a woman screaming “Help me, Help me, he’s going to kill me!” around the time when authorities believe Padilla killed Lockhart. The defense challenged the sister’s account, arguing that she waited two years to tell police about the alleged screams.
One night while awaiting trial in county jail, Padilla displayed crime scene photos of Lockhart’s decapitated head and her headless body so that the images were visible to other inmates and to guards. The prosecutor described it as Padilla displaying the images “as a trophy.”
Padilla’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Daniel Kim, questioned whether Lockhart’s death was even a murder.
Lockhart was an alcoholic, in poor health and in the weeks leading up to her death had made trips to the emergency room for seizures and alcohol poisoning. Her death, Kim argued, could have been from natural causes. Pathologists did not find any defensive wounds from prior to her death that would have suggested a struggle or fight, the defense attorney added.
“There is no forensic evidence of a homicide, none whatsoever,” Kim told jurors.
The defense also raised suspicion of Padilla’s father, who also used the shed as a “man cave” where he could watch television. The father was also seen tending to his garden above the area where Lockhart’s body was found.
Lockhart may have taken shelter in the shed only to die of natural causes and leaving Padilla or his father afraid to contact police, the defense attorney argued.
The prosecutor discounted Padilla’s father as a suspect, noting that unlike Padilla — who was far larger than Lockhart — the father was in his late 60s, was going blind and had trouble moving due to a foot cyst.
A hearing will be held on Wednesday afternoon to determine whether Padilla whether the 15-to-life sentence Padilla faces for the second-degree murder conviction will be doubled to 30-to-life due to a potential previous “strike” on his record.
Padilla is scheduled to be sentenced on April 11.